stebo

We need speed, strength, and conditioning. This will come with different recruits and better conditioning. You forget, Dickey was such a "players coach" that he would have the Spring game BEFORE Spring Break so that the players could go party in South Padre Island. You can't undo all of that neglect in a half season. Dodge needs time and recruits with more speed.

Again, I agree with you 100%. Again, I do not own a freaking Playstation!

Euless, He is just chatting. I mean - come on, your solution is recruit lots of Tongins from Trinity! First of all, could they even fit into a team concept - secondly, our crime rate has finally gone down on the team! Let's not invite more thugs and criminals back onto the team just yet. Steve Boedeker Class of 96 By the way - While OT has foolowed the team for a long time, I wouldn't discount some of us either. I have followed NT football since I arrived on campus in 1992. Been to just about every home game, sat through some really bad football and watched some really good football. I have also been to about 50% of the road games over the years. That is 15 years of watching and following North Texas football. There are quite a few on here that can claim that. I was right there with Harry when he opened up the old Paradise forum, moved it to Rivals, then to here. I have watched 3 AD's come and go. I have watched 4 coaches - Parker, Simon, Dickey, and now Dodge come through town. I have watched NT run a Variable Offense, a West Coast offense, a Running attack offense, and now a spread offense. And I do not even have a Playstation with football on it. So my ideas come from my history with the program, not a video game. I don't know how many people have the credentials of people like myself, FFRick, Harry, Jeff, Brett, Rob, SUMG, and our group. We have never left and then come back- we have been there through thick and thin. I know that there are great fans like Plumm that have had to take time off from the program due to his job or his digust - but our group of like 100 or so Paradise guy have been following this program for about 15 years straight together. People like FFRick and Evan have been following them even longer. I think we know a little bit about football. I don't even watch other teams play. So my knowledge is about NORTH TEXAS football. I do not watch pro football, it is corrupt. I do not like auto-bid BCS football, there is more money in it then the pros. I like watching North Texas and now the other Sun Belt teams. That is perfect football to me. steve

36 is his long. He missed two in the ULM game (one at that exact range, and one even closer). I would say that for him to have a good chance to make it, we need to be on the 5. He has also missed a PAT and bounced another one in. All of his kicks do the same thing, go right. And they do not have the distance. When he did tiehis best of 36, it was all the way to the right, barely inside the posts, and it just barely made it over. That was when we were on the 19 yard line. We had 3 times when we were inside of a normal kicker's FG range last night and were forced to go for it on 4th down instead of kicking. Two more times we were in the range of any exeptionally gfood kicker. Lets say that we just had a good kicker, not an exceptionally bad kicker... We could have converted 3 of those to 9 points, add on the touchdown and we have 16. At that point in the game it would have been 28 to 16 and we would have been "in" the game. The other killer to our losss - special teams. We gave up 14 points for kicks/punts run back. Take those two ran back TD's away and we are at 16-14, our lead. Then momentum would be with us and maybe just maybe, our OL would have woken up from the NAP that they were taking all of yesterday. I am not saying that we should have beaten Troy. To me, Troy is a legitimate top 30 team. Hell, they beat the living shit out of Okie State and they are currently #30 in the Sags. I am just saying that those problems (special team, OL, kicker, kicker, kicker, and OL) (Yes, i repeated myself on purpose a few times)... all need to be adjusted/recruited or we will not be able to hang with FAU, ASU, MUTS, or TROY - at least not for a long time. Then our wins will be against FIU, ULL, and ULM every year. That won't cut it, and I bet that Dodge is going to agree with us on this one. I am sure that he will right this ship... those are just some of the things that I see wrong with it.

Children of employees do not have to pay for tuition at NT. Helwig's son used to work for me - and he didn't have to pay. All of the Helwig children went to NT, they got to go for free. I don't even think that we will need to use a ship on Rodge.

