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Mike Jackson

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Everything posted by Mike Jackson

  1. How was Todd Dodge essential in getting Apogee please tell. Apogee was already in the works before he arrived. It was proposed by the Board of Regents in 2002 when the land was purchase during the middle of Darrell Dickey's Sun Belt run. And UNT may have gotten kicked out of FBS or at least the Sun Belt without Apogee or without 15-20 million dollar upgrade to Fouts Field. There is big time revisionist history when it comes to Dickey and Dodge in MGN. Dodge was a horrible hire and I called it that at the time. It might have worked if the AD insisted on Dodge putting together a staff with FBS experience from day one. But that would be intimidating to first time coach at the FBS level with a paycheck that says: "you better be good dude or you're extremely expendable". Dodge recruited better than I expected. It would be unfair not to acknowledge that. But Dickey's biggest sin is that he left with a "bad attitude" and I can't say I blame him much. He should have been given more resources to work with and recruiting assistance. But the notion that somehow Dodge was essential in getting Apogee when at the time of SGA vote to finalize the financing for the stadium with 2 wins over FBS opponents by the middle of his second year is dubious to me.
  2. While I understand your logic I don't agree. I would rather that extra hour+ at home watching competitive P5 games or spend time with my family. Seeing Fine would have been nice but I not that upset that I missed him. Even if the game was closer at that point, the outcome was never in doubt for me after the middle of the 2nd quarter. The only questions were how hard they would play throughout and which backups would get a shot in garbage time (if the lead swelled beyond 14 points). I gave up dreams of coaching more than a decade ago. Figured out I don't love the sport that much. If we were getting demolished by a Houston, Memphis, Texas Tech, Kansas State, or any other lower level P5 team I would have stayed because each play in garbage would tell us more about this team from an athletic talent standpoint than garbage time against lowly SMU backups.
  3. I think in hindsight it is a resounding NO. RV set this program back a decade at least. Another bad Dickey year at head coach would have set us back 2 seasons maximum. But in fairness any FBS progress we made was due in large part to Dickey at the time. In professional life whether you are leader or worker bee the principle is the same. Never quit current job unless you already have a better opportunity lined up. Never fire a worker (who hasn't fired themselves with extremely poor decisions ) until you have good plan to replace what that employee provided to your team.
  4. Can you really blame them for wanting to leave? I left probably about 3 minutes before your group did. If I knew that Fine was going to play I would have stayed. You are lucky to have a group a people with you to stick around till the 4th quarter. I could rarely get people to accept a free ticket in a prime section to come to a game with me in the first place. Which is why I gave my season tickets up.
  5. We are talking about SMU coming off a 2-10 season demolishing us at home and making me consider leaving before halftime despite all the game day experience upgrades. We lost 34-13 at SMU last year with all our problems. So we didn't lose ground but the late touchdown in this years game gives a false sense of progress in my opinion. Effort is not progress it is the minimum.
  6. Firing Dickey only makes sense if you hire someone better to replace him. I am not "bemoaning" firing Dickey I am bemoaning not hiring someone better to replace him. The same principle applies when I "bemoan" Canales. You acknowledged that 100s of others would have done better than McCarney, Canales was just one of those. And who knows Canales might have done better than either of us thought if he brought in the right staff to assist him in recruiting. With crappy facilities we had when Dickey was dismissed, no hot P5 coordinator, FCS head coach, or even NFL position coach was lusting after the job here. So Dickey could have been given another season to turn it around. But move on from semi-ancient history when it comes to UNT's return to FBS. So yes they have invested more but if the W & L columns look basically the same after that increased investment that just means you are doing less with more. They were "striving" for better when they decided to build Apogee and hire McCarney (for relatively big bucks for UNT). The last time the university was "publicly happy" with the status quo was in the middle of our Sun Belt run. And even then they were planning to get resources in place to build Apogee. Sorry but I am all out of patience and kudos for investing in a program at level fitting for the flagship of a University System with 35,000+ student in a major metropolitan area. Sorry my friend that is low bar: actually "trying" at all levels of the program from financial investment, administration, game day coordination, coaching and players. It is good that they are now but they are 15 years late at least. With 15 years of actually trying adequately we should be a notch below Houston as one the more desirable G5 destinations. Not struggling to beat upstart UTSA. We are closer to being a FCS program than a program getting even slight interest from P5 conferences.
