Stan R

What time you planning on starting emmit?

I'm going to try to stop by with my kid as well. Where is it at? Fouts lot?

I think another analogy might be that we are "house poor". We bought the Mc.Mansion and now we are struggling to afford the upkeep and the homeowner's association dues.

You get a +1 for the use of the term "nuhssing".

By this logic we should have several National Championship trophies sitting in our Athletic Center.

Too early to tell, stop being so impatient. Jeesh! Some of you guys are so impatient!!

We gonna need them fans, because UNT facilities are ON FIYAAAAHHHH! (not literally, that would be bad, fire is dangerous). Baseball.. Facilities... AWEEESOMMMEEE!!!! Hey - if this is how we get our news, so be it. Just happy to hear all of this is going on behind the scenes. Thanks to everyone who is making it happen.

Hmm. Thinking. Yes, I think we do want to market it. I think we do promote improvements even in our current situation. It is separate from our current team's issues. What's the worst that could happen? Some people might roll their eyes? Oh well, at least they will see that we have more in the pipeline, that we as a program haven't given up. That we are committed to the future. Is that a bad thing? Will it cost us anything?

Please don't take my frustration the wrong way. I almost fell out of my chair when I had heard that a group of donors put 3 million towards the practice facility and towards the new jumbo tron. To me that is unheard of in my time of following UNT basketball. I guess what I'm afraid of here is the possibility of us falling back in to extreme apathy. I hear people talking about it being too painful to attend games this year and that is the exact opposite thing that we should be doing. I'll be here on Thursday to see this for myself. I just hope everyone else will be too.

Don't know about the "others" on this forum (or maybe it's the "other others", man I miss LOST ) but I love the ESPN3 streaming and I just think it is totally unacceptable for any D1A school to not have ALL of their games streamed in one form or another across all sports. This includes pay per streams as well. The REAALLY unacceptable games to not be streamed are the football games. No excuse whatsoever in D1A. Were any of UNT football's games not available on TV or streaming (radio only) in 2012? Wasn't sure about that.

Ok, fair enough. I'll accept that criticism. Yes, I would say that I am being impatient. That is my right as a long term supporter of this program who sat through countless basketball games with 500 of the other guys who I'll assume are guys like UNT90 and CMJ, et al. It pains me, PAINS me to see how things are falling apart right now. I think what would shut people like me up on this is SOME SORT OF INFORMATION being put out by the athletic department on the progress of the situation. Honestly, it shouldn't need to come from the group of donors, that's not your (or their) job. I'm going by the level of interest shown by our athletic department during Apogee construction. We had live interviews with the construction company, videos of construction, timelines, on and on including a webcam. Do those things matter? Do webcams mean anything? They do. They do because they show the level of commitment to a program from the top levels of the administration. Where is that on the basketball side? Where is the financial commitment If it is there, someone please enlighten me because I just don't see it if this season was supposed to be one for the ages.

So one season huh. I'll ask my question again. Has this ever happened in the history of college basketball? Do we want that kind of notoriety? That may prove more harmful than sticking it out for a gut wrenching two-to three seasons (where's my projectile barf icon?) of this. Hey I want him out here as much as the next guy based on all of the evidence. Practicality and economics is another thing. I get people will say "well then just kiss yer fans guhd bye and stuff". Well yes I get it, it will be ugly, but guess what, this is the situation we have put ourselves in (our AD has put us in more accurately, although everyone seemed to be golf clapping this in just the same way we did for Todd Dodge). We have to end this in a non-catastrophic* way. *By somehow saving face for our program, no matter how far fetched that sounds right now.

Has any college basketball coach at the D1A level EVER in the history of EVER been fired in less than one year on the job. Do we want to make that kind of history??

Ok, so maybe I should have read up on this, and to be up on all of the news and whatnot : http://espn.go.com/mens-college-basketball/story/_/id/7431968/western-kentucky-hilltoppers-fire-ken-mcdonald So this is a case of a 3rd year coach being fired halfway through the 4th season. Apples and oranges? Are we advocating firing a 1st year coach halfway through his 1st year?

