eulessismore

One of the guys I've met through the forum mentioned that some of the football players (at least one from defense) was standing behind the two of us in the line at the concession stand at the UALR game Saturday night and noticed me talking football; with some awkwardness (not noticed by myself at the time) created for him and those players. As I recall, what I said was something to the effect that I was looking forward to football next year; posed the question as to whether there would be a real competition for QB, with my opinion being that I would like to see that, and that I liked Nathan Tune. Then I said that that was based on seeing him play, but in limited time coming off the bench, and that a lot of quarterbacks coming off the bench, and (this is the part I think could be seen as a slam against our recent defenders), that "those coming off the bench against us looked good". I'd have to say that this was kind of lame for me to say, especially in situations like a basketball game, where some of our football players will of course be attending, and having to hear us fans say whatever we will when we're around a North Texas athletic event. A couple of things by way of explanation: We do have a couple (at least; I don't know the history of all our players now or previously quarterbacks) of guys on the team who have who quarterbacked state championship football teams; Riley Dodge and Nathan Tune. I certainly thought Riley was impressive as SLC QB, as well as showing noticeable speed at WR when he was playing this year. His injury history does concern me, as he certainly was given the diagnosis of concussion after the Rice game, and more is becoming known about the accumulative effect of concussions suffered by football players; this may be something that bears watching. I also thought Nathan, in the one chance I saw for him to throw the ball (and he did lead us to a touchdown in a game where, offensively, nothing was really clicking for us, and I felt he showed some poise. However, I think there may be reasons why our (and other teams') quarterbacks coming off the bench may look good, whether it's that they're rested, the opposing defense hasn't had much chance to study film on them or any number of reasons that I know too little about football to guess. The other thing; I don't, and I don't think anyone else on here, seriously thinks our defensive players were to blame for the state of our defensive play for the last couple of years, although I do think it's the responsibility of the head coach, the strength and conditioning coach, those coaching special teams, the defensive coaches, and the defensive players to do better next year. In 2007, against mostly the same teams, and returning mostly the same (8 players?) starting defense, we did much worse, near, if not at the bottom of FBS schools, than the previous year, when we were somewhere in the middle. I'd have to consider the dropoff in college level defensive coaching as a likely explanation for that year (at the expense of making too obvious of a point), since some of those leaving here then went on to coach successfully elsewhere. In 2008, many of us felt we had good reason to be more optimistic, with the return of a defensive coordinator who had been quite successful at UNT in the recent past; however, we seemed to overlook the fact that we had lost most (all?) of those starters from the 2006 team to graduation or otherwise leaving the program. That's not all bad of course, since we want our players to graduate. And, being from Euless, I had wanted Jordan Scoggins to succeed in converting to a defensive tackle (and I don't know exactly why he left the program), and knowing about Tevinn Cantly from his being a friend of a coworkers family, wanted him to at least gain some needed weight and strength from our conditioning program as a redshirt, without realizing we had no football specific strength/conditioning coach. To Dodge's credit at this point (and I think even his harshest critics here have expressed confidence in the strength and DT coach hires), he seems to have filled out his defensive coaching side with coaches having real accomplishments, whose talents address specific needs. Also, I think we have reason to be optimistic about some of the defensive players who will be playing for either their first or second time next year, whether sophomores, coming off a redshirt year, possibly starting as true freshmen, or transferring from JUCO's. And, at least some of those who did start as underclassmen will have needed experience. You may notice I'm not saying Dodge was entirely responsible for losing all our previous assistant coaches and that experience gap; someone here mentioned it was strongly recommended to him that he not retain any of them. I don't really know what did happen before; by now, I think Brett Vito has been shown to be correct in saying that Dodge won't be hiring any more assistants from the high school ranks. His recent hires seem to be well thought through. As to whether I, any other members of this forum, or the players themselves have any reason to point blame at the athletes on the defensive side (especially those leaving after 2007 and 2008, who by and large have represented us very well in a difficult situation), that is a stretch that none of us should make. I have reason to believe we can have a noticeably improved defensive unit (and more wins) next year, and for the foreseeable future; Go Mean Green! My apologies for the rambling nature of this; hey I'm no Brett Vito or Troy Phillips! Dwayne Taylor, Class of 1977

Got to agree with you on that; it was the word that I was thinking towards the end of the game.

