stebo

Expected costs are roughly $60 million. The department has raised about 10% (or $6 million) of these funds.

I get the feeling that you wrote the article. Sorry dude, I did give everyone the link to your site and many have gone there to look at the Belt previews. Maybe next time just tell it like it is instead of being mean.

DD didn't answer to RV, in fact - the two rarely talked during his last two years. DD held his relationship with Mattress Mack over RV's head to get what he wanted. He practically blackmailed RV to even have two a days in 2005. It was a bad situation because DD had just come off of his fourth consecutive NO Bowl and he had the only big time donor in his back pocket. RV worked with what he had and as soon as the wins went away, Dickey got the boot. Dickey dug his own grave and because of that he is now at an even worse situation then NT. I hope that we never let a donor blackmail the department and our AD again - but the fans on this board would have been ripping RV a new one if he had let the Mack donations slip away. RV was in a no win situation and DD simply didn't care. DD never cared about NT. He didn't care about players being good citizens or students. He had quite a few that turned out to be outstanding students and citizens but there are so many untold stories about stealing books, robbing stores, robbing lockers, robbing other player's houses, etc... thank goodness most of it never came to light. There were only a few things that really were made public - the incident with the guns at the old Mercado Juarez... the incident in New Orleans when a player punched a fan from the other team through a car window and went to jail - only to start the next day while out on bail... I really won't go on and on, I was directly hurt (financially) by two players that were from this system; they destroyed a piece of my property (an ATM machine) and only one was let go from the team (the one that wasn't playing anyway). Make no mistake, DD had RV by the balls and thank god he is gone. I am willing to put this whole bad report on DD. As for RV not having him "under control" - I blame the fans just as much for letting DD hold the Mack donations over RV's head.

The author is included as is the source. There is nothing against the law about my post.

I didn't really read the article as negative.

http://www.collegesports-fans.com/football...as-preview.html

bomp

With a secondary bowl, Troy would have gotten a bid last year most likely. But really that is only the 3rd time that a team with a winning record has been left home. There was MTSU in year 1, NMSU had a 7-5 season one year, and then Troy last year. 6-6 teams from the Belt don't need to be bowling, that is silly. I am guessing that the talks have always been outweighed by money and this won't be an issue after we start getting our NCAA credits next year. We might be one year away from a second bowl but I think there will be one by 2009.

Just the fact that we won't be running a simple "man to man" - "You get him, I will get him" defense will help dramatically. Actual defensive schemes will help those guys a lot. It is tough to say how good or bad the defensive players were last year because of the way that they were coached. It was just way to simple for the college level. Now, I would have liked to see a lot more recruiting for the defensive side of the ball - but I think that the guys we have in place can win with some fundamental college D. Does anyone know what they were lining up as in the Spring Game?

I don't think the improvement can be summed up with just wins and losses. Our offense was good enough to win just about every game last year. Navy was a very good team and we put up over 50 on them. The season will be judged on two things in my opinion: if we keep up the momentum of the points and lower the turnovers and if our defense crawls out from last place to a respectable 70-80 ranking. To move up 50 spots in defensive ranking in one season would be huge in my opinion. I think that if we handle those two things then the W's and L's total will take care of itself. If we win the close ones that we lost last year it will be an improvement - games like the SMU and Navy games... As long as there is steady improvement in those areas - we could win as many as 8 or 9. I still think that we have the ablility to run the Belt with the right defense. FAU and Troy both lost a lot and those were the only two teams with winning records last year. La-Mon was a 6-6 team but they just don't worry me. If the defense comes around under the direction of Deloach then we could easily be the dominant team in the Belt again.