  7. That just means the bar is extremely low here. I hear patience preached all the time by the Mean Green faithful. Running out Darell Dickey, hiring a high school coach as your head coach, not giving Mike Canales (a coach that desperately wanted the job and the team responded too) the job in favor a coach with NO CONNECTiONS to this region of the country, and keeping RV around for years after is quite apparent that the job was too much for him used up ALL my patience. You won't get kudos from me anytime we are playing at unranked G5 team coming off 2-10 season and I am seriously considering leaving before halftime before it gets too ugly. UNT Leaders have squandered to many opportunities and has failed to take advantage of UNT's unique resources when you compare them to our rivals. South Alabama beat Mississippi State. South Alabama didn't have a program in 1995. App State took ranked SEC East favorite Tennessee to the brink and App State has barely been in FBS long enough to wake up and drink a cup of coffee. Southern Miss beat Kentucky. And people here are preaching patience. Patience is warranted when you see competitive game at home (they don't have to be wins) but if I am leaving before the 4th quarter and you aren't playing a P5 school or a highly touted G5 team that is flirting with being ranked in the top 25 there is not much to be positive about. Playing hard is the bare minimum. It's like actually writing your name on the test and attempting to answer every question, you don't get praise for that just acknowledgement.
  8. I think we need to stay put unless we are fairly certain CUSA will be lose some of its better members. The MWC shutdown its network operations 2013 so there is no advantage there. I like the prospects of playing Fresno State, San Diego State, Colorado State, Boise State and Air Force regularly. But if the conference loses more than one of those teams and we don't bring 3 teams from the western part of CUSA with us I am not interested. MWC EAST Colorado State Air Force Wyoming New Mexico UTEP North Texas UTSA Rice or La Tech (worst case scenario New Mexico State) WEST Boise State Utah State San Diego State San Jose State Hawaii UNLV Nevada Fresno State
  9. I don't care what Morris did. The fact that your best returning offensive player happens to be a running back who is not on the field for 3rd and 1 and the following 4th and 1 is very concerning to me. This team needs to rely more heavily on the run game. And your best running back needs at least 20 carries a game minimum.
  10. I think you are wrong abut the negatives because the last sentence in the paragraph explains all the struggles. I was a season ticket holder in 208 section. I got tired of the what I saw Saturday nights and could no longer justify buying two tickets to games no one I know would want to come with me. That includes alumni I keep in contact with family and friends. I am not asking for much except to be competitive with almost every G5 team that comes to Apogee and beat any FCS team that comes to Denton.
  11. It is all about personal finance priorities. I would love to have club seats but really can't afford them. If you have a young family, make under 80K, and rounded reasonable entertainment budget you shouldn't be even considering buying club seats. The finance of big time college sports makes me feel slimy. I love the product just don't like being exposed to the details of how its made like sausage. That being said if UNT gets too a level where I can old afford to buy one ticket a year I would be beyond excited. Because that would mean they are being successful at a level to attract more attention for the university and that may have a small positive affect on my career down the line at some point. I can always watch them on TV.
  12. I am more interested in what is going to happen with the highway overpass of Bonnie Brae.
  13. From an "idealistic" stand point; I believe provide access to the DFW market for SEC or PAC 12.
  14. The way I understand it is a little different. Houston does very little to increase the value market value of conference games. BYU is a little different but only because it creates interest in a region of the country the Big 12 has no impact in currently. All the other options that are rumored are unattractive to their television partners.
  15. We need reconsider our "Big 12 aspirations". The market right now is saturated and they have diluted a lot of what makes college football unique and great with conference realignment. And TV executives aren't all in like they were in the first round of super-conference creation. It looks like the only way a Big 12 expansion would be approved by their TV partners would be stealing a popular team from one the other P5 conferences. BYU is the only team available that actually has a good foothold in a new market for the Big 12. Take a look at this story featured at the link below. If you were AD besides just winning what would you want UNT to try to do in light of this information? http://www.sportsbusinessdaily.com/Journal/Issues/2016/08/01/Media/Big-12-TV.aspx
  16. It funny that you mention the Houston game which did move the needle and got Apogee it's biggest crowd ever. That 2011 Houston team was coming off a 5-7 season in CUSA that isn't going to excite anyone. Kansas State is was in the middle of 7-6 season at the time they came to Fouts and UNT was about to fire Todd Dodge for poor team performance, do those sound like must see events for your average college football fan? Bring Houston or Kansas State into Apogee for a game while we are in the middle of successful run and you will get a sellout or dam near a sellout. A late season match up between a bowl eligible UNT and bowl eligible SMU could get a sellout also. The scheduling has been awful and whenever we do have attractive match up at home we are in the middle of a losing stretch or coming off a losing season.
