SCREAMING EAGLE-66

---A winning program requires money to keep or get outstanding coaches and until we can build a good fan base --30,000 or more attendence at game and get more media exposure it is going to be tough to recruit extremely well or raise more money. The whole situation is a catch-22,---- it is tough to improve interest without better teams and tough to get better teams without better fan and media interest. We could then improve revenues. ---About the quickest way to get more respect is defeat some quality teams such as Texas (now unlikely) without other improvement. However odd things do happen sometimes... SMU definitely was not better than TCU last year who lost only one game and won their conference.... but they won, somehow. ---You said there is no committment to winning..... you got any good sources of money that is needed or inroads to outstanding athletes that we can sign???? UNT does need to create more school loyality amoung students somehow, unfortunately so many of our students are JC transfers that never develope the loyality that students who spend all four years at a university do. The first year they are new to the campus and are settling in and the second and final year they join very few activities and know they will soon be gone. ---Everyone will listen to some good suggestions from you if not to improve out committment. Remember we can't tap tax money for athletics, UT doesn't either but they get a fortune in donations from alums and friends. ---When the NCAA created I-AA, Lamar, UT-Arlington, dropped their programs and West Texas State went to a no-scholarship situation. Only UNT in Texas survived the drop in status and has even made it back to I-A. The Southland group already existed as a lower classification and are still there. I am not as critical as some.

---We were a member of the MVC until about 1978 when Cincinnatti, Memphis, Louisville, Drake, Tulsa, Wichita, Bradley, NMSU, etc. were members.. Indiana State (Larry Bird's alma mater) is a member now but not at that time. That conference has had many teams in the final four, mostly before 1980.. The football part of the conference disbanded when UNT, Lousiville, Memphis, and Cincinnati left. The others formed the Metro-conference which became CUSA, but we went independent thinking that we would become a SWC member --but SMU shot us down...... and we eventually were forced into I-AA as a result. I hate SMU...... let me count the ways......!

---Maybe we could get George W. Considering his language skills he might not be any good but we would get some attention and it would get him out of Washington. ---So much for an Ivy League education, obviously their English and and speech departments are lacking. He should have stayed in Texas and received a good HS and college education instead of going to a New England prep school and college.

The GOP is in power...... opps wrong board, wrong topic. LOL.

--Hmmmmm... Temple loses nine scholarships.... There were people on this board that wanted them added to the Belt.... That would have made us look even worse.... plus they can't beat anyone.

Ok I will bite... where is this SE Texas Mardi Gras??? Port Arthur?

----Leaf did very well as a college QB, but not as a pro.... there a lot of those guys around, not just him. There are also several good pro-QBs that did little as a college QB, probably because of the system or the talent around them. WT may have done ok with this guy. Besides a lot of good coaches were not very good players.

---No Texas schools in the WAC either... The closest would be LaTech and NMSU which is over 600 miles away. Who would the other three be in the "Eastern" part?? NEVADA, UTAH STATE AND IDAHO.....??? I would rather go to Middle Tenn and the Florida colleges over those places.... ---At least three, maybe four, Belt teams are closer than NMSU... and it is the second closest of the WAC.. I would prefer CUSA but other than that ---stay in the Belt. The WAC is a wacky option. Nothing good about that conference..

--- The forced movement of us to I-A (1978?) was a huge blow to our sports program. Plus that would not have happened if "SMUt" had not led the fight to keep us out of the SWC and convinced TCU and Baylor to vote with them. Houston had been admitted in 1976 and Texas and Arkansas wanted to expand the SWC to 10 teams like the Big-10 and Pac-10 which was admitting Arizona and Arizona State in from the WAC. The other six teams voted for us and if remember right --however we needed 7 "for" votes. ----This explains my "signature". Any year that we soundly defeat SMU is a successful year, even if we lose all the other games.

Stay in the Belt...... 1. WAC is little better if any plus the travel expense is awful. 2. Except for LaTech no close rivals. 3. Bad time zones, Mountain and Pacific Zones get little press space or media attention until late at night when the rest of the games are over. 4. There are other sports besides football and midweek trips would be difficult in the west for athletes who are trying to be students.... after all few college athletes ever become professional athletes. 4. We would be back with some of the teams we complained about (NMSU the exception). 5. Too many people always think the grass is green on the other side of the fence. LaTech may be one that wishes they were back on our side of the fence since they are so remote from the remainder of their conference. Fans cannot really travel to games much at all, neither could ours if we were in WAC..... and our home attendence would get few visitors either, probably less than we do with the Belt. This could cause attendence to drop... not increase. No one has any real interest in those colleges or friends that attended those either --which helps fuel interest.

I find it interesting that in the profession team list that the Spurs and Rockets are missing as is the Texas Rangers and Astros.