Fouts is fine this year. The renovations have made it SOOO much nicer. In fact, I have always thought that Fouts was just fine when it was full. I brought a friend of mine to the FAU game and he went to Utah. I pointed across the HWY and told him about the new stadium and he had no idea why we would want to build a new stadium, thought that ours was a classic look and really nice. I asked him if he was kidding and he wasn't. The sight lines are bad but god, it is really nice now with all of the renovations (Turf, jumbotron, bathrooms, concession area, paint, etc...) Still gotta get rid of the bird shit on the seats.

North Dakota State also beat Central Michigan 44-14 this year, they are 7-0 overall and 2-0 against FBS teams.

I don't think that you can appeal a civil suit, can you? Just a criminal one, right?

Uh, we had like 5K show up for the Spring game... Are you thinking of the practice at the end of the summer?

Somebody got his period early this month. The kicker also missed a bunch, lol. I think he was 1 of 3 for the night. North Texas Kicking T. Moreland 1/3 (missed two from about 30 and 35) - made a 20 yarder chipshot... But yeah, he was 4/4 on those hard ass PAT's! - 7 points out of a possible 13, hey that is 7 out of 13, almost a passing grade, that would give him about a 53 if it was a test!

Very cool - but I would swap out the photo of the kicker for Don Vizza!

Dude, did you read the thread? It is not being televised in Texas. It is available on Sports South but that channel is not offered to Texas Subscribers - in its place is Fox Sports Southwest or South or something. Nobody can get it. The only reason that the place could do that last week was because it was on Ch 21 in the DFW area. It could still get picked up by Plus, but I highly doubt it. We are gonna have to listen to this one on the radio or through the Troy internet feed.

Hey, we spent a week in the Bottom 10 but we are off the list now including the waiting list (SMU is hanging in there though, lol ). The good thing is - The Darrell Project in Logan, UT has climbed all the way up the chart to #2! Obviously FIU is still #1 but if FIU wins and USU loses their 13th straight - then The Darrell will achieve his goal of destroying yet another proud program!

We tied them last year as well.

I wonder if this in the same Jon Baker that played for NT - went on to play for the Rams - and then ended up in the Arena League.

Thank god for Sun Belt refs! God Bless Em! Other then a few things here and there (like this, that can only be seen with close-ups and slowed up video) - they have really improved this year. I mean they have been pretty stellar. This conference definitely had its growing pains but the Belt is getting its act together.

That first block looks like a ULM player kncking another ULM player out of bounds... am I imagining that? Am I seeing it wrong? The second block is Stickler, no doubt - but that first block looks like two ULM players banging into one another, lol.

Oh, and I forgot to comment on the A&M situation. The Director of Academic Affairs for the University where I work is very involved with aTm, he is a proud alumnus and big time booster. He is such a big booster that he was getting the infamous newsletter. He told me at work today that the buyout has gone down already and will be announced within the next couple of weeks. He also said that the new coach will either be Jeff Tedford (Cal) or Tommy Tuberville (Auburn), just like the rumours say.... but then again, you never really know how important someone is and how credible their information is. I had someone that I know to be very close to our AD swear up and down that Jimbo Fisher would be our new coach last year, lol

Jimbo Fisher still wants a Head Coaching gig. It was either Memphis or UAB (can't remember which one) - but one of them had a deal with him for $500K and their BOR/BOT poopoo'd the contract. SMU is paying Bennet something around the figure now - I would guess that they would be willing to pay about the same for a Jimbo Fisher. As for recruiting - it would depend on the coach. Dodge is a great recruiter because all of these kids have looked up to Carroll for all of these years. They want to play for the master. Now - let's say that SMU brings in T Bowden... would kids in this area flock to that program? Eh, I really don't think so. SMU isn't going to beat Nav's contract and pay over a million a year - Dildo Mackman can forget about that. A few of those names might help a little bit for recruiting "nationally" - but locally... eh... I don't see any candidate that could hurt Dodge. At least not now. A few years from now, when Dodge's name is not such a well-known high school name, then his college wins will have to speak for his ability. For now, his name carries a LOT of weight in Texas.