I dunno guys - from the right hand side of the page: Location Denton, Texas Built When Hell Freezes Over Opened When The Cold Front Makes It To The Seventh Level Owner University of North Texas Tenants North Texas Mean Green Capacity 40,000 (estimated)

I was skimming through the DaMN's Quick today and they had a mock NFL draft... anyways, they had the Troy cornerback going 10th overall. There wasn't another non-BCS player in the top 10 mock guesses... Troy is really doing a good job of getting their kids into the NFL. I can't remember how high Ware went when the Coboys took him, but it was pretty high - wasn't it?

bump time

Thank you sooo much, that is definitely the most information that I have gotten about it so far. I put your cell phone number into my phone and I will def give you a call. It is weird, My girlfriend just likes this band Vampire Weekend and we were looking for a place to go see them... The closest venue was Bonerroo - so I started looking into it and WOW! Like Woodstock or something, lol. So I bought two tickets and it is good that we did because I think that only VIP is available now. I had no idea that I would get that great of a reaction from my g/f - she freaked out when I told her. If you want to erase your number, you can - I have it in my phone now and thank you so much. I just need to figure out some way to get a hotel or camp there. Can't decide how to pull all this off.

Work! Oh, and a bad car accident. My truck has been declared dead by the insurance company and my whiplash is just now going away! I am doing my best to catch up on all of the posts, lol.

What a spectacular school year for the Belt! Great OOC wins on the football side and conference ended up ranked ahead of the MAC for the season. Now basketball has done what CUSA and the WAC could not do - placed two teams into the tourney... with one team advancing two rounds to the Sweet 16. Our conference is now ranked above the WAC for men's hoops and we might jump even higher after the win today by WKY. WKY has moved up in football, our fledgling FAU program is getting national attention for their gridiron success, and FIU is building their new stadium. The Belt has been a big experiment but it is really starting to shape up nicely. I know that almost every member of the Belt aspires to be in a higher profile conference; but you never know - maybe we will be that higher profile conference in the future and CUSA members will want to join up with us? I mean, things are really coming together in Belt land... you just never know.

Yeah, but look at who those wins were over. Our SOS was terrible. We have got to start playing some real teams in OOC play. JJ needed those UT-Permian Basins and SE Okla State when he was building this team but we should really put a true Div I schedule together now that the team has some stability. I didn't even know that Texas A&M-International existed!

They have the history of his name all wrong but there he is... Scrappy the Eagle... You can vote to put Scrappy on the cover of NCAA 09.. Sorry folks, I really wish it would be Mean Green Scrappy or something to emphasize our real team name... but either way it is cool that he is on there. Scrappy is one of only two from the Belt (the other is Lightning from the MUTS). When you get to the voting page - click on Sun Belt/Big Sky and vote for the only cool selection available from the Belt >>> Scrappy. (bleh) http://www.easports.com/ncaa09/

bumperooski

I hear ya Jim... I really do. *shrugs*

Well, he is a student... so he has season tickets. All students do and they pay more then most alumni for those season tickets in the form on student service fees. He is not an ex yet but he could join the Student chapter for free. I agree with you though - we need our students to take advantage of their season tickets and go to the games.

Well, the article that I read had the bit about air conditioning for the East side stadium seats... It looks like they are getting yet ANOTHER athletic center (what is that, like their 4th one?)... so I can see this project being done at NT for around $35 million... for their cost we could build three brand new stadiums exactly like the one that we want

Eagle D, you running tomorrow? My hotel is completely filled with runners! I had no idea that the Austin Marathon drew 11K

Yep, the cranes were in the North end zone... you are right. When I got back to the hotel room I looked it up and there was a blurb about it in the local student paper. They are also renovating some East side stadium club seats to have air conditioning. Geez... air conditioning??? It's a football game!

I am actually down in Austin right now and we just drove by the stadium with one of the students... where I saw (guess what!) - big cranes and construction. I was asking the student what was being built. She had no idea at all. None. If NT was to build another 4K seats it would be on every page of the school paper, would have to go to the regents... there would be arguments about it... there would be editorials written about how the athletic dept was getting too big and that the teachers at NT are underpaid... here, in Austin - they don't even know it is going on. That is the beast that we have to "try" to keep up with... makes for a very, very difficult journey.