Will RV's Terrible Scheduling Continue unabated?

UNT90 · December 2, 2014

Ok, everyone, with the recent addition of that superpower of a program Portland St. to the schedule, it's a good time to take a look at the overall scheduling picture for the foreseeable future.

First, please open the following link in a seperate window and use it to as a referecne while reading this post:

http://www.fbschedules.com/ncaa/conf-usa/north-texas-mean-green.php

First, resign yourself to the fact that we will buy another FCS next year or the year after. The good news? Doing this really opens up the flexibility (finally, after 4 years of crap due to RV's previously astonishing failures to manage the schedule appropriately) to schedule another 1 and 1, as we have only one home game scheduled both years (SMU in 2016 and Army in 2017).

The bad news? I would look for another whore game in either 2016 or 2017. That is just what RV does and appears to be the only way he knows to fund an athletic department, nevermind it's about the laziest way possible. Oh, and he will tell you again it is due to "exceptional circumstances" that he created. And then he will tell you that it is always his goal to have 6 home games, even though he has only hit that goel 50% of the time recently.

2018 is full with SMU and that awesome attendance attracter Incarnate Word. After that, we have 2019 that still has one home and one away slot open. Flexibility.

Now, if we had someone who wanted to do this at the helm, we could schedule a one and one beginning as soon as 2016, as long as the team we are scheduling agrees to come to UNT first in 2016 for a return game in 2019. Again, we would have to convince the team in negotiations to play at UNT first with a return game 2 or 3 years down the road. This would have to fit into the opponent university's scheduling plan. Maybe we could even find a second school willing to come here first in 2017 and then agree to a return game in 2020. Problem solved, right?

Well, you would have to convince those scholls to come here first in negotiations. Will they attempt to bend you over the table? Is your AD a good negotiator (historically has proven to be worse than gawdawful)? Can he get that done? Because THAT is the way out, my friends.

That would allow the annual RV Bowl whore game to be scheduled in 2018, 2019, and 2020 to round out a balanced, 6 game home schedule every single year through 2020.

We have bought one home game each year for the last 4 years and are just now working our way into being able to add an other one and one. FOUR HOME GAMES BOUGHT. And during that stretch, we have had to endure two 5 home game seasons with an FCS opponent as our only OOC home game. That tells you how bad the scheduling has been by the AD. He may try to blame the head coach, but anyone who takes the time to look at the evvidence knows this is COMPLETELY his own doing.

Do I trust this guy to find 2 even semi-marque schools to fill those one and one slots? No. Do I think that is even his plan? No.

Hope I'm wrong.

Edited December 2, 2014 by UNT90

THOR · December 2, 2014

You need to drink more and just enjoy life as it is...

UNT Five&Dime · December 2, 2014

You need to drink more and just enjoy life as it is...

Is there a "Best Answer" option for the entire forum?

UNT90 · December 3, 2014

You need to drink more and just enjoy life as it is...

As you get older, you drink less and become more focused.

Sometimes, even hyperfocused. ;-)

I'd probably be easier on him if he had given MY family a free trip to the Bahamas... ;-)

so jealous of that.

Edited December 3, 2014 by UNT90

GRN-WHT · December 3, 2014

You need to drink more and just enjoy life as it is...

Since we can buy beer at games now, that's the official slogan of the Athletic Department.

GreenTexan13 · December 3, 2014

I get that Portland State is probably the lamest game possible to play here at home, or better yet wherever we play. But what happened to the old TCU talk? Where they scheduled weaker opponents to build up the momentum and UNT needs to do something like that? Or what about what about the whole talk of people coming out to see a winning team and they some fans don't necessarily care about the opponent? And if these games count towards bowl eligibility, then let's just look forward to playing in a good bowl game. We play Iowa and Tennessee next year. Say what you want, but I think NT needs this Portland State game.

forevereagle · December 3, 2014

UNTexas · December 3, 2014

I don't see how 4 home games is possible. Regardless of UAB dropping football, someone needs to be held accountable for such nonsense if it happens. Especially since the university built a nice new stadium. If we have only 4 home games to include 2 FCS teams then I'll see y'all in 2016 because next season is a wash. (After wasting money on the El Paso trip and witnessing that beat down first hand I sure can't stomach paying to go to places like Tennessee when we will most likely get killed on most of the 8 road games.) Awful schedule if true. Please tell me this isn't true.

