Brett Vito Slide raises question: Why isn’t program capitalizing?

[GrandGreen]

It is a culture problem with NT athletics, but not the one that serves for a perennial excuse for sub par performance. Commuter school, losing history, art and education dominated student body, too much competition in recruiting and for the athletic dollar; are just a long line of excuses. Some are almost laughable, others have some level of validity; but all are handy rationale for not getting the job done.

The real culture problem is an apathetic stagnant athletic department.

[flyonthewall]

The real culture problem is an apathetic stagnant athletic department.

HMM, apathetic stagnant athletic department??? Is this the same one that has spent the the last ten years building the athletic center and practice fields, the new Waranch Tennis Center, purchasing the Liberty Christian Campus, building new womens softball facility, a dedicated on campus soccer field, a dedicated court for womens volleyball, Apogee stadium, Kuehne basketball practice facility, new centerhung scoreboard in Superpit, Yeah, I guess when you look at it, everything has just stayed exactly the same over the last few years. I mean nothing has been done.

Clown

[cdizzle86]

HMM, apathetic stagnant athletic department??? Is this the same one that has spent the the last ten years building the athletic center and practice fields, the new Waranch Tennis Center, purchasing the Liberty Christian Campus, building new womens softball facility, a dedicated on campus soccer field, a dedicated court for womens volleyball, Apogee stadium, Kuehne basketball practice facility, new centerhung scoreboard in Superpit, Yeah, I guess when you look at it, everything has just stayed exactly the same over the last few years. I mean nothing has been done.

Clown

Most of those items listed should've been done a long time ago. I think it's safe to say we were playing catch up from the years of neglect. Not to take anything away from the athletic dept. on these amazing facilities, but I think a lot of us have problems when it comes to making the right coaching hires. We have a history of "sticking with coaches" until it's too late because we don't want to buyout the contract. (ie. Benford, Dodge & Shanice Stephens) Just take a look at how far our basketball team has fallen because of this.

On top of that, our successful coaches don't get paid enough to stick around. They are typically gone as soon as another offer comes through the door.

[oldguystudent]

Clown

Pffft...Everybody here knows damn well that you can just write more checks and make all of these people go away, get immediate hires of Nick Saban and Mike Krzyzewski, get into bed with Bob Bowlsby for an invite before Thanksgiving, and begin construction of Apogee up to its rightful 50,000 capacity.

But we also know that there's some illuminatiesque little group of you huge donors who kinda like being the big fish in the tiny pond, and that you and your RV crony actually intend to keep this program down so long as you get your numbered parking space and privileged tailgate setup with folding chairs. And while we're at it, how much is Nike paying you for that gawdawful piping on the uniform pants? And why isn't Augie Garrido up here leveling earth for the new baseball stadium with a gold plated shovel? Does the transfer from your Amex black really take that long? Have you tossed the impoverished Bill Gates too many bread crumbs this month that you can't justify turning UNT into the Manchester United juggernaut of college sports that it needs to become today?

BTW, my guests this past weekend had a great time, said to thank you for the hospitality. There are pictures of Apogee flying all over face book with descriptions of what an amazing time it is, people asking me how much it cost, blah blah blah. But no. Really, it's all entirely on the shoulders of you, Ernie, and the five other people who have clearly not done enough for this place.

Sincerely,

A fanbase with champagne and caviar tastes on a Schlitz and pork n beans budget

Clown.

[Army of Dad]

HMM, apathetic stagnant athletic department??? Is this the same one that has spent the the last ten years building the athletic center and practice fields, the new Waranch Tennis Center, purchasing the Liberty Christian Campus, building new womens softball facility, a dedicated on campus soccer field, a dedicated court for womens volleyball, Apogee stadium, Kuehne basketball practice facility, new centerhung scoreboard in Superpit, Yeah, I guess when you look at it, everything has just stayed exactly the same over the last few years. I mean nothing has been done.

Clown

It is possible to be good with facilities and on the field of play at the same time.

You aren't really saying that the AD can only do one thing at a time, are you?

Edited October 21, 2014 by Army of Dad

[GrandGreen]

HMM, apathetic stagnant athletic department??? Is this the same one that has spent the the last ten years building the athletic center and practice fields, the new Waranch Tennis Center, purchasing the Liberty Christian Campus, building new womens softball facility, a dedicated on campus soccer field, a dedicated court for womens volleyball, Apogee stadium, Kuehne basketball practice facility, new centerhung scoreboard in Superpit, Yeah, I guess when you look at it, everything has just stayed exactly the same over the last few years. I mean nothing has been done.

Clown

Everyone should be ecstatic about the facilities built at NT in the last decade.

