Meangreen Fight

A lot depends on the revenue/TV viewing projections Stanford and Cal after their first 2 years in the ACC. My Prediction: After the novelty wears out media executives will start accepting that competitive football & rivalries drive regular season football ratings; their appetite for huge contracts with super-conferences will diminish. The SEC & Big 10 will either have to trim the fat or go to a permanent unequal revenue sharing model insuring the conference heavyweight brands get the most money regardless of their on the field performance. I don't think Cal, Stanford and schools in similar situations are prepared to do that and incur the logistics cost of the worst travel schedules in all of College Sport. A restructured Pac 12 with OSU, WSU, Stanford, and Cal would be at the core.

Those rumors are absolutely ridiculous. Without additional changes that would make the transfer a significant financial win for all big brand members of those conferences, it has no chance in hell of happening. Any source putting out these kind of rumors without extensive supporting evidence isn't worth wasting your time on. Comic books are more entertaining and slightly less realistic in this case. 😂

For me it is in response to people defending his mediocre 0 conference titles and 0 bowl game wins like he was great and did us a favor by coaching here get a salary within top 10% of G5 coach salary. That defense is indictive of fans and alumni making far too many excuses for leadership of this program. This program had no qualms about throwing out a head coach with conference titles and a bowl win, after a couple bad seasons that you could partially blame on his health problems (heart attack) and losing the heir apparent starting QB in traffic accident. That coach had the audacity to point out the serious short comings when it came to institutional support for Mean Green Football. He won at the dump that was the last 10 years in the life of Fouts Field. This program will never win the fan support it needs to be stable until 0.500 against FBS competition is consistently met. So the history of not our team not meeting that standard is irrelevant if we want a positive future for Mean Green Football. A 0.500 Mean Green program will never sellout our staduim but it will kept from less than 1/2 full.

For me it is in response to people defending his mediocre 0 conference titles and 0 bowl game wins like he was great and did us a favor by coaching here get a salary within top 10% of G5 coach salary. That defense is indictive of fans and alumni making far too many excuses for leadership of this program. This program had no qualms about throwing out a head coach with conference titles and a bowl win, after a couple bad seasons you could partially blame on his health problems (heart attack) and losing the heir apparent starting QB in a traffic accident. That coach had the audacity to point out the serious short comings when it came to institutional support for Mean Green Football. He won at the dump that was the last 10 years in the life of Fouts Field. A stadium worse than a lot of the better 5A and 6A highschool stadium of that time. The culture of a large part of the fandom of Mean Green Football is to 💩 on people who just expect competence and are reluctant to celebrate any accomplishment that doesn't come with team hardware. Yes, getting into bowls and championship games are an accomplishment. But a bowl game win with more than half of FBS teams getting an invite just means you aren't bad when you win them.

No, no settle down sir you expect "the greatness of 0.500 vs FBS competition". You can only aspire to that at little ole small North Texas when we only been playing football over 100 years. Little Ole UNT has 25 conference titles with only officially 4 at FBS level. You can't dare to have the audacity to be frustrated with this program that constantly overachieves while drastically under paying coaches who selflessly coach our teams. With all that said can I mark you down for increasing your Athletic Fund donations this year by a minimum of 35% like a good alumni and fan should never question? - Mean Green Football General Manager CM Burns

Nope but what I expect isn't great. Programs that started from scratch or stepped up to FBS after 2000 get on our schedule or get in our conference, beat us and surpass us in the standings every year INCLUDING some of our "best" years as you measure them. Excuses at your job or made to your customers when you paid top dollar will get you fired. And the "coaching graveyard" excuse isn't one. There are only 134 jobs at this level in all of American Football. And when you compare our situation to places like Vandy, Indiana, South Carolina, and many other with no chance to ever qualify for their Conference title North Texas isn't that bad. I could rattle off at least 30 FBS Head Coaching jobs that have far less realistic upside than North Texas. Hell at the service academies your hands are tied behind your back as a coach. UCF, USF, and UTSA joined FBS after 2000. USF played their FIRST football game at any level in 1997 and UTSA did in 2011. Coastal Carolina spent an entire season ranked in the AP top 25. Their first football season was 2003 and first FBS season 2017. Let me be CLEAR, I am NOT expecting greatness. Like the heights of these new to FBS programs I just mentioned I am expecting competence and to be good competing for conference titles into November often.

