Mike Jackson

A didn’t call this UNT a Football school. If that makes a difference. But the reason the basketball doesn’t have support is because it has 4 appearances in the NCAA tournament all time. So your comparison holds zero validity. The DFW market is a winners market. The USA is a Football market. The NCAA Tournament Championship Game draws less that half the College Football Championship Game. Let us consider your argument. But let’s be accurate. 2003 Sun Belt Champion, 2004 Sun Belt Champion that is within the past 2 decades. So if you want to hold up the 2021 CUSA Championship and 1 tourney win as bigger you are splitting hairs. Yes in this moment in time the Basketball team is light years ahead of football when it comes to management, play and coaching. But expecting the SuperPit to be packed based off 1 Tournament win and CUSA title is just foolish. And pissing on the football program isn’t going to fill the SuperPit. 🤦🏽‍♂️

Why? How is that different from from what upstarts/restarts FAU, ODU, Charolette, UAB and UTSA have done? Literally any school with the adequate resources within 30% of ours that really tries surpasses us.

Calling a program that is 1-4 in the NCAA tournament a “basketball school” just makes my 🙄. Give me a break. Reach the Sweet 16 first and then repost this topic.

I don’t get the sour grapes either. They would be playing here under a head coach that sucks for another year minimum. And if their great defensive play (which SL can’t really take a lot of credit for) help drags this mediocre coach to 6-6 again you might be “rewarded” for that by playing another year under him. Actions speak and their actions to retain SL told everyone that mediocre is good enough here if budget friendly. Taking off my Mean Green gear and thinking purely as an athlete; I would have zero respect for this program and I would leave given the opportunity. Coming into 2022 you would have to look past this program’s history to chose to come here over any team in the top half of G5 or chose North Texas as school for other reasons. They say “building champions” but apparently that doesn’t apply to football. Would you want or expect a player to stay here if they didn’t believe the leadership was trying to build a champion? And I am sorry for being harsh but anyone believing that building a championship football program is this leadership’s 1st priority you are delusional. Your actions need to align with your words and right now I don’t see that here.

I don’t think it’s faith. Faith would be giving up a chunk of your salary so the Department could pay a guy with good track record to potentially save your job. Seth should negotiated leaving for 1/2 the buyout money so he could get on another staff and rehab his reputation as an Offensive coach. He is trying to have a somewhat respectable season without a 5 game losing streak. It all about hunkering down, and squeezing the maximum out of all the resources that are in his comfort zone. Seth could have delegated some of his offensive oversight to others and threw himself into correcting the QB situation the past 3 years. He doesn’t have a feel for the position or what kind of QB really meshes with his style. He wants to throw the ball around but really unless he has a great former QB on staff that can coach he can’t teach the QB’s how to execute it. A Jaylen Hurts type would do well here with the average number attempts per game slightly under 30 and really great instinctive running. But Seth wants a better passer cause if you can’t show P5 teams you can develop good passer they won’t be interested in you as head coach candidate with an offensive background.

OU and UT don’t want to fork over the full amount of money required for them to leave early. And the Big 12 gets their cut of their home games till 2025 regardless of when they leave. That means those big checks from Texas/OU hosting A&M, LSU, Arkansas and etc. will have Big 12 chunks taken out of them. That is the understanding I get from John Kurtz. https://youtube.com/channel/UCYKMXVCgo3h9fK5BtxDIorg

With three straight years though of declining completion percentage don’t you think it would be better to get a known commodity at QB coach? If I were WB. This would be far beyond the last straw. I will be asking myself what do we need Seth for? Why wasn’t he named QB Coach after 2 straight years of decline since he was already on staff? At this point I would want to see how Tommy Mainord would fair in 2022. If he shows something you could be more frugal with his 2023-2026 contact years. A quality new coach with options at the end of 2022 is going to want the best financial security UNT can offer. It is a dumpster fire and a head coach hasn’t been hired away from here since 1980. A cheap young unknown coach is not an option here there is too much negative momentum to ask him to turn around. While I was fat checking my 1980 comment the name Jerry Moore came up. He seems to have done pretty well after he left. My question is was he considered or pursued when Matt Simon and/or Daryl Dickey were hired? It appears to be a perfect timeline Appalachian state was still more than a decade away from playing FBS football. Does anyone in the form know Or have a strong hunch.