---Give me the sports that are decided by a clock..... not a bunch of judges. ---Speedskating has been my favorite but the short-track version is sort of odd. Downhill skiing looks the scariest personally, lots of speed and horrible crashes. There are a lot of winter sports that have a lot of risks due to the speed and risk of crashing. [ unbelievably, even ice dancing has turned dangerous with all the falls ] Not many of the summer Olympic sports have this much personal danger. [gymnastics maybe]

--- This is one of the problem with having "Spring??" football too soon... cold weather. April could be rain (I hope) but I would go the route of late March or early April to avoid the cold which one has now. No one likes practicing in severe cold and little can be accomplished.. The other teams don't start early for a reason. ---I would think the players would like a longer time off after a long fall season instead of more practice so soon. Besides it is a long time until August and I would think a lot of things learned would be lost. I would also think mentally there would be more into it after a longer break from fall. When there has been coaching changes it would give these guys more time to get their act together and adjust to NT and what is going to be expected of them. All this would especially true if we had been to a bowl game.

AA may be the evil empire but they are still in business..... unlike a lot of others including Braniff, Pan American, and TWA.

BAA-A-A-AD

---That is the problem with western conferences, the PAC-10 and WAC.... they play after other have finished or even late on Saturday night. Another good reason to stay away from the WAC.... bad time zones and therefore not much national exposure and often their games finish after Eastern and Central newspaper press times and they don't even make the 10 o'clock sports news...... besides they are too spread out and have a lot of expensive travel.

----Sorta cool for SPRING training. Maybe we should think March or April. Besides I am sure the players feel like fall football just ended.

Note: no Sunbelt teams in ESPN bottom Ten

Note from 1968 annual: ___________________ The Tulsa Hurricane blew into Fouts Field as the No. 2 passing team in the nation and looking for a replay of last year's title game. The Eagles, remembering their 30-27 defeat, did a little blowing of their own and knocked the Hurricane windless, 54-12. 16,500 fans watched the Mean Green batter Tulsa for the MVC championship as quarterback Steve Ramsey passed for 274 yards and four touchdowns. Ronnie Shanklin caught three passes for TDs. The Tulsa offense was smothered by the Mean Green, while the Eagles rolled up 480 yards and eight touchdowns. The Yucca, 1968 _____________________ note the 16,500 attendence ---enrollment was only about 15,000. Now our enrollment is over 32,000 and the attendence is not much better. Shame, shame on the students and recent alums. The alumini base is huge now compared to what it was in 1968 since ten years earlier (1958) the enrollment was less than 10,000. Basketball attendence is disgracefull compared to what it was in the 60's as well.

---I don't know.... The interlocked NT made a lot of sense.... Tech has their double T, A&M continues to use their ATM, and Texas uses the "Longhorn" T. North Texas is weak on traditions compared to a lot of universities. Traditions is one thing that connects different class years together. We need to do better. ---I doubt that our name ever changes again and besides North Texas has always been part of our official shool name, why not use the interlocked NT. (with or without the star you used).

I was the first at UNT and in fact was the first family member to attend college other than one cousin. Two of my three kids have UNT degrees.

---I think the name change in 1960 to University of North Texas was opposed by several UT grad senators. From what I remember they said there is only one Univeristy of Texas and we are not about to have a University of North Texas. They had to eat crow in the 1965 session as the baby boom was beginning to hit and universities in the state that were not in the UT/A&M system was deperate for money and space. The UT system had an excessive amount of money due to the income from universty lands [ which contain a lot of oil] so they renamed Texas Western (UTEP) and Arlington State* (UTA) so they could pull from the University Lands fund which made the money they had been given by the legislature available to the other colleges. UNT did a lot of construction in the late 1960s and early 70's as a result. * for a week or two, Arlington was be Texas A&M Arlington, but both schools protested and the legislature went to the UT-Arlington name. At the time A&M was still almost all-male and all corps.

Auburn is going to play Buffalo???? They should be ashamed to even call that a game.....

---He commented on TV last night here in Midland and tried to explain his comment by saying that the school would try to get athletes jobs to earn money if they got little or none from home... Either way the guy was really stupid to shoot his mouth off. I am not that knowledgable about regulations about athletes on schlorships.... but is that not a problem also? I am betting that guy (and the coaches) wished he to could find a hole to hide it...... and I expect he has learned a lot about arrogance and attitude out of this deal if nothing else.

---Schools aren't going to falsely adjust their enrollment numbers. It would be illegal I doubt any administrtors would want to take the personal risk just for sports reasons and second--- a district's funding from the state is based on enrollment.. less students means less money plus---- schools do not know what the cut numbers will be at the next the "redistricting". HP was absolutely a AAAAA school for a while. Their coach (Allen) is very good one and great guy, he was the coach that followed Gordan Wood in Brownwood and did well there as well. ---The real problem schools are those that are in a quickly growing mode, such as Plano was during the late 60's and 70's. They were winning in AAA when then actually AAAA size and during their AAAA period during were likely AAAAA size from day one because their classification was determined by the previous two-year average. They won several State-titles when they were several times the size of most schools they were completing against. Other schools have been the same boat but have never benefited so much. Then Plano went to the odd plan (two campuses, fr/so and sr/jr) they developed which allowed them to go over 5000 students which dwarfed most AAAAA schools even.