UNTFan23 · December 3, 2014

I don't see how 4 home games is possible. Regardless of UAB dropping football, someone needs to be held accountable for such nonsense if it happens. Especially since the university built a nice new stadium. If we have only 4 home games to include 2 FCS teams then I'll see y'all in 2016 because next season is a wash. (After wasting money on the El Paso trip and witnessing that beat down first hand I sure can't stomach paying to go to places like Tennessee when we will most likely get killed on most of the 8 road games.) Awful schedule if true. Please tell me this isn't true.

No way the conference would leave us high and dry due to the now canceled UAB return trip. The conference made 13 teams work this year so I'm sure they could make it work until a replacement comes in.

UNT90 · December 3, 2014

I don't see how 4 home games is possible. Regardless of UAB dropping football, someone needs to be held accountable for such nonsense if it happens. Especially since the university built a nice new stadium. If we have only 4 home games to include 2 FCS teams then I'll see y'all in 2016 because next season is a wash. (After wasting money on the El Paso trip and witnessing that beat down first hand I sure can't stomach paying to go to places like Tennessee when we will most likely get killed on most of the 8 road games.) Awful schedule if true. Please tell me this isn't true.

Only one FCS on the schedule, but we are back down to 4 home games next year. We better pray CUSA offers someone quick and gets them in for 2015 season or else we are looking at the possibility of buying a second FCS to fill out the 5 home game schedule.

UNT90 · December 3, 2014

I get that Portland State is probably the lamest game possible to play here at home, or better yet wherever we play. But what happened to the old TCU talk? Where they scheduled weaker opponents to build up the momentum and UNT needs to do something like that? Or what about what about the whole talk of people coming out to see a winning team and they some fans don't necessarily care about the opponent? And if these games count towards bowl eligibility, then let's just look forward to playing in a good bowl game. We play Iowa and Tennessee next year. Say what you want, but I think NT needs this Portland State game.

The issue isn't the FCS game. The issue is the FCS game as the only OOC game in a 5 home game schedule. For the second time in 4 years.

The 5 home game schedule is by far the biggest issue.

It would also be nice to schedule like Ark. St., ULM, or any of a number of G5 programs who manage to bring relevant P5s to their stadium.

Edited December 3, 2014 by UNT90

Army of Dad · December 3, 2014

Only one FCS on the schedule, but we are back down to 4 home games next year. We better pray CUSA offers someone quick and gets them in for 2015 season or else we are looking at the possibility of buying a second FCS to fill out the 5 home game schedule.

I agree the schedule is bad, but why won't we have four conference home games next year? Wouldn't CUSA just reshuffle the deck to compensate for UAB and maintain the same number of conference games for all members?

UNT90 · December 3, 2014

I agree the schedule is bad, but why won't we have four conference home games next year? Wouldn't CUSA just reshuffle the deck to compensate for UAB and maintain the same number of conference games for all members?

One would think, but I wouldn't take anything for granted.

Travis Scott · December 3, 2014

Ok, everyone, with the recent addition of that superpower of a program Portland St. to the schedule, it's a good time to take a look at the overall scheduling picture for the foreseeable future.

First, please open the following link in a seperate window and use it to as a referecne while reading this post:

http://www.fbschedules.com/ncaa/conf-usa/north-texas-mean-green.php

First, resign yourself to the fact that we will buy another FCS next year or the year after. The good news? Doing this really opens up the flexibility (finally, after 4 years of crap due to RV's previously astonishing failures to manage the schedule appropriately) to schedule another 1 and 1, as we have only one home game scheduled both years (SMU in 2016 and Army in 2017).

The bad news? I would look for another whore game in either 2016 or 2017. That is just what RV does and appears to be the only way he knows to fund an athletic department, nevermind it's about the laziest way possible. Oh, and he will tell you again it is due to "exceptional circumstances" that he created. And then he will tell you that it is always his goal to have 6 home games, even though he has only hit that goel 50% of the time recently.

2018 is full with SMU and that awesome attendance attracter Incarnate Word. After that, we have 2019 that still has one home and one away slot open. Flexibility.

Now, if we had someone who wanted to do this at the helm, we could schedule a one and one beginning as soon as 2016, as long as the team we are scheduling agrees to come to UNT first in 2016 for a return game in 2019. Again, we would have to convince the team in negotiations to play at UNT first with a return game 2 or 3 years down the road. This would have to fit into the opponent university's scheduling plan. Maybe we could even find a second school willing to come here first in 2017 and then agree to a return game in 2020. Problem solved, right?

Well, you would have to convince those scholls to come here first in negotiations. Will they attempt to bend you over the table? Is your AD a good negotiator (historically has proven to be worse than gawdawful)? Can he get that done? Because THAT is the way out, my friends.