The good folks at TEDTalk would like to have a word with you sir. I think you misunderstood the requirements for Decorum and format.🤷🏽‍♂️ 😂😂😂 You’re right about basketball. However Oklahoma Louisiana and Texas are probably the most football attention dominate collegiate regions in the country. Look at the history of the Mavericks trying to acquire free agents with roots in Texas. That just might be a coincidence but I don’t think it is. No American born star has ever fallen in love with this place.

I just wanted to interject a distracting fun hypothetical to take our attention away from the dumpster fire that Mean Green Football appears to be. (It may not help but it is worth a try). Scenario: UNT gets a billionaire supporter committed to make an endowment that fully fund a state of the art energy efficient dome stadium 42k capacity for football or soccer. The fund would cover 100% of construction and maintenance for 20 years including the gear that switches playing surfaces. Either you accept stadium endowment or 35% of the value endowment paid over 10 years. There would be no stipulations on how you use the 35%. You could use it to start up baseball, men’s soccer, and probably women’s gymnastics most likely if you started another male sport (title 9 compliance). Or you could use it for whatever the NCAA allows. Which would you chose and why?

You probably wouldn’t be saying that if we didn’t have a losing coach or department leadership made decisions in line with their stated Championship standard. Oregon State is no great program. If we had a winning coach who recruited well that would be G5 level depth behind them and it would probably those backups transferring and not the starters. It isn’t like these guys transferred to UT Austin, Oklahoma LSU or Texas A&M. If you have guys transferring to those programs but have depth behind them you’re a G5 program in good shape. We are whining about big CFB wide issues that we and UNT staff have no control over while retaining a losing coach? 🙄 Let’s get to where UTSA is now then complain about those things.

Nobody sets out to be on a losing team for the majority of their college career. Yes, high character guys who like a challenge want to be a part of a big positive change. The biggest reasons these guys are leaving are the same ones that keep UNT Students and Alumni outside Apogee on game days. You can no longer sell the excuses to get younger fans invested in UNT Football, when we routinely see teams we barely heard of that started playing football after 2000 kick our ass routinely. You don’t get that low by chance. When the standard is 0.500 and you miss you are terrible. When the standard is championship and you miss you might still be a winner. Your decision process has to align with that championship standard. The decision processes here don’t align with that. Seth never met nor exceeded the standard but got two 2 raises/extensions? There is no standard here Seth on the sidelines this coming season is proof of that. The question is what can and should we do about it. We don’t have a lot of power. Otherwise things would already be different here.

Bravo, we have plenty of examples of other programs without our resources surpassing us. And in 2021 we were reduced to celebrating “ruining” UTSA’s perfect season as the signature achievement. The leadership should be demanding the type of season we “ruined” before handing out big extensions. We should never be begging coaches to take/honor an upper 1/3 G5 contract when they have zero conference titles, zero 10-win seasons, and zero bowl wins. [When a coach dangles an offer from a mid-tier P5 program like KSU, remind him UNT, when comparing resources of conference rivals, is a big fish in a little pond and that isn’t the position KSU has in the Big 12. Offer him a 100k loyalty bonus if he stays and wish him well if he leaves and cash that buyout check coming. Now if he gets an offer to go to a top tier P5 team, celebrate with him and help him pack.]

Unless you are currently unemployed why a quality QB Coach take a one year challenge to work wonders with talent poor QB room and an unknown commodity as the OC? Because if you don’t work wonders you won’t get to year 2. This is akin to taking the Texans HC job last year.

The sinking ship was obvious to anyone being objective. That is what infuriated me about SL defenders. The weather saved Seth’s job. Foundational decisions about a football program should not be changed by a weather event. Baker has to start righting this ship immediately. Especially if he has aspirations for bigger things. As an AD mishandling a FBS football program that actually has resources trumps your other achievements. This HC position becomes less desirable as the cupboard empties and the fan base becomes more Apathetic and or upset It would be refreshing if we hear Wren Baker say this in the next 48 hours. Those guys get paid to be smarter than us. I overlooked the second extension Seth received. It was an indication to me that they didn’t understand what is possible at UNT. Good G5 programs have their head coaches hired away frequently. And that is always more desirable than firing a coach you kept too long.