  17. I would stay put but it would be a close call. MWC teams don't move the needle here locally. No dormant UNT Alumni are showing up at Apogee just because we are playing San Diego State, Fresno State or Colorado State (are the other team really worth mentioning). The only thing that would make me move the school to the MWC would be legitimate belief that the program would win a conference championship in the next 4 years. The advantages of the MWC don't do much for us if we don't win the conference. Only the Champion gets to play a P5 school in the MWC. But wining the CUSA probably gets us a P5 opponent in the Heart of Dallas Bowl. UNT90 As often I agree with you I think you are not looking at the big picture like Big 12 officials would be. If they want a better chance to survive this next round of realignment SMU is not going to do much for them. SMU has low growth potential as an expensive small religious private school without any success of note since the death penalty. They can money whip a well known coach to lead the program but that is no guarantee. If Texas and Oklahoma were exclusively making the call and did not care about conference long term survival it would be a no brainer. They know SMU is a more controllable threat to their dominance of the conference. In the Big 12 we would have a couple advantages over SMU that would make us more difficult to manage for the Big 2. And TCU and Baylor would be happy about it either. I will be only discussing Texas recruits and Oklahoma recruits that could work out getting in state tuition after their freshman year with family ties in Texas. 1. As cheaper public university we would be more attractive to walk-ons than any other Big 12 in the state of Texas. (If you walk on at Texas or Oklahoma you are not going to play until the middle of your sophomore year or beginning of your junior year). Good luck with TCU, SMU, or Baylor tuition until you earn a scholarship. Those blueshirts, gray shirts, and walk-ons could be on scholarship at UNT 2. Better location than Texas Tech, Iowa State, Kansas State, Kansas and West Virginia 3. Plenty of space to expand and improve facilities with minimal cost compared to SMU locked north central Dallas 4. By playing Big 12 teams regularly you tap into the huge local Alumni fan base. UNT being in a conference the P5 Texas schools for as little as 12 years would create a generation of hardcore local fans. So if I am conference commissioner and looking at keeping my job for the next 15 years more so than placating to the Big 1(2) I opt for UNT over SMU. UNT just has more long term upside. As successful as SMU was (while cheating) I have never met an SMU fan that wasn't an alumni or closely related to an alumni. SMU is Dallas' version of the U of Miami without the Hall of Fame players, Championships or a school name to unify people not associated with the school around. Even with all that Miami has trouble filling their stadium. If SMU were named the "University of Dallas or Dallas College" with all the same history and issues as SMU it definitely be a no brainer. But without a unifying name their "advantages" mean squat in 2016 and beyond.
  18. Nothing better than a UNT smack down of SMU in any academic or athletic realm. The truth about SMU is that they would be in the Big 12 already if they were allowed to cheat like ever other school in the SWC did back in the day except for maybe Rice and Texas Tech. Texas Tech might just have been bad a cheating is just as likely.
  19. Disclaimer: these fine student athletes have absolutely Nothing to do with our award winning School of Music.
  20. All fine and good but my point was always that student athletes aren't focus on the long term usually. The definitely aren't thinking about how research activity at their chosen university is going to affect their undergraduate career. Way too many three and four star recruits aren't even thinking about graduating, let alone the perceived market value of their degree if they chose to finish. UNT is great academically in a lot of ways so you don't have to sell me, you have to sell a 17 year old who knows want kind of offense or defense he wants to play in way more than what they want to major in. If most student athletes cared about academics appropriately department chairs would routinely go on recruiting trips.
  21. Why not go west and drop WVU? San Diego State, Colorado State, New Mexico, BYU, Boise State and there are more options that just those guys. If you want a real foothold in California, you could add San Diego State and San Jose State.
  22. Since the formation of the original Big 12 every conference realignment more has made me less inclined to watch games that did not have a direct impact on UNT's season. I loved the original Big 12 and I followed the SEC (12), the Big East, Big 10 and the PAC 10 closely most years. Now these mega-conferences are watered down with weak rivalries that have very little on the field history. UT vs WVU, Cincy, Memphis, Louisville, or BYU has no interest to me. And you could plug any other state of Texas FBS (not wearing Mean Green) team in for UT vs those team and I still would not have interest.
  23. Unfortunately this reading this makes me feel like its ground hog day.
  24. Where is the chocolate cannon next to the field! That is a serious omission. lol
  25. Young athletes don't think long term usually. If that were the case Stanford, Norte Dame, Michigan, USC, Boston College and UCLA would almost never struggle. They all are highly touted academically and have good athletic brands. All these schools have struggled for years on end over the last 25 years. And only USC could blame some of their issues on NCAA scholarship penalties during that period of time. UNT makes a lot of sense as destination for student athletes however, if Boston College can consistently struggle in their conference division just about any school should. But look at our conference rivals. UNT is the oldest and largest school in the conference. And if you were ranking the schools academically UNT is in the middle of the pack. We should be out recruiting these schools regularly except for maybe Rice and La Tech if you want to consider location and academics. And that is assuming that the recruits are heavily influence by the academic reputation of the schools. University Forbes Rank North Texas 553 UAB 515 Rice 30 MTSU 638 LA Tech 392 Southern Miss 522 Marshall Not Ranked UTSA 654 WKU 576 UTEP 554 FIU 455 FAU 557 Old Dominon 545 UNC Charlette 492
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