That is certainly not the issue, The issue is despite the great improvement in facilities and resources, things like recruiting and attendance should have IMO improved more than they have. Thanks to mainly the students and some great alumni/fans at least the Fouts field and other sub par venues excuses has been blunted.

Any assumption that facility improvements would not have happened under other leadership is also questionable.

[flyonthewall]

So how many people are you bringing to the game? Crotchety antisocial old guy student managed to bring a few with him last week. I know, he introduced them to me.

My wife and i bring a new family every game. I have expanded my tailgate and now have 8 sponsors, all who have tents. You don't see me griping and bitching and whining on a public forum that potential student athletes and or student athletes read. Why? Because i will tirelessly fight to be part of the solution. You can throw your stones from behind a keyboard all you want, i am not quitting. Since 2001 i have been to five bowl gamesand two ncaa tournaments in basketball. I have seen a beautiful new stadium built. I have watched the women play volleyball in a gym that only belongs to them. A young man less than two years after his graduation date finished 18th in a pga tour event this weekend, his third start. Lance dunbar is talked about as being a "big part of the plan" on a team that has the best record in the nfl.

So just keep on coming on this board and whining and bitching about how bad we have it. I will keep laughing at all of the clowns.

#itsallajoke

[oldguystudent]

Crotchety antisocial old guy student managed to bring a few with him last week.

A truer description was never given. But even though I'd be out of breath after a five yard dash, I derived direct benefit out of athletics and continue to do so. It's a great entertainment dollar that I spend, and it's because of football that I was ever able to earn that dollar. So, yeah, I'll throw my barbs out when a coach says something that grates against me, but I'll continue to enjoy the overall experience. Life's waaaaayyyy too short to dedicate it to being pissed off about a game.

[GrayEagle]

How in the hell does flyonthewall get minus points for telling the truth? Yeah, maybe some of this should have happened a long time ago BUT IT DIDN'T!

All of the things listed happened not only on RV's watch but also due to his fundraising, planning and drive. Did he make hiring mistakes? Yes, but so far we can only count Stephens and Dodge as mistakes. And, I didn't hear much hue and cry when we hired Todd Dodge. He was arguably one of the top high school coaches in the country. It was a gamble that paid off to a sense inadvertently by his insistence on a new stadium. We don't have just a new stadium...we have a quality stadium. But yes. although he did fairly well recruiting the results were horrendous. Benford looks like a disaster at this point but we'll have to wait until after this year to see how bad it really is. Somehow, I think that this team may surprise. I guess that we don't give him credit for hiring Johnny Jones, who turned out to be in the Top 3 basketball coaches at North Texas.

It's a little harsh to condemn these poor hires when we barely had two nickels to rub together. When you have deep pockets it's relatively easy (although plenty of schools make hiring mistakes) to get a great coach. I realize that there are improvements to be made in fundraising, promotion, and to some extent scheduling but we've come a long way.

I go back to just after World War II. I have seen some pretty good highs and some bad lows. This era has plenty of room for improvement but I've seen it much worse.

[DallasGreen]

Many years ago Rod Rust proved that Yankee coaches do not impress Texas high school coaches or players!

[ColoradoEagle]

If it can get much worse than this, and people are satisfied with where we're at...I don't know. I hesitate to say I'd pack up and leave, but damn. Under Mac and Benford, we're at a .444 win percentage, and .410 if you take out the non-FBS/D1 competition.

And it's not that RV doesn't get credit for hiring JJ, but if I turned in a successful project one out of every five tries, I doubt I'd have my job for long.

[DallasGreen]

I'm thinking we have a new Offensive Coordinator next year unless Skladany retires, then Mac may not want to try and refill both Coordinator positions at the same time. Mac knows our offense has been running into a brick wall for quite some time now but RV wanted to hold on to Chico. I love Chico's attitude and commitment, but our offense from QB, most skill positions, and play calling have been sub-par. Mac knows that too. Defense needs a make over too, but Mac is all about Skladany - mutual loyalty. The Strength and Conditioning coach Wintrich (sp?) now there is a keeper, watch his career rise. LEE JACKSON needs to step in and make this program become as special and respected as the North Texas fan base / market deserve. MAN UP LEE, we are boosters and alums. Make it work, don't back off and hide.

The key thing that would improve everything is to increase the student athletic fee to that charged by Texas State and UTSA. Our students have assumed the $7. increase that they approved is a big deal( $3. was already going to athletics). Time to man up and put $20./ semester hour as the fee. FL schools are charging multiples of that. All we are asking is what the rest of Texas schools already charge. Why do we fear the students? ----Where else are they going to get this education at this price? Be like UT and T$AM, if you don't like it don't let the door hit you in the butt!!!