If this coming season is not a total disaster we should count ourselves extremely lucky.

We don’t lack sufficient talent to be above 0.500 in a G5 conference. Only the bottom 1/3 of CUSA has that problem. There is plenty of talent to go around for the upper half of G5 conferences. The talent gaps in the lower G5 conferences are small. A recruiter goes after the talent the coaching staff identifies as good and fitting their system. It is a group effort so separating the recruiter outcomes from the coaches virtually impossible historically mediocre G5 programs. The brand doesn’t help the recruiter at the G5 level so you need a coach with a good reputation to recruit for. And that is why our recruiting this year is suffering. What is a recruiter selling? Facilities that won’t be finished before these guys graduate or get frustrated losing on the bench and transferring?

NIL and new transfer rules are just convenient scapegoats. The problem is the overall anticompetitive structure of College Football. These powerhouse teams rarely leave their region to play a game. College football has always been regional. And it will continue to decline until we see regularly see non-conference regular season games between the best brands. Just go on Winspedia.com and see how rare these cross-regional regular season non-conference games are. Hell let’s just list the big brand college football teams Alabama hasn’t played a road a regular season at game in 30 years. USC UCLA* - (3 games total 1 at Rose Bowl 2000) Oregon - never played anywhere Washington - 1978 last regular season game Colorado - No regular season games Nebraska - no matchups since 1978 Iowa - never played Michigan - (2012 in Arlington Regular Season) Michigan State - no regular season games Ohio State - (only regular season game 1986 in New Jersey 🙄) Virginia Tech - ( 2 games in Atlanta) Boston College - no games after 1984 Pittsburgh - no games Alabama is not unique in doing this. And the problem is huge in my opinion. Imagine if the NFL were run with this. 12 game schedule, 6 division games, 4 conference games, and 2 games the teams get to schedule ( so no regular season NFC vs AFC matchups unless Jacksonville wants a payday at Dallas or something else akin to that). Also those 4 in conference games were scheduled by the teams with one money and playoff positioning in mind, no rotation. And the playoffs were just NFC & AFC championship games and the Super Bowl. The participants would be based on ranking with tie breakers beyond head to head determined by a committee based on “eyeball test”. (Side note: You think a committee not trying to shoehorn a Cowboys team with the same record as Tampa Bay into the NFC Championship game over them?) If the NFL were run this way there would be a ratings decline in that league also. Now imagine if there was no draft or salary cap. Your interest in watching games would drastically decline unless you are fan of one of the most popular franchises. 🤷🏽‍♂️

That is a pretty low floor. 🤷🏽‍♂️

Great recruiters still have to have something to work with. A great recruiter is not turning Rice into a perennial conference championship contender. They are very important but think a recruiter can turn conference bottom feeders into powerhouses with bad coaches is just foolish.

He will probably be the starter and throw sub 55% in completions with have them below 0.500 again. These facilities don’t mean squat unless recruits believe the team they are going to can compete. With the current coaching and last 3 years they have very little evidence to show recruits they should believe in them.

Get a coach that can have 3 straight above 0.500 seasons first. Unless you put a retractable dome on Apogee and regional P5 schools come every year attendance won’t change because people don’t come see a losing program. We haven’t seen a coach here get the best out of the talent we had available since Dickey. We won’t be able to NIL our way to consistent just above 0.500 ball without good talent development coaching.

Money talks and I don’t see a whole were OU, UT and the SEC pay all the money necessary to have those school leave early. The SEC would have to make concessions in the expanded playoff structure otherwise (which would still boil down to money) for that early exit.

But you would still be at the floor of a better conference. The same win-loss record just with a tougher schedule in theory. 🤷🏽‍♂️

Yes, 😂 when you are losing it doesn’t matter which conference you are in. Bottom feeder programs in P5 still have to fight off G5 programs for recruits. By the time we have an AAC schedule to show recruits Seth will be gone.

See, that just circles us back to fire Seth because I doubt he he waiting to awe us with a coach from the NFL that is unavailable to interview now because he is still in the playoffs.