I thought this was a better article (hey, an opportunity to compliment the Denton Record Chronicle): DRC on space rocks find

Maybe whoever presided over the last "realignment". On his way to New Orleans, he could stop in Deep East Texas to watch DeSoto play a district football game.

I'll never worry about your employability again!

They may still be talking about you. If everyone did that; a lot less of that paperwork would be found necessary. Lenders would be lobbying Federal and State legislators for paperwork reduction and fine print removal. I can imagine reading "Mortgage industry leaders petition congress for plain language, fixed rate loans; just this one thing, and we'll never ask for another bailout".

Why is it necessary to be presented with so much paperwork at a closing? It seems like so much of it is just pro forma, cover their ass disclaimers, that those could just be given to the buyer in advance of the closing as homework; with the closing only consisting of plain enough, pertinent enough, straight written enough, that nobody could ever feel like saying, "too much fine print", whatever. No, I have nothing against an honest businessperson; but, no I have no patience for the banking CEO's "We never do anything wrong, just leave us alone and we'll...do what it was that got us to this point..oh, please, taxpayers, bail us out, will ya? I found all that conservative philosophy fine when I was a conservative Republican. When reality intervenes, something gives, and you realize political ideology can go under the bus quite nicely. Adam Smith was just another guy selling books and trying to be popular with the monied crowd. Wasn't it he who said words to the effect that "slavery will continue to exist because it's popular"? The creditors aren't really trying to finance purchases anymore and get them paid off; they're just trying to keep debtors paying whether or not there's any real chance they'll pay off anything.

Fixed it for ya! Now your insurance agent will love you.

Well, he did seem to be there for big improvements in scoring offense over 1991; also, Mitch Maher, who played from 1991 to 1994 (of course, coached by Dodge for 2 of those years), had a good enough year that we won the Southland in 1994, under Matt Simon. I think the problems in 1992 and 1993 were the same as in 2007 and 2008 to a large extent; lack of defense. I don't think that was really Dodge's responsibility in the 1990's; it was in the last two years. I do agree with what you said in another thread that the new assistant coach hires this year may improve our defense enough to result in 2 or 3 more wins; the attention to the defensive line this off season is actually the reason for any (yes, more than any time since Dodge came here) optimism I have. Do I care whether the Dodge offense puts up big numbers? Not really. Like many, I've come to the conclusion that defense, special teams, and ball control can win; and winning will make fans forget how they won. If the defense stars, fine by me. If they don't improve, nothing else really matters. By the way, his SLC teams only played Euless once. Like many Euless residents, I don't want to talk about that game. Nothing you say can make me comment any further on that. Oh yeah...how did we get from Stradford to here? Oh yes, the coaching fraternity thing. Yup; you're right on two counts, there's a coaching fraternity and no, they don't care what we think about it. Did anyone notice that someone said we'd never recruit out of Cedar Hill because of Ron Mendoza, and then, we signed someone out of Cedar Hill? I knew that nothing that happened with Mendoza here at UNT would keep any Cedar Hill recruits away from North Texas. That was all just fans thinking coaches can't get over things.

Hmmmm, I'm thinking that's basketball, but I'll bite: Memphis basketball can and will make a lot of teams look bad.

So, why wouldn't that allow you to eat tailgate food; high calorie by definition? Wouldn't feel right just washing it down with water? Maybe some of us could join in on that 20 minutes of exercise. I propose that some of it involve walking up and down the stairs around the Super Pit.

Hey, I'm no James Brown, but Please, PLEASE, PLEASE; if you use a word like "brainpower", spell it correctly! But to answer your question: obviously, NO!

