NorthTexasWeLove

That doesn't answer his question as to the why a CUSA team in general was left out. Some have explained it to the tune of it was EITHER Gasparilla OR FR Bowl that ESPN was going to give CUSA. I don't know if that's written somewhere in the tie-in (that CUSA can't have both, but 1), but that is how WB sort of tried to explain it. So, they CHOSE the gaspiralla rather than the FR and it left 3 teams (SoMiss, Marshall, UNT) for 2 bowl slots (New Mexico/Gasparilla). Since Marshall went to NM last year they put Marshall in Florida and that sent us to NM. It all sounds convoluted, mismanaged, and just fishy. But whatever.

I was in Charlotte last week. Went by the campus and was pleasantly surprised by everything I saw. They have a very nice campus and their football stadium sits practically right in the middle of campus. As you're walking its like science building, art building, BAM football stadium, then english building, music building, etc. Their football venue is also very nice, but seemed crazy small as well. Like FCS level/does not belong in FBS kind of small. Nice, just inadequate to the level of football they're playing in. But, yeah, not a lot of programs are investing. And yes, it's a dying conference. And yes, the conference leadership is piss poor and utterly mismanaged. CUSA has went from the brink of respectability to being a very poor conference. Had we known that Tulane, Tulsa, UH, Memphis, just basically the entire conference was leaving would we have left the Belt? Probably. But there just seems like a lot of dead weight in this conference and I don't want to sound better, because we use to be that dead weight, but we are striving for improvements across whereas a lot of members are stagnant. MTSA had no more than 10K at our conf champ game. That's embarrassing.

Being a pro SL AD I would look at NDSU as a place that recruits and sells itself, much like a Boise. The coach matters, but does it? They are going to get the best fringe FBS/FCS players on the coming out of high school because of their history of winning and their NFL success turning fringe players into NFL players. I would look at Littrell as walking into a dumpster fire and instilling his philosophies and a getting them to a respectable platform while finally turning around the recruiting fortunes at UNT. Klieman is a defensive guy whereas Littrell is an offensive guy. Big12 is a win or lose league by points, a big reason why Kstate hasn't been able to keep up. SL is younger and with that probably has more energy and fire, presumably. It comes down to what you're looking for. A case can be made for both.

That's what I am saying. Neal Brown's aren't growing on trees, especially Neal Brown's of the kind we can double and almost triple his pay. He has to be feeling slighted right about now, and would have to look at this job at UNT as a stepping stone to a 3 or 4 mil a year meddling P5 that he will think he can turn into a power. It would be the most ideal situation. So, if it's a legitimate one I would like to see Kstate pluck SL so we can get a guy in her to for sure keep the train rolling.

Yup. Drop 1.5 on his head and pull him away. Attach a 2 or 3 mil buyout clause to his contract and some dumb meddling P5 school will cough it up and we'll happily stuff our coffers. I think it'd be a perfect time for SL to leave to we can get this guy in here. Because Seth is leaving this year or next, that we know is for certain IMO. He's playing with fire if he doesn't leave after next year because he may be a .500 coach or worse while we work in a new QB/almost entire offense during an offensive rebuild. He may be actually be our Gary Patterson by default because he'll be rebuilding again to get us up to the potential 10 win team we are now. I think this exact scenario is what is happening with Holtz at Tech. He builds them up and gets them looking legitimate at 10 or 11 wins, then graduates his studs while maintaining some competitiveness while trying to build them back up. He's doing well at LaTech, but not well enough consistently for a P5 to swoop in on him.

Yes, regional. The reason you asked me if I knew where all the MWC bowl games are at because regionally, they are in the Mountain West part of the country. That is why you asked, right? SDSU coming here, along with Boise, are anomalies and as far as tie-ins are concerned should not have happened. But they did, Whatever.

Oh for sure, we'd be 10-2 with at least somewhat respectable losses. To me personally I will never be able to live down that thrashing in El Paso in 2016. We were 5-6 playing a 3-8 team and got absolutely muffin top punched with bowl eligibility on the line. Also If I'm a Kstate fan, those blowout losses in 2017 would be concerning as well. As would all the close games vs not very good teams since he has been here; Rice, UTEP, UTSA this year come to mind. That record combined is like 4-32 and we beat those 3 schools by a margin of 92-62 with that being a very deceptive overall margin of victory given the 14/21 garbage points we dropped on Rice with under 5 min to play. I would be skeptical if I'm looking at SL as an AD. I sure would like to get him outta here if he's planning on leaving this year or next to try and snag Neal Brown from Troy. I think we could money whip him a little to get him in here. Along with a big buyout attached to his contract because you know schools are eyeing in on him ready to pull the trigger when their current deadbeat coach shits the bed in 2019. It'd be a buyout sweepstakes with Littrell/Brown coming in and leaving.

