Mike Jackson

Exactly, just like bookies to a certain extent they don’t care about the quality of the bet as long as the house wins over time. They charging retainer fees regardless. I hate he is struggling with alcoholism but it is time for him to transition to a less stressful role. He shouldn’t need the money at this point in his career either.

Cal has pretty bad attendance for a P5 school. Their stadium holds over 60,00 but in 2022 they only drew more than 40,000 once and that was against local rival Stanford. That is horrible considering they are the flagship university of the state most prestigious university system like our A&M or UT System. When Cal is decent their game attendance is just okay but getting over 60k is a rarity. I think you will be a little disappointed with our turnout for the Cal game. They aren’t popular football product right now due to their poor performance. I put little stock in playing programs 2 hour plane trips away that don’t have national appeal. Cal, Vandy and several P5 whipping boy programs don’t draw well on the road.

It’s about the name also. Nothing about name SMU identifies it with DFW or Texas. It is an advantage TCU has over SMU. SMU could hypothetically move anywhere in Southern part if the USA and name still fit. Also they aren’t “the Methodist” university as there is Methodist University in North Carolina. There isn’t a lot to rally around and feel apart of even if you aren’t familiar with the wealthy exclusivity reputation of the school. When they are successful you don’t instantly feel like our community accomplished something just because you live in the DFW area. The schools successful previously mentioned have that. They have welcoming bandwagons community reputation. And we have more potential to do that because we are North Texas. And it far more likely your average citizen in DFW knows a UNT alum on a personal level than a SMU alum. I don’t think I would ever be rooting SMU in a huge bowl game or CFP like I have for Longhorns in 2005, or Texas Tech on occasion. That isn’t because I am a North Texas alumni is the distinct impression that many associated with that school wouldn’t really want me to go to school there, regardless of my academic record. And that is similar for Baylor from my perspective also. In general the school needs to do a much better job capturing all of Denton County. I just had a reminder the other day how poorly we’ve done. A curb sign service painter put a flier on our door listing all the default options for curb painting. It was really disappointing to not see UNT/North Texas as an option with Boise State and Houston Cougars being options.

Going through this round of conference is making my head spin. The demographics of our University just destroys SMU’s. We have over 300k local alumni and over 40k students. Yet with barely 50k local alumni SMU is on the doorstep of being in the PAC 12. So my question is why is our potential minimized in the minds of so many not from the DFW area. I argue we have far more potential to elevate in this market to rival TCU, Baylor, and Texas Tech when it comes to watching games on TV than SMU does. So I would like to know what people really think here. Take off the green tinted shades for a moment and imagine UNT in the PAC 12 paired with SDSU. Would that wake up the local fanbase just waiting for a reason to support the team? Basketball I think we compete fairly early, but football would take a little more time.

Not terrible but not good either. The defense was always a problem. We don’t know how much Graham Harrell as QB Coach helped the offense. And Seth didn’t pivot to a run heavy game plans until forced. So was he a poor recruiter or poor at developing recruits? I think we are so used to our program underperforming we aren’t as critical of mediocrity. Morris recruiting better than Seth team is something I put very little stock in right now. Looking at difference Coach Dykes made unlocking the talent he inherited at TCU makes me more skeptical of recruiting evaluations below top 30 class rankings.

Glass half full? Seth’s season were the definition of trending at mediocrity. They improved by 1 additional conference win. There is no reason to think he was going to do better in stronger new conference this year.

While I can sympathize with instinct to lob insults at SMU, how about y’all keep it contained to threads that mention the whiny express?

They need to sign a current KC star and refresh this commercial. 🤣

I think we should be. But if the main media partner ends up being Apple+, Colorado leaves, and/or we don’t Getinge one of the 3 best brands left in the league in Denton every year we shouldn’t. Regularly getting 25k for PAC 12 matchups isn’t out of the question. I still believe you can activate at least half of the 300k local alumni by competing with P5 teams and wining over 45% of the time against them. I think a version of that using Sinclair to distribute and buy a few games for Stadium TV is the way to go if a streaming partner is not willing to “overpay” based on the rumored payout numbers released. I believe The next conference that figures out that over the air isn’t dead for live events will be able to grow their brand. Until most larger TV screens are produced without digital receivers or pay TV over the air is developed broadcasting over the air is far from dead.

I don’t have a hard stance one way or another on Roberson Ranch but I do believe a change in the parade route that goes through the population and business growth centers inside Denton was overdue. That is part of the reason student and alumni interest diminished. Another reason is that Denton just isn’t passionate about UNT in general. It gotten better in the last 20 years but growing up in Denton the UNT community was very segregated from the rest of Denton socially. The only way you change that is by doing things a different way; stopping any tradition cold turkey without trying to do it a slightly different way should never be an option. If I could send a message to the past I would tell the leadership that Fouts must be built on top of Eagle Field. A stadium more centrally located in Denton would have had a more unifying impact on the community and we probably aren’t discussing a cancelled homecoming parade today.

