keith

In today's college football world where your entire roster (or a significant part of it) may change over every two years, I'm not sure "buying into what is being built" is going to be the difference maker it used to be. By the time they fully buy-in, they will move on to their next stop on the college football carousel.

Sitting in a respectable number of UNT fans at the Navy game and around me there were many watching the Texas/OU game on their phones and providing play-by-play updates instead of watching the game in front of them. SMH.

It's been a little quiet on this lately, hopefully things are still moving in a positive direction. I attended the two Army games at West Point and attended the Navy game this past weekend at the Naval Academy. All were very memorable, but seeing a North Texas flag flying above the Navy-Marine Corps Memorial Stadium as a conference mate was pretty special. Hopefully, we'll see one flying above Michie Stadium in the future and both flying above DATCU stadium.

We've been at this strategy for at least 45 years and probably longer. How much more time should we give it? It's hard to understand what motivates 17 and 18 year old brains (I'm talking about football and being recruited here people, nothing else!!). Some may not want to go to the "local" university and see being recruited to play football in another state (and Texas for that matter) as a badge of honor. We always tout other schools wanting to dip into the Texas market for recruiting as a benefit to scheduling us. Did/do we ever take advantage of playing in Florida or other states with football talent? All I have ever heard during a coaching change is Texas ties, Texas ties, Texas ties...ad nauseam, as if that is the single most important attribute in hiring a coach. Sometimes I feel like our fanbase is OK with mediocre success as long as the coach has Texas ties. We are collectively very myopic on this IMHO.

I don't know why this is such a sensitive topic for everyone. Recruiting the state of Texas has been as close to the singular focus of this program as you can get for as long as I can remember. It is the one strategy we have never strayed from. Now we have narrowed that focus to the DFW area. This is not to say there isn't a ton of football talent both in Texas and the DFW area...there is. However, we're fishing in the same pond as every other program in the state and pretty much every other P5 program in the country. Why is suggesting we be more aggressive beyond our state borders outside the Overton window of GoMeanGreen.com? Perhaps it's a difference between recruiting and signing, but the numbers do not lie. We are heavily focused on the state of Texas. Here's a look at the current roster and the player's home state. Out of 115, 94 or 82% hail from the great state of Texas. The other 21 are sprinkled from a variety of states (and two countries!). Some will point to 21 or 18% coming from non-Texas locales as evidence of our new found recruiting strategy. Looking deeper, however, tells a different story. First, I doubt, but I guess it's possible, we took recruiting trips to Australia and Canada, so I'm going to discount these as out-of-state recruiting efforts. That leaves 19 that came from some other state than Texas. Thirteen of these out-of-state players came to us by way of transfer from another university (home state: 3 from California and one each from Connecticut, Florida, Georgia, Kansas, Louisiana, Missouri, New Jersey, 2 from Oklahoma and one from Pennsylvania). Maybe we initially recruited these and they eventually found their way back, but it's more likely this was more a process of scanning the transfer portal. To be fair, a lot of our TX players also came to us by way of transfer, but they are native Texans. That leaves 6 players currently on the roster that came to us from an out-of-state high school (one each from Alabama, Arkansas, California, Nevada, Ohio and Oklahoma). Maybe we're recruiting these states and just not able to convince players to come to Denton. This is a valid topic of conversation, but for some reason is so out of bounds that we'd rather dismiss it out of hand rather than discuss it. Maybe we will eventually be successful in this strategy, but the past evidence suggests it will be a constant challenge. Or, maybe it doesn't matter at all in the age of the transfer portal where we focus our high school recruiting efforts.

Not sure it's the system or high-octane offenses as much as it is massively out-talenting (is that a phrase) everyone else they play. These teams (coaches) you mentioned have been able to attract better, bigger, stronger, faster athletes at every position. There's some coaching involved, sure, but when every guy is better than the one across the line from them, talent usually wins.

If there were not so many other entertainment options in the DFW area, our attendance would be much better. If we had a new stadium, our attendance would be much better. If we were in a better conference, our attendance would be much better. If we could get teams people have heard of (P5) to play us at home, our attendance would be much better. If the temperature could stay between 75-80 degrees with no rain and calm winds, our attendance would be much better.

Not sure what percentage of punts are actually returned, but it seems more often than not you need someone who makes the right decision about receiving/returning the punt or letting it go. Besides that you need someone with sure hands that can focus making that fair catch (often in traffic). We just got the ball after a defensive stop. The number one priority of the punt returner is making sure we don't give it right back.

With only a quarter of the season over, I can't honestly give him anything other than an Incomplete at this point. However, this isn't a rebuild scenario. Regardless of how you feel about them or how watered-down they have become, we have been a consistent bowl team (yes, we lost them, but there are many programs that don't even make it to the post-season). We also played in a conference championship game last year. Weak conference perhaps, but 6 moved up to the AAC and only two played in it. So far we are 2-1 against the teams I had us penciled in for wins. The next 8 is the meat of the schedule and will tell the full story. It seems, however, that the AAC may be weaker than initially projected so we may be able to steal a win or two here or there that I previously didn't think we had shot at.

And now we know the real reason some members of congress have been pushing so hard for student athletes to get paid.

So you are aware, kick-off is 3:30pm EDT. Driving down from Connecticut in the morning. Five in our group.

I have two - Section 207 - Row 5 (1,2) and a blue parking pass that I won't be using if anyone wants them.

I think there may be more to this post.

I think it was the early 80s (some time between 81 and 85). I recall the name change and the story about Scrappy being too aggressive/warlike. Eppy won a student vote or something, but I don't ever remember getting the opportunity to vote on it. Just remember how silly it was when the new name was introduced and the reason for it.

1000%

So it's just clipart? Cut/Paste, put your letters on it and call it yours?

What do you mean? 🤪

Since there are a lot or moderators, perhaps a useful feature would be to indicate which moderator deleted/removed/hid a thread or for the moderator to message the the thread OP or the person with the post that caused the thread to be removed with the reason. That way people don't have to bother Harry all the time.

I thought this thread (based on the title) was supposed to be about criticizing the coaching staff or if it's even permissible. The fire issue was a different thread.

Careful now. Someone may get their feelings hurt.

As many have said in the past, compared to other schools, the jobs of AD and head football coach at UNT are probably the easiest in major college football as they are protected from criticism and not held accountable for performance.

Had to watch this on delay as I had previous commitments. Congrats players and coaches. I’ve always said a win on the road isn’t easy. This game confirms that. Great job team to march down the field and get the winning FG. Fun game to watch. Enjoy the week off and let’s take care of ACU before conference play.

It's probably more semantics or maybe airing it in public. I have no problem changing strategy, tactics, approach or game plan (which should change to some extent each week), but I don't think his vision for the program should change unless he now believes it's unattainable or not attainable in any reasonable timeframe. Wasn't it partly his articulated vision for the program that got him the job? If he's resetting it, what is it now?

OMFG. I wonder how that team meeting went? Did he come in and just say, "men, we've talked about my vision for this program from day one. We worked on it during spring ball, honed it during fall practice and have seen the results during our first two games. I'm here today to tell you to forget all that, we're gonna try something new."

You realize this is due in part to the better conference dividend, right? It's simple table stakes to get a better class in The American than C-USA, better in C-USA than the Sun Belt (at least the old Sun Belt, haha), better in the Sun Belt than the Big West, etc.. It's the natural order of things. We should not compare our class to previous classes until we've been in the conference for a few years, but even then it's more relevant to compare ours against our conference mates.