I am at a loss to even process this in my brain cells. You seem like a trustworthy enough source to be posting this, so I'm going to believe it at face value. I actually do have a follow up question to add to this discussion, I realize I'm a bit late to it. RV loves to be on the sidelines at games, etc. If we hooked a lie detector up to RV's fingers, what words would come out of his mouth? Is he aware of all of this? Full practices before games? Ludicrous substitutions?

So are you saying that RIGHT NOW given our current record that is the correct decision? I don't think so, not yet. You have to let this play out to its bitter end. Is there a record at the end of this year that would make you change your mind?

Bro. We all see it, but of course you knew that, you're just trying to find consolation by preaching to the increasingly agitated choir. So what is your realistic view on what should be done here? Not the comedic version, the semi-serious one. It ain't fire Benford tomorrow, or probably even at the end of the season. Let me ask my question this way. Let's say we could put this same situation on WKU's head. What would they do? They are in my view the gold standard of what UNT basketball needs to be. Facilities, consistently great fan support, high expectations every year. Now what if by some freak occurrence, they hired a complete disaster of a coach along the lines of Benford. They also hired him into a 5 year contract or something along those lines. Do you take the financial hit and put the guy to the curb at the end of one season and admit complete, embarrassing failure as a program?

I mentioned in a post several months ago one key point in all of this. NCAA sports are all about showing progress through facilities. If you don't capitalize on your "six year building of the program" by truly BUILDING something by way of facilities improvements, you are on some incredibly thin ice. We can slide back into pre JJ program status incredibly quickly. For our sake I hope we follow through on the jumbo trons and practice facilities and really take the program to the next level. At this point I see it as nothing more than lipstick on a pig for the simple fact that I don't see our athletic department really caring that much about basketball given their actions of late. Is our account overdrawn? By that I mean did we put all of our effort and energy into building the facilities for football and then did we lose all of our steam for the basketball side, by way of making some minuscule improvements (granted, very desperately needed ones) and then calling it a day? What is the long term plan facilities wise and program wise for basketball? Do we have one? Does a 5-10 year plan exist? If we crap all over the momentum we have built this will be very depressing. To me it feels like RV and company seem to me to make sure that the least amount of work is put into basketball to literally keep the lights on. That isn't enough for the guys like Tony Mitchell. It simply isn't.

*sigh*. Someone contact Wilford Brimley. I have a feeling some of our players may need to talk to him about the condition that they've had all these years unbeknownst to them.

Hmm. Sounds familiar. And in a very, very bad way.

*sigh* thanks for posting this. Darrell... I'm starting to think he has the right and maybe ONLY recruiting philosophy that works for teams like UNT. Hey buddy, nobody else cared about you, but I DO. We'll make something of ourselves and PROVE these BCS schools wrong. Come here and you'll be adored by the fans and we'll shock the world. Hell even the fans don't like ME! (DD) but look at what I've done. I'm a football rebel and you are too, I know it. Work with me and we'll have fun and make it work. 10 or so years later. Did we make the right decision firing DD? Even after the sting of the black unis faded off I was starting to question that decision. The argument that keeps getting brought up - "well we would never have apogee if we never fired DD and hired *gulp* TD". I cannot argue with that line of thinking but I can't help start wondering if... wait for it... wait for it... wondering if Mac should bring in DD as a consultant of some sort. I'm like, mostly serious about that. he knew how to somehow make it work here, and LORD knows that hasn't been easy over the past 50 years. UNT Is not Iowa State, and it is sure as hell not Florida. Someone with a history of knowing how to make it work in North Texas might just be DD. to clarify: I'm just referring to consulting on making the recruiting work, not Uniform pantone color selection.

Lock the gates!! Don't let Canales out!!

The ULM drool is priceless. PRICELESS!!!

I know things haven't been the greatest as far as RV is concerned, but I still do miss posts from Glad to Be Green. There were some nuggets one could pull from his coded responses. We took what we liked and left the rest. So. GTBG - if you are reading this. Please give us some hope? ... Please?

Strange... Strange indeed. When I think of Canales in the interim HC year, this doesn't make sense at all.