NIL is insignificant compared no conference championships in 38 years, highlights of 1/2 empty Ford Stadium and snooty student body that wouldn’t acknowledge your existence on campus if you didn’t have a great 40 time or bench 300 lbs. We will see what NIL can buy you in year 3. But so far it does not equate to actually winning anything or retaining the best coach y’all had since the death penalty.

Although I know it’s not true, I am telling my future grandchildren “douche it up” was a phrase coined by Mean Green fans at Fouts when SMU came to Denton and cried getting a but whipping because even off death penalty they expected to beat us and were sore losers. Old money can’t buy everything. 😂😂😂

It being a Dome makes it unique in CFB and novelty for recruits. So that offsets the negativity of it being old and off campus. I hear they desperately need to upgrade their support facilities. And if were in their leadership I would spend top dollar for those improvements and delay the on campus stadium as long as possible. San Antonio reminds me a lot of San Diego. Your new open air stadium will be in competition with the Alamodome for events not controlled by UTSA as long it is in decent condition. And the Alamodome has a better location to attract events for the whole city than UTSA’s campus. I believe between UNT & UTSA there are far more important differences to consider between the two for most recruits.

I think that is a tad overstated. It is critical to have facilities on par with programs at your level. If we magically got the money to afford to bring our sports facilities on par with the better SEC programs we are not signing a ton of 4 stars overnight. We left Fouts Field a decade late minimal given leadership’s stated aspirations. Having facilities in disrepair does far more damage than what great facilities can gain you. Because bad facilities discourage not only recruits but coaches and recruiters to come help your program.

Those rendering look like 45k+ capacity. That size maybe a little too ambitious but renovations, getting it close to that should be underway already. And that likely would be the case if Coach Dodge or Coach Mac worked out. Apogee would have had multiple sellouts if either of them sustain a 4 year run of over 0.500. I just wished they had gotten a coach like Littrell when they hired Dodge. A lot of the positive momentum from the stadium construction and first season in it was squandered. I also think building on top Fouts would have been better for football. And my dream scenario would been somewhere between Eagle Blvd and Oak Street.

Funny with these almost unlimited funds they couldn’t keep a great coach from going to TCU. When the money is right things tend to happen early or right on time. The moment Texas, OU, UCLA, and USC announced their big moves all the remaining. “roadblocks” were just administrative formalities.

Actually the PAC 12 set these “deadlines” for themselves and various presidents in the league running off at month made it worse. The PAC 12 without Southern California market represented is just not a valued product. And potential media partners are not interested enough to get into a bidding war.

In front of queue to join a very unstable conference trending down towards being more G5 than P5 is not where SMU wants to be ideally. The best brands they have left in the conference don’t view SMU as value add just a band aid. SDSU made sense geographically and is actually trending up big time athletically with the championship game appearance. SMU appeal is just to be the PAC 12’s Vanderbilt. A smaller school that gets PAC 12 teams slightly better access major market.

Still from the outside the stadium just looks better. We don’t have regular seating at on end zone either. Our stadium is functionally better no doubt but that isn’t what they are judging here.

Maybe they are on their own board I heard from a psychologist that small intimate support groups of 5-8 people are the most effective. 🤷🏽‍♂️

Outside of the top 30 who really cares? And objectively I can see why Bobcat Stadium is ranked far ahead of Apogee. It has a classic look. Our wing end zone section looks temporary/high school-ish.

Never been so happy to see Pikachu. 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣.

The tone of section I quoted sounded as if the PAC 12 had the right to negatively judge SDSU while their leadership conference appeared to be just as inept.

Army and Navy in the American Athletic Conference just makes too much sense to actually happen. Schedule wise for the game I think the Friday or Saturday after Thanksgiving makes more sense with the 12 team playoff on the horizon. It always been at a weird time to me. Having the spotlight by itself is good but as a consequence the game usually doesn’t have any impact of the CFB season is bad trade off. An independent that can’t get the bigger brands to come to their campus regularly is operating at a terrible disadvantage. Rumors now say that even Notre Dame is actually feeling a little pressure to join a conference.

Bad take here. We aren’t talking about patience we are talking about an extra 17 million dollars because the PAC 12 can’t meet arbitrary deadlines they set for themselves. Time is money in an extreme case here. SDSU should have kept their mouth shut until yesterday. Saying you plan to be somewhere without one confirmed option other than your home conference was beyond stupid. For the way they talk it gave the impression that they had a backup deal to join the Big 12. There are no other financially feasible options for them even if they were okay taking a lost. They could have followed BYU’s play book and only took football independent maybe. SDSU fans may not travel well but plenty of fanbases including our would show up to enjoy San Diego weather in the fall.