SCREAMING EAGLE-66

There are idiots everywhere... one even posts here and has nothing better to do than to post nothing... which likely reflects what he knows. The oddest theft I have seen was on TV.... a closed trailer parks over the gasoline tank at a station and then drops a hose from inside down the fill pipe into the tank and sucks it somewhat dry...and drives off..

Most posts in CUSA were rather positive or at least not negative...

Good find... other conferences listed on page as well.

---Why stop? -- include inter-galactic level.. Maybe we should get to the state level first with some national recognition.. ---I think this is what TIgreen 01 was referring to about reality. To me is #1 purpose of a new stadium to have one that will be large enough to attract name opponents... whatever size that is but I don't think 30K will do it.

Those of us who want larger that 30,000 are wanting a stadium that can attract large name opponents. I doubt many Big XII teams would considerm coming to a 30,000 stadium, maybe Baylor but not even them if they ever start winning and can attract more fans. A larger stadium will allow us to have bigger name teams for home games. ...period. and the attendence should improve greatly. Even larger crowds to those games should cause other games to improve attendence as well since there would more interest in the program. Am I wrong.....maybe... but I doubt it.

Disagree ---A small stadium will not permit us to have home games with many of the teams we would like to bring in... They won't come because they might even be able to bring enough of their own fans to fill much of it. I agree with the phase thing some ...but we need to start at 40,000 to get name opponents into Denton. There is a good joke here that good taste doesn't permit me to comment on.....LOL..

I agree... anything under 40,000 is completely ridiculious.... especially considering the size of North Texas. To me the main purpose is a NEW stadium is to have one that can attract teams that will not play us now because we have such a small stadium... If we just willing to have a small one then spend money upgrading what we have... much cheaper to get a get a rather decent one that way than just build another. None of the major state universities in Texas have a new one, just rebuilt ones that appear to be new. . Secondary to me is the fact that is stadium is old and that the existing track puts the crowd so far from the action. New to just have a new stadium is not going to help us that much.. Most of our fans that like football don't come because of the old stadium but because we aren't playing "name opponents" or "opponents of interest". A larger stadium is what will increase attendance by bringing allowing us to bring in more interesting opponents that will not come to a small stadium.... a new one might help some but not all that much.

Rick-- I AM WITH YOU... A few years ago the big news on local news TV was a lady getting chewed up by a neighbor's pit bull. We went on a trip Carlsbad (caves) and guess what the headline news on TV was there? "Pit Bull kills some older lady". The next night we went to El Paso. The big story on local TV news... A pit Bull had chewed up some kid and someone that had saved the kid. That was three nights, three places, and three pet pitbulls that were considered nice that had chewed up someone including killing one person. They may have a place as a junkyard or as a security animal.. but I have hear too many bad stories since about them... I support not allowing them in residential neighborhoods, those things are psycho, one day they are your friend and then the next they decide to tear you up for no reason... Just because they are nice one day... don't bet they will be nice tommorrow.

--Isn't our coach from Port Arthur??? At least we did not get ours from a junior college.... we got him out of a local high school......LOL

--- One other main difference.... what other sport teams are in that area, no big names and no professional sports at all.... not just a lot of competion for athletic interest even for those who are not grads at Boise. ... Nebraska is inpretty much the same situation (what local competion for interest) except they are a member of a major conference and that really gets their fan interest up there.. ---Locally, North Texas interest is pretty limited to alums and students and not the public in general. SMU has the same problem except a smaller university... and both of us compete with the Cowboys for media interest and someone to root for.