Are those our only choices? 🤢🤮

I can only guess and say it was PR move that was not more "fiscally responsible". Like I have said many times before. He shouldn't have coached his last season. The fact that his salary just came off the books January 2024 is ridiculous looking a record with no bowl wins or conference titles. I enjoyed reading this thoughtful post. I don't why it got 🙄 reactions. Maybe it was this last part I quoted. Seems like leadership was so happy after years of being bad they got ahead of themselves. We were way too excited to be mediocre and competing for a bowl birth. None of our recent hires have inspired me to be optimistic since McCarney. I questioned Seth's second extension when it was announced because I felt it was unwarranted. This program has had everything it has needed to be a upper tier G5 program for a while. Coaches post Dickey are supposed to win here more specifically have at least 0.500 conference record. The only thing that should get coaches big raises and extension 2 years early are conference title or running the table in conference regular season. @Cr1028 your defenses of Seth are sometimes just tedious to read. A 0.500 coach when you count victories against non-FBS is no a justification to be the top paid coach in your conference, until UTSA's coach runs the table a gets a raise. He was mediocre, and nobody should be interested in perpetual mediocre Mean Green Football. They can double down on mediocrity all they want but I won't be do that with my donations and ticket purchases.

Then correctly put "Dallas County" on the jersey. And maybe we could put DFW on our Mean Green using that malleable logic.

It was a rhetorical question. Schools and NCAA almost always wait till am entire staff has moved on before rendering "punishment". Jim Harbaugh was inconsolable yesterday.

What I find bizarre is that Littrel retained after a fluke home weather aided victory against a program that was born after 2000. You can't hire that magical coach if you over pay extend contracts and retain mediocre head coaches too long. We perpetually aim low when the jump to P5 coming from being a BAD I-AA/FCS program is a monumental task in the shadows of the Longhorns, Aggies, Sooners and Dallas Cowboys locally. Maybe my perception is off compared to your average college sports aware person living within the DFW area. But I don't think it is. I think if you conducted a poll of just DFW area college sports fans you would be surprised as to how many believe the leadership, and most passionate boosters aren't "all in" when it comes to winning here. I know there is HUGE potential here. And in my opinion we should never be super excited to extend a coach that doesn't have the team ranked at the end of their 3-4 year..... But now that the dynamics with the transfer portal, and NIL has completely changed how you build a program. We are leaving an era of college football when upward mobility was easier. Leadership squandered all the PR momentum Dickey's run through the Sun Belt generated.

But are any of the coaches on staff at that time coaching here today? Also if you don't assign blame for coaches in situations like this then you can't give them the credit for avoiding stuff like this either. To do so sounds like hypocrisy to me. But regardless of how you access blame it is just another example to me that Seth was overrated by many on this board for most of his tenure here. When you are a G5 program spending near the top of the conference you are in judging is pretty simple IMO: 1. Are you over 0.500 vs Conference opponents? 2. Are you competitive in Bowl Games? So I agree judging Seth or any coach for minor incidents away from the field, or training facilities is not fair. But if he was fired after the 2021 season (or his first extended contract was allowed to expire) I wouldn't have anything negative to say about how Seth's time was managed here by the AD.

The vast majority of them don’t. And most of them have data from their alumni income compared to those who graduate from bottom 1/3 of universities to justify the investment. Also if schools and environment outside the home don’t matter that much why do people often buy more house than they can comfortably afford for good neighborhoods and access to their public schools?

People don't like the truth. 🤷🏽‍♂️. And you forgot to mention that it only in the last 15 years that we have had University Leadership not directly on the Athletic Department payroll that has cared about sports. At a time of existential crisis for all DI Football below the top 20-50 brands people scoffed at even trying to get Deion Sanders here. That is when I mentally started preparing for the day Mean Green Football would return to the FCS level or something in between FCS and FBS. And the irony is that the TV product they are creating beyond the playoff will suck. You are going to have what Basketball has now; only a few rivalry regular season games getting the ratings that any matchup of undefeated teams with 3 wins would get. The stakes of 2 highly rated teams matching up will be drastically reduced. Player and coach movement disconnects them from the schools and community. Without the school connection, atmosphere, and history people won't watch semi-pro football. Aggie HC leaves to be Longhorn HC. That didn't happen in football but I believe it serves as a good historical markers for the rapid decline of FBS we are about to witness in the coming 10 years.

Ah yes, the best private schools in the country don't mean nothing that is why they are all going broke. 🙄

Most poor families deal with crappy schools to even get their children academically eligible and capable to progress through college once they get there. And the reality is at most colleges the Pell Grants still leave students in a position to take out loans.

"Free Education" is a fallacy. Especially when majority of it should be subsided by the state at public universities. Public Colleges used to be affordable to working class without massive debt and poorest (but academically eligible) students could go virtually free. Also the gap between starting pay for a college graduate and highschool graduate USED to justify the investment in a college degree. Collectively as a society we have let the value of an education decline along with the value of labor. What you are describing with walk ons hoping to earn a scholarship is an unpaid internship. Capitalism has many great side effects for soceity when implemented with solid guardrails. "Unpaid Agreements" that on the surface appear primarily benefit the organization taking advantage of the most desperate people should be always critically reviewed, studied, and improved when possible. The only IMPROVEMENT that seems to be happening is minimally complying with some concept of fairness while allowing the biggest brands to keep majority of revenue. It seems that very few in power really care about academic/career development of the student athletes. If they really cared about the education of the student athletes then in conference revenue sharing would be directly tied to graduate rates and academic progress. Also bonus credit for degrees valued the most to the current labor market should be considered. All the current moves being made aren't about the student athletes. They are only compromises try to continue to produce a good TV show and maximum revenue rolling in for the "right brands".

