Mean Green Matt

Venezuela joins us on the top side of the bracket. Expect their matchup to be Argentina. It only gets tougher from here.

Important game tonight for the USA. Win or draw should be good enough to get through and take our chances against Brazil in the quarterfinals.

We have soooo many bigger fish to fry than the fact that our practice fields are named after a coach that won four straight conference titles.

If Neil was just going to hire Hank Dickinson he wouldn't have even started all of this in motion. Hank was the easiest choice for the next couple months. He won't be the choice for the next five years.

As awesome a football venue as Toyota Stadium is (despite being designed specifically for soccer) I doubt it has the size for an FBS bowl game (though many bowl games wouldn't even fill it with attendance). It has hosted the FCS title game for the last 6 years and had a new 4 year contract to do so.

He lost all five of them...

Really? What about moving to the Southland?

If we are being really, really honest with ourselves that happened a long time ago. Their football season ticket base dwarfed ours even when they were FCS.

He didn't fit our criteria of proven winner with head coaching experience.

I'm not the real Mean Green Matt?

He is a regular on the Web.com tour, but appears to have gotten some sort of exemption into the (Non-WGC) PGA event this week in Puerto Rico. He finished third and took home $174k. Carlos Ortiz (a PGA regular) didn't make the cut. A third professional NT golfer, Juan (Sebastian) Munoz started the year on the Larin American tour (which Cauzabon was successful enough last year in to win a Web.com tour spot), but received an exemption into the Web.com Tour Columbia event and he won it, so he received his Web.com tour card, is currently #1 on the money list and looks poised to receive his PGA Tour card for next year. Good stuff from a trio of NT alums.

I'm sorry, but if NT athletics is out of money because it has to fund so many buyouts, we need someone else captaining the ship. You seriously think he gets let go after a winning season when he's been retained after 4 straight losing seasons against D1 competition?

The basketball program has been completely decimated. The results from Benford would have been unacceptable from any self respecting program even if he had taken over for Trilli. The fact that he took over a successful program that was trending up from Jones makes it even worse. We know from the Dan McCarney experiment that even one year of moderate success will result in a brand new 5-year deal. So when we go 17-15 next year with one win in the conference tourney, just get ready for that buyout to jump back over $1 million.

In my mind any success this year is icing on the cake. From the moment she was hired, she loaded up for next year with talent returning to DFW. If they somehow manage to get to .500 at year end it will be a minor miracle.

I hope they have a private entrance to the coaches box...

Today was the first women's game I've made it to in quite a while. The first half was very sloppy, but they kept playing hard. Frierson and Tac both sat out for a few minutes in the fourth quarter due to foul trouble. Kelsey Criner who hit the game winning layup with 1.8 seconds left played all 40. It is still very early on with coach Mitchell, but considering the talented transfers she has sitting out this year, next year could be pretty exciting. If that ultimately happens and other schools come calling I hope The 17 reward her with enough incentive to stay.

Absolutely. It didn't happen this year but no team should be able to go undefeated without having a chance at the national championship.

Inching closer to that magical .500 contract extension.

This is exciting.

Who cares? Seriously?

SHSU is in the top half of the Southland....so I'm not going to get my hopes up.

0% chance.

Hmm. Sounds like maybe you should take issue with BGSUs defensive strategy/performance since they were the ones actually on the field defending the triple option, rather than the spread offense.

Just because NT hasn't achieved something doesn't make it a lofty goal. Given the amount of students we have and alumni living within an hour drive of campus, 25,000 should be a disappointing attendance and the fact that we've reached it so little is a downright embarrassment. With that said, I agree it shouldn't be a contract incentive for a head football coach.

It was designed with the transition to a baseball stadium in mind though. Will be interesting to see how they transition it to football. The way the Portland Timbers transitioned Providence Park into a soccer and football (Portland State) facility is one of the better jobs I've seen of it.