That would allow the annual RV Bowl whore game to be scheduled in 2018, 2019, and 2020 to round out a balanced, 6 game home schedule every single year through 2020.

We have bought one home game each year for the last 4 years and are just now working our way into being able to add an other one and one. FOUR HOME GAMES BOUGHT. And during that stretch, we have had to endure two 5 home game seasons with an FCS opponent as our only OOC home game. That tells you how bad the scheduling has been by the AD. He may try to blame the head coach, but anyone who takes the time to look at the evvidence knows this is COMPLETELY his own doing.

Do I trust this guy to find 2 even semi-marque schools to fill those one and one slots? No. Do I think that is even his plan? No.

Hope I'm wrong.

Holy Shit...we get it. Your personal mission in life is to bitch about RV and scheduling. What possible good do posts like this hope to accomplish? None.

Travis · December 3, 2014

I can understand UNT90's issue....

This is a problem. A big problem and it is one of many reasons we have the odds stacked against us. The problem is, we already have to fight big odds from outside factors.... lets not make it worse from the inside.... but, it is too late for that. But, I don't know if RV even sees that he is doing something wrong. And, that might be the saddest thing of all....

Edited December 3, 2014 by Travis

BillySee58 · December 3, 2014

I can understand UNT90's issue....

This is a problem. A big problem and it is one of many reasons we have the odds stacked against us. The problem is, we already have to fight big odds from outside factors.... lets not make it worse from the inside.... but, it is too late for that. But, I don't know if RV even sees that he is doing something wrong. And, that might be the saddest thing of all....

Exactly. Although, to me, what may be an even more sad issue is that we have a lot of fans who are pretty unaware of what's going on. Who don't realize how bad our scheduling issue is. Or how bogus these excuses being made are. Or that our last 6 hires in the main sports that our fans buy season tickets for (football, mbball, wbball) are sitting at a combined 103 games under .500 (123-226) heading into tonight.

What I see 90 doing is trying to bring attention and educate a fanbase that, a large percentage of, primarily only follows UNT athletics and buys all these excuses that they hear because they don't know enough about what goes on in D1 sports outside of UNT enough to call BS.

meangreanmick · December 3, 2014

Sounds like all of our problems are based on the OOC home games being high profile enough. We should schedule higher profile teams that will bring bigger attendance at home. Then we wouldn't have to schedule the body bag games away for money that you like to complain about so much. Maybe we should schedule a lower end Big 10 team to come here, that would solve all of our problems and would surely have great attendance for that game? Oh wait, we did that and it didn't make much of a difference in attendance. Maybe we should schedule one of the Texas based AAC teams Houston or SMU to come here, surely those would sellout. Whats that, we did that and that didn't work either?

So basically what you are proposing is more of the same that already was tried and didn't work? I am all for scheduling some low end teams that give us what should be easy wins. The only thing that has made any difference at North Texas for attendance has been winning, regardless of the opponent.

At no time were we going to have 4 home games, it wasn't going to happen. Thats like looking at the scoreboard in the first quarter and seeing we have no points and then claiming we are going to be shutout.

We could say its the 2nd time in 4 years to have only 5 home games, or we could say its the 2nd time in 7 years to have only 5 home games.

UNT90 · December 3, 2014

Holy Shit...we get it. Your personal mission in life is to bitch about RV and scheduling. What possible good do posts like this hope to accomplish? None.

Not to people like you. You probably said we should just trust RV when I pointed out this was coming over 2 years ago.

You will probably say we should just trust RV when this becomes an issue again in another 2 years.

No thanks.

UNT90 · December 3, 2014

We could say its the 2nd time in 4 years to have only 5 home games, or we could say its the 2nd time in 7 years to have only 5 home games.

Well, why don't we say that it will be the 2nd time in the 5 seasons that we have played in a brand new stadium.

A stadium that this same AD told us would bring higher profile OOC home games and promised that we wouldn't have 5 home game seasons. That promise has been broken.

Twice.

Indiana is the lowest profile team in the Big 10. Houston to open the stadium was nice, but RV expected the stadium to sell out just because it was the 1st game and didn't do enough to make sure that happened. Don't believe me, go back and listen to the podcast where RV says this very thing. Massive failure on the AD's part. If you don't get the cultural problems after 10 years of being AD, chances are you never will.

Scheduling has gotten worse since we left Fouts. Sad but true. There should be accountability. There isn't.