Hey Rick, Two years ago the non-BCS schools became BCS schools. All 11 conferences are now BCS conference schools. Now, the big 6 have auto bids to the BCS bowls; but there is an entry point every year for the non-BCS schools. Instead of having the BCS Bowls rotate the Natl Championship, they added a new game called the Natl Championship game the the non-auto-qualifiers have a shot at a rotating bowl every year. So far, the BCS "bubble" has been busted both years. And both years, the non-auto qualifying team won their BCS bowl game. Two years ago it was Utah that beat a pretty lousy Pitt. Their coach was promptly hired away by Florida. Last year, Boise State beat OU in the Fiesta Bowl on a last minute trick play. It was absolutely splendid. Soooo - technically speaking, all 11 FBS Conferences (formerly IA) are now "BCS" schools. 6 of the 11 have an auto bid for their champion regardless of ranking. In order to bust the bubble, a member of the non-auto-qualifiying conference must meet a set of criteria... like being ranked in the top 12 of BCS standings, etc... It basically means that we would have to go unbeaten as well as win their conference. That is not really fair but it is better then it used to be (Ask Tulane - they went undefeated a few years back and got left out of the big money bowls). A Big 12 school can have 2,3, even 4 losses - win their conference - and still go, as long as they win their conference. So far, this year - Hawaii is the only school that has a shot at busting the bubble - but they have a pretty good shot at it. Then again, there are quite a few teams losing and we could POSSIBLY get a second team in this year (not likely, but not mathematically impossible) In addition to getting a little bit of validity, we all have a much bigger piece of the pie. We used to get "hush money" - it was a stipend. We all get a share of the BCS money now. Even the little ole Sun Belt - and since there are less of us, we get more because we have less teams to split our amount with. In addition - we also get a second share of the big money if ANY of the other non-auto bid conferences get a team in. Last year, when Boise got in - we actually got an extra $87K at North Texas as a result of it. Boise got about $3 million. The new BCS game for teams from the WAC, MWC, Belt, CUSA, and MAC doesn't pay the same amount as the others but it is sure a lot more then ANY of our previous bowl payouts that we had access to. So it is all about the auto-bid and non-auto-bid now. So I guess the question really needs to be, "Will the BCS system ever have an auto-bid" for all BCS conferences?" I think that will come with time. Especially if the qualifying team each year continues to win... and tickets sell.... and ratings hold strong... Two seasons into the new system and things are looking good. The only people that do not have access to the BCS Bowl system are the IA Indies minus Notre Dame. So, schools like Army and Navy could go undefeated and still not be invited to a BCS Bowl..

Of course we would go to CUSA in a heartbeat regardless of ranking. Tulsa, SMU, Rice, UTEP - those teams would all draw well at Fouts every year.

The BEST Mean Green Fan in the ENTIRE world:

Oh yeah - and USF, that would be the USF that has only had a program for 11 years - they are #2 in the nation. The Big East is weak this year, I don't think that any team in the Big East should have a shot at playing for the Natl Championship. Still, you have to give it to the Bulls - they have done it with smoke and mirrors as well as a hell of a publicity campaign. How did they sneak into the Big East? Why is the Big East still a BCS auto-bid conference? Hopefully this is the sign of things to come. The Belt is starting to get respect. I can't believe it but CUSA is ranked only one spot over the Belt, by a very small margin. They are below the MAC and the WAC. Hell, we are both behind them as well as the Indies. If WKY counted as a Belt team this year, we might slip in front of them. The Belt keeps this up, and we might actually pass those M'Fers up next year. That would be kinda funny.

I haven't seen a Sun Belt team get a vote in the AP poll for a long while - today's numbers just came out... Others Receiving Votes: Penn State 95, Virginia 85, Illinois 75, Boise State 37, Alabama 27, Rutgers 18, Wake Forest 18, Wisconsin 18, Clemson 9, Connecticut 7, Florida State 6, Maryland 6, Air Force 4, Brigham Young 2, Troy 1