That's kind of irrelevant since we're playing in one of the CUSA/MWC bowls. And one of the MWC teams are playing in one of the CUSA tie-in games. Plus bowls are typically regional so they would take that into consideration when they add/shift/subtract or do whatever to the inevitable bowl shifting.

Ahhh..I just went to the general drop down priceline site. We will more than likely drive, I was just looking earlier to see what the prices were.

I think the MWC discussions on this forum revolves around the excitement of the kinds of teams they could bring TO Denton for basketball and football. It's never really been around the premise of, 'man I can't wait to get out to Fresno for the game'. It would debunk the ideology of regionalizing conferences, but we would without doubt be in a more competitive football and basketball conference. Traveling fan attendance would obviously struggle for teams coming to Denton and for Mean Green fans traveling to away games, but it would better position us as a competitive athletic program moving forward.

We are getting them in Denton, just a few years from 2019.

Top 25 sort of. We will not be preseason ranked in any poll. And we're playing Cal in California next year.

ding. We just tread lightly and stfu around these parts.

Is this normal to hold a press conference to talk about a bowl game announcement? It may be, I can't recall.

It will much sooner than 7 days. It will be ASAP. This new signing period doesn't allow for universities to sit on their options as long as they used to. They have to get their guy, get a contract signed, and get him into town to try and salvage the upcoming recruiting class.

That may be due to the bowl announcement. 3 or 4 times we were predicted to be in a bowl vs Minnesota and EJ is from Minnesota and tweeted about getting a chance at them.

I mean, they're top 25 in 1 of 3 polls. The point still stands, but they are not a bonafide top 25 team and during the broadcast of this game there will not be a ranking next to their name because those rankings are pulled from the CFB Playoff rankings and USU is ranked only in the coaches poll, not AP or CFBP.

If MWC opens a slot for us, we don't hesitate. That's a no brainer. They had a team over the weekend with already 2 losses playing the their conf championship game and lost. This team (Boise) was ranked in the 20's. After a loss, still ranked. This would happen in the land of the CUSABelt approximately never. It shows the amount of respect the media and voters have for this conference. It'd be a good conference to be in. It would play itself difficult for other sports though that have to travel much more than 4 times a season. I think CUSABelt needs to be blown up and strictly regionalized. It's the for sure thing we can do to sustain success through attendance dollars/fan interest.

A lot of wives, I see. You might enjoy this Utah game after all.

I see. I hate that. Gives too much maneuverability for the sake of TV dollars. If it's a tie-in it's a tie-in, if it's not then it's not. It gave us a lesser bowl and gave SoMiss the shaft. A shaft that we very well could receive in the future. I bet the 4 or 5 six win teams were probably exclusively from CUSA and the Belt. Also the only 2 conferences not playing a P5 opponent.

Glad you can judge one's integrity and intelligence via a sports message board. But, you're welcome.

But that is the fishiest part of all of this? The choice is there. The tie-in is present. A power move was made to push us out to New Mexico it sounds like to open up that slot for the two teams playing in the FR Bowl. I just want to know why. It is what it is, and that's not changing. But some real explanation would be good. You know, accountability purposes.

Of course it did.

Schools have say. There is no other way to say it They have input, conference commishes have input, conferences have input, bowl sponsorships have input. It's not a process done by throwing darts in the dark. There is input from all angles. WB can make his twitter world very easy by just stating the fact that: 1) CUSA put us in this bowl 2) New Mexico was the only bowl that we received an invite from 3) My coaches and their players wanted to go to this bowl game. I will probably make this game regardless. I missed NO last year. So I was going anywhere we went outside of Hawaii. I didn't care about the destination more so than the opponent. If we had Boise out there in NM, then hell yeah. That is a feather in the cap win if we could pull that out. How it is, this is an opportunity to get to 10 wins, which a feather in its own right. But there is no draw to this game outside of that. I am sure Utah State thinks the same thing about us and maybe rightfully so.

How does one bowl supersede another? Shouldn't CUSA teams be inserted into both if they have a team qualified to go?