--Absolutely..... the people in oil business that are REALLY making money are the ones that own the wells that are rather old. [ includes T.Boone Pickens ] A local guy just gave $30 million to the local hospital... same deal, owns part of a lot of old wells. Companies that are refining crude to gasoline aren't making much (at least with the crude they are having to buy) .. they buy expensive crude (world Market prices) and then sell it will a small margin of profit. Meanwhile the older wells which were drilled and could be profitable at $20 a barrell are making a fortune at $130+ per barrell. --Another factor that people don't mention much is our increasing national debt ( thanks Bush, who has doubled it ) which drives down the exchange rate in world currency. The last time I was in London (prior to Bush) it took $1.51 to buy a British pound. ... now it takes $1.97....about a 30% increase in cost. that same 30% price increase is also applies to world products such as oil. The exchange rate against some other currencies is even worse. As the exchange rate worsens... our prices will go up. Don't tell me that the national debt doesn't matter or that we owe ourselves.... a lot of our debt is owned by overseas people.

--Anyone seen the Sonic commercial about the guy wanting to have the last word??? Actually I thought the thread had died ( it was several clicks from the top) ... and was expecting -- UH-HUH -- from someone (like the commercial). We need to start a comedy thread... this one has gotten to the point (and changed subjects so often) that it is unrecognizable anymore. Oh well it is off-season... what else can we expect..... LOL... It is to the point that the question "Will it Happen?" could mean anything now.......hahahaha

--Anyone seen the Sonic commercial about the guy wanting to have the last word???

---TWU was the sister school of A&M when they were one gender colleges. I think it is pulling money from the University Land system.. Merging may make some sense but financially it may not. The State would have to look elsewhere for money to operate that campus if it merged with us.. I doubt that it will happen, they regularly add colleges to that Unv. Land group, not remove them. More may be added if oil prices stay the same or continue to climb which is growing that fund a lot. . --$14 ?... gee we could spend that much on sunglasses just to research the girls on campus without just obviously staring.

--Evolution??? Oh yeah I forgot , there is no such thing.

Not exacly sure whast I am reading but it appears that the main UT and A&M campus have more than 30% more... that is a huge difference and as the fund gets larger they are continuiously adding more schools to that fund... TTU, Houston and NT maybe TSSM are the only really large schools not in that fund. If your paycheck went up 30% or more... I think you would notice it and would have a lot more to spend... Our basic amount covers what is needed... the 30% extra would really change what extras we could do. On the personal level having an income to meet basic needs and getting 30% more is very noticeable.

I have an unfair advantage... I live in the middle of those university lands.... (West Texas and oil fields) plus I was in school when it all hit the fan during the 60's and the state had to find more money to finance colleges... and UT and A&M had more money than they could spend... Bet I am a bit older as well. Thanks for your kind comment... Some times being an old geezer is good... we have had more time to learn. That guy trying to argue has not been out in the world in the world long enough to understand what an athletic program can do for a college. He may be a CS student but so so were my "kids" and they understand it. You don't learn everything in a book or from one or two people. Some never do. You need to learn all your life. Some universities never refer to their alums as ex-students or even former students because they hope their alums keep learning all their life. SE-1966

--I am now guessing that you are not a native Texan or just slept though Texas History class.. When Texas joined the Union in 1845, we kept our public lands. Most Western states have a lot of federal land, forests, deserts, etc. which was acquired by way of the lLouisana Purchase or Mexican War. There are almost none in Texas except The Big Bend , a National Park. Much of this state land became what is now known as University Land was to used to establish a couple of universities in the State (UT and A&M) . Most people considered this land near worthless at the time and a lot of it is around me in West Texas. They were wrong...many years later oil was found on them (Santa Rita #1, near Big Lake) and this land is now very valuable, not on the surface which is leased for cattle grazing but for the mineral rights. There was no real "oil deal" it just happened to be there. All this money went to two universities... UT and A&M and it got so large they had way too much money to spend. -- Here comes the mid 1960's and the baby boom which was the result of the depression and WWII hits college age. the state's answer was to "pull off" what California was doing....a multi-college state university system... and create a bunch of UT's so that could use this really large fund. In 1966?? UTEP was renamed from Texas Western and Arlington State became UTA..... which gave them more money and the the rest of us now got the money they had been receiving. Note there was a lot of new buildings at UNT during the late 60's and early 70's. We and Arlington had had the least class space per student until this took place. As time has passed more and more colleges have been added (Kingsville, Commerce, UT-D, UT-PB, UT-SA, Canyon and even more.... all pulling from this fund which is financed with West Texas Oil which was set up over 120 years ago....prior to oil revenue. It is now getting rich again considering the oil prices. ---We in Texas have no income tax (one of very few states) ... partially because as Texans we don't have to finance all these colleges with state tax money... our public lands (oil) does most of it... ( but not TTU and UNT) .... We are now 49th in the nation in state taxes per capita. [yet those idiots in Austin still want to cut state taxes... not to citizens really (to corperations) .. about all we citizens pay is sales, gasoline, tobacco, and alcohol taxes. None of those have been cut, some raised (the sin taxes -LOL ) . Property taxes are local taxes and the state is cutting state educational funding which cause our local taxes to go up.. Your prof (non-Texan?) did not state it correctly or you remembered it incorrectly but the result is the same..All of the UT's and A&M's have a lot of money available to them that we don't have. .