Edited December 3, 2014 by UNT90

GreenTexan13 · December 3, 2014

Sounds like all of our problems are based on the OOC home games being high profile enough. We should schedule higher profile teams that will bring bigger attendance at home. Then we wouldn't have to schedule the body bag games away for money that you like to complain about so much. Maybe we should schedule a lower end Big 10 team to come here, that would solve all of our problems and would surely have great attendance for that game? Oh wait, we did that and it didn't make much of a difference in attendance. Maybe we should schedule one of the Texas based AAC teams Houston or SMU to come here, surely those would sellout. Whats that, we did that and that didn't work either?

So basically what you are proposing is more of the same that already was tried and didn't work? I am all for scheduling some low end teams that give us what should be easy wins. The only thing that has made any difference at North Texas for attendance has been winning, regardless of the opponent.

At no time were we going to have 4 home games, it wasn't going to happen. Thats like looking at the scoreboard in the first quarter and seeing we have no points and then claiming we are going to be shutout.

We could say its the 2nd time in 4 years to have only 5 home games, or we could say its the 2nd time in 7 years to have only 5 home games.

THANK YOU! This guy gets it, that's what I have been saying all along. When we win, people want to come out. Hell, sometimes I'm on that bandwagon of going out to see UNT steam roll a cupcake FCS teams or last place teams. I have said it before and will say it again. A good majority of casual (football uneducated fans) just go when word around town is UNT is a winning team. I cannot emphasize enough the importance of winning. And future college football players like being recruited to winning teams. I wouldn't mind having The occasional OSU or Kansas State come to Apogee when we are winning. But when we are 3-6 and thirsty for a win, losing keeps the crowd away when we play our conference games. Edited December 3, 2014 by GreenTexan13

UNT90 · December 3, 2014

THANK YOU! This guy gets it, that's what I have been saying all along. When we win, people want to come out. Hell, sometimes I'm on that bandwagon of going out to see UNT steam roll a cupcake FCS teams or last place teams. I have said it before and will say it again. A good majority of casual (football uneducated fans) just go when word around town is UNT is a winning team. I cannot emphasize enough the importance of winning. And future college football players like being recruited to winning teams. I wouldn't mind having The occasional OSU or Kansas State come to Apogee when we are winning. But when we are 3-6 and thirsty for a win, losing keeps the crowd away when we play our conference games.

Imagine how many of these casual fans would have there interests peaked by a winning team that beats a respected P5 program in Denton.

Wouldn't that just be something?

GreenTexan13 · December 3, 2014

Imagine how many of these casual fans would have there interests peaked by a winning team that beats a respected P5 program in Denton.
Wouldn't that just be something?

I completely agree with you, but can you really see us beating a P5 team with something like our 2014 team? I sure can't. You have to start with weaker opponents to beat up on, building our confidence, attracting recruits, so you play the big dogs and win or at least keep a close game with them. Do you want to see UNT get massacred on national TV in front of our home crowd being unprepared?

UNT90 · December 3, 2014

I completely agree with you, but can you really see us beating a P5 team with something like our 2014 team? I sure can't. You have to start with weaker opponents to beat up on, building our confidence, attracting recruits, so you play the big dogs and win or at least keep a close game with them. Do you want to see UNT get massacred on national TV in front of our home crowd being unprepared?

So you are saying we should have played this game last year?

gradumacated · December 3, 2014

Having OOC games that are winnable is certainly important, but I think the biggest issues with this AD is the footballing schedule is abysmal - especially compared to the likes of ULL, ArkSt, LaTech, etc. who regularly get P5 teams to come to their place. With everything that UNT has to offer - pipeline to North Texas recruits, brand-new stadium, possibility of a W - it is crazy that the last nationally relevant OOC squad to come to Denton was Kansas State. Houston was nice, but they were on a downturn with Case Keenum making them relevant.

Unfortunately, I don't see OOC scheduling changing any time soon. It's like when RV asks a squad to come to Denton they say nah, but want to come to our place? And RV says, sure, why not! Can't build excitement around a program with a philosophy and attitude like that.

UNT90 · December 3, 2014

Having OOC games that are winnable is certainly important, but I think the biggest issues with this AD is the footballing schedule is abysmal - especially compared to the likes of ULL, ArkSt, LaTech, etc. who regularly get P5 teams to come to their place. With everything that UNT has to offer - pipeline to North Texas recruits, brand-new stadium, possibility of a W - it is crazy that the last nationally relevant OOC squad to come to Denton was Kansas State. Houston was nice, but they were on a downturn with Case Keenum making them relevant.

Unfortunately, I don't see OOC scheduling changing any time soon. It's like when RV asks a squad to come to Denton they say nah, but want to come to our place? And RV says, sure, why not! Can't build excitement around a program with a philosophy and attitude like that.

One correction. Houston was ranked in the top 25 when they played us here.