[Ben Gooding]

The key thing that would improve everything is to increase the student athletic fee to that charged by Texas State and UTSA. Our students have assumed the $7. increase that they approved is a big deal( $3. was already going to athletics). Time to man up and put $20./ semester hour as the fee. FL schools are charging multiples of that. All we are asking is what the rest of Texas schools already charge. Why do we fear the students? ----Where else are they going to get this education at this price? Be like UT and T$AM, if you don't like it don't let the door hit you in the butt!!!

This, this and more of this. It's gotta get raised. We can't just throw darts in the dark and hope for the best.

[JesseMartin]

This, this and more of this. It's gotta get raised. We can't just throw darts in the dark and hope for the best.

I don't know, throwing darts in the dark sounds kind of exciting. Thanks for the great idea!

[GrandGreen]

In the end it is all about winning. Great facilities and abundant resources don't mean a lot unless they are translated into wins.

RV's record in the major sports, interrupted as football and basketball, are certainly not bad when compared to recent NT history, and stats can lie when viewed in a vacuum.

Football teams in RV's era are 62-103. Excluding Dickey which RV didn't hire and had a much less than a good relationship, 28-64. Now I have read the excuse that Dodge was hired because that was all NT could afford. BS, NT was playing in the Belt and NT certainly had the resources to compete effectively there. Dodge was a very risky hire that backfired. It should also be noted that football records are generally slanted downward by the number of guarantee away games played. No one expects NT to beat SEC or Big Twelve teams.

Men's Basketball teams during this period were 218-182. Basketball winning percentage is the opposite of football because the basketball record benefits from a lot of patsy oc home games. No doubt, Jones was a good hire and accomplished a lot including recovering from the Trilli disaster. His overall record was not that impressive at 190-146, but his last 5 years were 103 and 59.

Women's Basketball, the sport few seem to care about under RV is 148-207. Slinker in the RV period was 100-103. Coaches RV hired are 48-104.

Attendance in the decade plus that RV has been here, IMO is disappointing. There are a lot of negatives to overcome drawing crowds to NT, but most are faced by all G5 teams. In approximate numbers reported in football, Apogee attendance has averaged 19,600 per year, whilc Fouts during RV's tenure was 16,700. Basketball slowly built attendance from the AD's first year of 1,800 to a high of 4,006 in Jones last year. It pummeled to 2,514 last year. WBB doesn't have easily assessed attendance records, but I am sure since the demise of the double headers with the men's team and continued losing records and player turnover it is very low. Note, attendance numbers at NT and most other G5 schools are very suspect and often very overstated.

I made a statement about the apathetic stagnant AD's department in a post above. Apathetic was too strong a word. I know the department wants the best for NT, but the question is it time for new ideas and enthusiasm. The stats above relative to winning and attendance are at best mediocre. Sure, the coaches can turn things around and all will certainly have an opportunity to do that. However, the facts are not one of three team is currently showing any upward growth. Apathetic may have been a bad choice of words, but I don't think stagnant is.

[untjim1995]

I think culturally, the biggest problem hasn't been the apathy of the athletic department, its been the apathy of the administration, BOR, faculty, and Denton. The AD can only get done what those above him lets him do or build. Dallas Green's point about the student fee is the one that just floors me about this place. We aren't talking about Texas, Texas A&M, or Texas Tech charging a full athletics fee to it student body and trying to keep up with them and their P5 benefits. We are talking about Texas State, UTSA, and Lamar--an SLC school, an SBC school, and a fellow CUSA school. That, to me, is how you can say fully that the university isn't fully on board with athletics funding. The facilities and hiring of McCarney and his assistants has improved gigantically from where we were just a decade ago, though...

I still believe in Coach Mac 100% as the leader of the program--he has more pride for himself and his job than most of us will ever have. And what he has accomplished here already is better than anything his past three predecessors have achieved, just by winning a bowl game within three years of being on the job. He deserved his extension and he deserves time. He will get the coaching situation on his staff fixed at the end of the season, I have no doubt. And I think we will develop into a good-to-great team again in the next few years. But his job would be a helluva lot easier if funding was better to get and keep better coaches on staff--and tha tis where that athletic fee would help greatly. Remember, not only are we not charging anywhere close to what others are charging, the actual fee is tied to Apogee being paid off, so it will sunset. In theory, we could possibly LOSE that athletic-only fee down the road, when others are charging the state-mandated full rate.