That is also bullshit. While I definitely share the frustration. NIL was a BS response to blatant hypocrisy and cheating going on before it. College athletics could have went a totally different direction with ethical fair practices instead of bowing at the alter of crony capitalism. I can give a short list right off the top of my head. 1. Guaranteed 3 year scholarships if academic eligibility and general student code of conduct all students. 2. Cap on Adminstrator and Coaches salaries set by NCAA for D1 max by sport and cap by conferences. 3. Free tickets to ALL current students that. 4. All the biggest public universities that carry D1 sport play other in state D1 universities in a non-conference schedule (on a 5 year rotation or more frequent when not in same conference). 5. Only real hardship transfers with scholarship are allowed during the first 2 years. 6. Graduate transfers are walk on only There a ton of other ideas that could have implemented to really run college sports as a non-profit organization with the revenue generated going back to the bottom line of the university. They did not do that. You can not have a functional complelling competitive league where the teams with most money manipulate the rules of the league, scheduling, and etc. Yes here in Dallas it would be cool if Jerry Jones could create some kind of contract rule that would force Kansas City to trade Dak Prescott for Mahomes. But it would suck for all the bottom 2/3 of the NFL. It seems like the NCAA powers don't understand or care about the product on the field as a whole and eventually everyone will pay the price for that oversight.

So dumb

This is the point I think has never been critically consider because of the greed of EVERYONE ELSE besides the players. The old system was never sustainable because the schools had very little invested in the players actually getting the best education available at their schools. If guaranteed 4 year scholarships (with an option after 2 years) were the standard or breakable by the student I don't think we have the madness of today. The other major part is the lack of standardization and revenue sharing for all school playing at a particular level. How do you expect the players or coaches to have any loyalty when the schools have no loyalty to protect the health overall college sports. 🤷🏽‍♂️

My hypothetical assumed that all home games would be in Denton and UAB as a decent G5 team. Also I count only 6 road games as the Kansas game is at worse a “neutral site” game hundreds of miles from Kansas in DFW. And the Idaho State game would be swapped with maybe a team like New Mexico, UTEP, Tulsa, Tulane or La Tech, as Idaho State plays FCS now.

Converting College Football to a post season ESPN TV event. 🤦🏽‍♂️. It isn’t going to work out like they think it will. It will make 70% of regular season games completely irrelevant. And that 70% will include a lot of regular season games in the super conferences. I point at College Basketball regular season as a cautionary story. A few hard core fans of mid majors will still watch regular season games. But most fans aren’t hard core for any program including the “Blue Bloods”. What does Northwestern vs Purdue even mean if neither of them can get first or second place in the Big 10? They aren’t going to the Big 10 title game. And even if one of them is a playoff “wildcard” chances are pretty good they will rematch OSU, Michigan, or Penn State on the road and get blown out. Contrast that with about 25 years ago. A high rank Purdue vs high rank Northwestern regular season game had “playoff” atmosphere. Because the winner would be in contention for a great bowl and Big 10 title just by going on and maybe lucking out and getting Michigan/OSU at home and beating them. Now who knows if they will even get to play one of the top 3 ranked teams in their conference in 2024? It’s stupid.

If only we could financially pull off football independence and schedule like this today.

@greenjoe perfect response to @jtm0097 comment. Old Denton culture inside the Athletic Department is a cancer that spreads to new employees. The transition from Wren Baker, Seth Littrell and Conference USA is endemic of that. I am not even sure who the AD answers to and what kind of power that person is allowed to wield. I think that is huge part of the problem. Because during this period of time the school moved like it didn’t have a long term plan bigger than the AD, football head coach and conference we happen to be in/going to. I think that where Coach Mac may have misjudged this university’s commitment to big long term goals. Here is where the rubber meets the road; I can’t market free tickets to my friends because when their dismal record over the last 2 decades is brought up in response to my invitation there is very little I can point to except the now not so new Apogee/DATCU stadium.

I am engineering grad. NONE of my classmates attended games while in school nor have I seen any of them at games as alumni except maybe at a random homecoming over the past 20 years. Students would be foolish to come here expecting good football and basketball (men's or women's). Stop blaming the "customer" for the earned reputation of putting out a bad product. That is why find it comical that so many scoffed at the mere suggestion that school pursue a Coach like Deion Sanders before he left for Colorado. The attention of the pursuit alone would make an impact on the perception of the program. Just like Cowboys fans are super skeptical of "All In" when you don't even call one of the best running backs in the league to gauge his interest when he lives in DALLAS and your team needs a RB to support your QB.