You young folk! Don't you realize that us over 60's were about the last to be drafted in this country? I mean, why aren't you under 60's out demanding that you and all the rest of those not having military service be put into a uniform for a couple of years, including some time at a rifle range. Well, don't worry about us old folk; anyway, admit it, you're snickering to yourself that we couldn't hit the broad side of a barn. Myself, I'm just hoping that during my lifetime, the North Texas football program will feature a quarterback who could fire a round and not have it intercepted for a pick six by a freshman cornerback.

Hey, I knew things had passed me by when I was at a Starbucks about 10 years ago talking to a seemingly nice enough young lady, about to graduate from high school in Colleyville. She told me she had already gone through, and quit, a period of drug and alcohol abuse (she was around 17, I guess), and was looking forward to enrolling in school at UNT, in part, to get away from drugs and alcohol. I didn't say anything to contradict that, but it seemed strange, based on the time I spent there in the 70's and 80's. Maybe some school teachers are members of this board and could give us a clue about what's really happening around here with kids of that age. If things seem strange now, maybe we could think what our generation looked like to those who came before.

Dude! My hat's off (er, spats off?) to you; you will not go unnoticed. And yes, I did just recently buy a new hat!

I think the right photographs are the key to any blackmail scheme, even in this digital photoshopped era. I think something involving donkeys...doing things. I'm now wonderding if Quoner will pull some ellipsis rule on me. Oh, and I voted $80 million. Although I think it will be more; I think it will be closer to that than the $100 million. For North Texas, $100 million starts sounding like big money; we'd figure out a way to delay some press box improvements or something like that. Phasing could be the key, maybe like the Wake Forest University Football model.

Does your friend know this? Just asking.

Yep, time to bring in a real "jocks and socks" guy.

I nominate Green Bat to explain mortgage securitization and how we can be cured from it.

There was some claim that Mozart put too many notes in his music; would a higher IQ have only led to more notiness?

We've recruited enough DE's in the last 2 classes, as well as Kyle Russo playing well towards the end of the season that I say, let's give the guys we've already signed a shot. Also, we've signed enough DT recruits that Charlie Brown should be able to move back to DE, where some think he could do well. Plus think about this; we now have a football specific strength and conditioning coach helping those already on our roster, not to mention that the new DT coach can probably also help Rausch with the DE's. Another thing, I don't think we have enough scholarships now that we could be offering them. Would we then end up pushing some of our guys aside to make room for some of these? It's bad enough that there's none left to offer the walkons (as far as I know). I have little doubt that this was shabby treatment by JJ and SMU at best. I say we shouldn't head in that direction by overpromising of scholarships, which apparently was a part of that whole process. Oh, and how does all that work in the APR calculations?

I think most of the teams we've played recently have "acted like they've been there before" when they got to the end zone, except maybe WKY. We've beaten them twice in two years; maybe we should encourage taunting by our opponents (at least on their first score).

A guy in our office who was at UNT during the previous fee increase which resulted in, among other things, the added aluminum bleachers, mentioned the lack of acoustical improvements after that project. Of course there wouldn't be any increased fan noise with only the addition of open aluminum bleachers (which are usually empty) at an open end zone of a stadium. I certainly hope this new stadium will have good acoustics "built in" to the design, especially with the music school we have, and the hopes of its dual use as a concert venue. I think one acoustical problem, other than the openness of Fouts, is its lack of verticality (or as someone here so eloquently put it, "vertically challenged Fouts". As far as the 30k with potential for another 20k capacity; it may be worthwhile to think about what Stanford did in its recent stadium redo, reducing capacity from around 85k to 50, so as to increase "intimacy". Here's the link; keep in mind, although I haven't found it mentioned on a web search today, that Stanford sometimes covers massive numbers of those seats with a tarp like covering to hide the view of otherwise empty seats. Stanford Stadium redo, per Wikipedia

This could easily be worked into the next "Harry Potter" sequel; guess who is the scary woman?

Are you kidding? Of course he is, or was as of September 3, 2008: Pat Boone Interview By the way, there's a guy in our church choir who was in publicity for Columbia Records; he's old enough to remember going to Pat Boone's club in Denton.