Two things that are really important... "What is True and what people think is true".

---The tier rating is a joke... note the closer to NY the better you are likely rate (Northern editors and their schools maybe?) They even once had Princeton rated as a top law school (true).. they had no law school just a prelaw program.. (they do now) . Besides it is more important which major you are talking about not just just some generic term. Education is more about each individual and what they learned and not where they went. Don't want to get to specific about people but I know of some from "big-name schools" that are as dumb as dirt. I have heard several on respected TV programs claims Ivy League degrees just aren't worth the money in general unless the person wants to to work on Wall-Street (maybe National politics) and then it is more about who they meet and know than what they learned in class. ---I think you are reading something into most posts that just isn't there.... A better athletic program will help us in name recognition and may help us attract more of the top 25% academically... It is not the cure all to everything. UT and A&M have better SAT standards now than they did at one time because they are now extremely large (don't really want to get larger) and have a lot more applications than spaces... this is what drives up the SAT scores of those that are admitted, the lower ones just aren't enrolled. We aren't that large yet.... Colleges with large engineering depts usually have higher SATS than those without an engineering dept. . Those students make near perfect on the non-verbal part of the SAT (UT-Dallas?) ---again you need to analyze the Stats not just read them, a good education teaches you how to analyze and apply what you have learned... not just quote a bunch of "facts" that has been learned.

--Athletics has almost no effect on engineering or even academic standards.... good or bad.... why argue that???? It is as dumb argument... unless money is diverted to athletics from engineering or academic programs. What athletics will do is get you some "cheap" advertising that you exist and name recognition matters after leaving college. You can bet that if a an applicant walks in with a UNT degree or a McMurry degree, the UNT degree person is more likely to be hired unless the McMurry person is clearly better..... especially if seeking employment out of state from people who have never even heard the name. --UT-D has the highest SAT scores of every state school in Texas...yet most people out here (West Texas) don't even know it exists. Wonder why?? No known athletic program?? Most people out here are also shocked to learn NT is larger than Tech or even Baylor. SMU, and TCU...much less that we are larger than those last three combined. Again the reputation of the athletic program makes them think that they are larger colleges than UNT.

--My opinion... as long as our wonderful Texas politicians continue to have these idiotic state tests (which take time away from real education by working with students on how to pass them) our national tests such as the SAT will continue to decline. We have these things so that politicians can "claim" they are trying to help education. Meanwhile our state politicians in Texas have been cutting back on state funding which could help public schools. --Fact... We are seeing more and more students who do not pass the minimum requirements to be in classes for credit but have to take remedial classes. A second factor in the southwest is the recent immigration so that some students are now coming from homes that are not as educated as they once were a few years ago. They may be intelligent but their vocabulary and background education level is not what it once was. I know my kids were much better than I was at HS graduation since mine had parents with college degrees and my parents were not able to not even finish high school (depression) . ---Simple stats never tell the complete story but are useful to determine what to do or what is going on. (I teach stats) After you collect them then you also need to determine why they are what they are, and what you are really seeing. My HS graduation year had the higherst SAT scores of any of the next 30+ years. I was barely pre-Viet Nam. pre baby-boom, 99% of college students came from families that had spoken English for decades, plus not so many went to college then (Nam caused a lot of males to go to college) so the number of students taking the test was smaller that it became later. I could claim we were the smartest class ever but once you analyze what was really happening it might not be true. .