I will say this again, but the only way you can truly show that athletics is going to be the true window to the university is not just by building new facilities and increasing salaries--both of which are necessary for any program, but the best way to make your current fans and even more, your potential fans, is to fire people when they aren't getting the job done, not when it is just "affordable". If being a teachers college and focusing on fine arts students has helped this apathy to stay here over all these decades, then there really isn't much you can expect from McCarney or anyone else in recruiting. You just have to realize that the current diehard fanbase of 5-10k isn't going to ever elevate too much beyond this point without a commitment to winning. We have a commitment to fielding a program and giving students a game-day experience--the question really is IF that mindset can even change here. It may just be that the true focus on the education of teachers, artists, and musicians may very well be how we continue to advertise the university for decades to come, just as it has for decades past.

Edited October 22, 2014 by untjim1995

[The Fake Lonnie Finch]

HMM, apathetic stagnant athletic department??? Is this the same one that has spent the the last ten years building the athletic center and practice fields, the new Waranch Tennis Center, purchasing the Liberty Christian Campus, building new womens softball facility, a dedicated on campus soccer field, a dedicated court for womens volleyball, Apogee stadium, Kuehne basketball practice facility, new centerhung scoreboard in Superpit, Yeah, I guess when you look at it, everything has just stayed exactly the same over the last few years. I mean nothing has been done.

Clown

This.

We have many very competitive athletic programs now...just not the main, visible ones - football and men's basketball.

My only problem with Rick has been not him not hiring Kathy McConnell-Miller to lead the women's basketball team. Although, I do like Mike Peterson.

[Army of Dad]

My only problem with Rick has been not him not hiring Kathy McConnell-Miller to lead the women's basketball team. Although, I do like Mike Peterson.

You have no problem with the hiring and retention of Dodge, Stephens, and Benford!?

[oldguystudent]

You have no problem with the hiring and retention of Dodge

Not many had a problem with hiring Dodge at the time. I do believe that RV had his hands tied unbelievably tight by somebody who thought indigenous lesbian poetry was worth more than some dumbass football coach's salary. So he hired what little he could afford. Then we had to keep him around because the cupboards that were truly bare were the coffers to end the poor conditioning, the horrific decision making, the spiteful drug testing, and "the football plan."

Just consider that particular era one in which much higher powers at UNT actively sought to undermine athletics and its white Judeo-Christian patriarchal system of oppression.

[Stix]

The SFA vs Dallas Baptist..(No I didn't know DBH was in the Southland) game was on TV this weekend.

...

The game was played at DBH and it is easy to make the wrong assumption at first glance that DBH plays in a CVS Pharmacy parking lot. I'm not kidding.

Rick

Think it is actually Houston Baptist, they joined Southland Conference in 2013

Yes, it is HBU, and the CVS is on the corner of Beechnut & Fondren, on the corner of the HBU property, and right next to the stadium. There used to be a Putt-Putt miniature golf and driving range there 25-30 years ago. Before last season, they put in a field, but only used it for practice - they played their games at Strake Jesuit HS stadium. Before this season, they built the erector-set stadium - actually half of a stadium. I guess they'll have to tear down the CVS to build the other half at some point. I actually haven't driven past it, and only found out they had built it a couple of weeks ago when I was curious to see whether they were still playing at Strake Jesuit and went to the HBU football website:

http://www.hbuhuskies.com/sports/2011/9/21/Facilities.aspx

Check out that Basketball venue - NT has played HBU there a couple of times.

Well, how about that - they'll be playing Nicholls State for their Homecoming on the 25th!

http://www.hbuhuskies.com/schedule.aspx?path=football

[wardly]

Darrell Dickey went thru the same post bowl slump. After going 8&5 in 02',9&4 in 03',and 7&5 in 04', he only won 5 games the next 2 years and was fired. Could history be repeating itself, and if so, why?

[DallasGreen]

Mac should learn from Dickey's rants--- excuses are like a-- holes everybody has one!!!

[JesseMartin]

Darrell Dickey went thru the same post bowl slump. After going 8&5 in 02',9&4 in 03',and 7&5 in 04', he only won 5 games the next 2 years and was fired. Could history be repeating itself, and if so, why?

I don't think we'd be seeing such angst if we'd had that kind of record for 3 years instead of just 1, CUSA or otherwise.

[FirefightnRick]

Yes, I meant HOUSTON Baptist, glad everyone knew who I was talking about.

And No, I don't just want a bunch of Fatties, and MOST of you knew that. But as we continue to see truly poorly funded programs like ULM locate

solid players from under our noses and elsewhere from time to time I'll always question whether we're looking hard enough or not?

It may be a negative slant from which I'm looking at our programs' recruiting,.......but at least I'm still looking.

Rick