I repeat... I know nothing of UC-Davis... they may be another "Harvard of the West" as far as I know (nickname for Stanford, actually makes sense if you know the history of its founding, know several grads).... UC-D just isn't a well known name as is Rice, Stanford, Duke or many others. [ partially well known because of athletics ] I do teach in college, my wife teaches in a private school that sends a lot of students to very tough academic universities including Ivy League colleges. I repeat.. I have heard of it... (never lived on West-Coast) but that is about it.. it could be a Mickey Mouse place as far as I know. this forum should get together and decide what you want ... ahh... we don't get to make the decisions ... get real.!! but we can discuss and maybe have a very small amount of influence with some. (ie. public opinion) where do you suggest we get together... IHOP? this thread represents a great deal of the poor thinking that infest this forum......size of a university says nothing about how good a university is academically.....while winning can increase applications and allow for more selective choice in students......it would take probably a decade or more of this to even have a small impact on overall quality of enrollment and academic reputation --- yep we are dumber than goats but we can spell etc..... I and the rest here always thought it was size that mattered...lol... and that Rice is an awful college because it is so small.. PS: I did not go to college so I could claim I went where-ever (and owe a fortune in student loans) ... but to get an education and to be able to make a living... You are not talking to a country bumpkin that knows nothing about education ... one of my sons will finish law school this year and recently represented the law schools in the State of Texas at a national competition in LA. [Harvard did not get there, their students were eliminated at the regional round...LOL ...he defeated several Ivy league grads in his own law school to even get to the regional competition] My other son (UNT- 2000) owns a patent or two, both are currently computer engineers. Daughter (UNT-03) works for a computer networking company. An education is more about what YOU LEARN and what YOU CAN DO than where you go or what crazy ranking some Eastern magazine wants to assign to your college. .........Go Mean Green...continue to improve in athletics and academics. .... both of which CAN improve the school's reputation....plus name recognition does help get people in getting employment. ... and even more so when outside your region. ( I suppose people in Calf. know of UC-Davis pretty well, people here don't ) .

---George Mason and some others have reported that the number of applications for enrollment have really climbed after being very visible in the NCAA March madness. ( they can be more selective and pick better students which improves academic reputation) Athletics can be cheap advertising. Athletics also tends to bring in more donations.... The complaint here has been the lack of a size-able endowment. I'll bet their is a high correlation between athletic success and endowment size. No a wining year or two does not make the profs better but in the long run it can improve the image of the school... . [unless the athletes recruited are constantly getting in trouble] ---As I have stated in other posts, UTA and UNT were once almost identical in size. now statewide, UTA is not known very well and UNT is much better known and is also much larger. ---The list is interesting... maybe some of those have good academics, but I really have barely heard of a few of those. If a person said he had graduated from California Davis, I would not be impressed..... Stanford, yes ---Granted the first four almost everyone has heard of and consider an outstanding college. One is known for the A-bomb and the other three have had several well known athletic moments....just not recently. ---Athletics won't make a school a great academic institution but it does bring them name recognition, may allow them to be more selective in students because of more applicants, and brings in more donations to all departments. Sometimes raw stats just don't give the entire picture... I teach stats, you just need to evaluate what you are reading. Good athletics CAN improve academic image but not always and may do nothing and in fact could harm it as could be the case at Rice if they get into trouble or come across ob TV as idiots.

To almost quote a well known Dallas Cowboy...... "Get your Prozac and Xanax ready" --I hope I am wrong.