Neal Smatresk: Year One in Review

FirefightnRick · January 7, 2015

It's hard to control cost in education when you build an unneeded school of law.

^^^^^^^^^

This!

Rick

untjim1995 · January 7, 2015

Are you kidding me? You actually think they would have tried to stay on had Smatresk not been hired?
Someone was going to take the fall for it before Dallas Lee did. This was no great move on Smatresk's part. It was a necessary one. Nothing more.
I'll reserve my praise till I see something done with the athletic department. I'm hearing he may have been the one to tell RV to get their numbers up, which may be why you can join the MGC for 3 pennies and a bubblegum wraper, or whatever the going rate is now. But till I see significant changes I'll take a wait and see position. What I won't do is sit around and seal clap over nothing really of great importance like three accountants who can't count resign.
Rick

FFR, if you wait for significant changes at the athletic department that are good from a buyout/hiring standpoint, you'd better be prepared to wait for a longtime--like decades.

Smaestrek came here to do the work of the BOR and the chancellor--that means taking good care of the university's main windows to the public and becoming a huge backer of "value". I think Smaestrek is a great leader, a guy you'd like to sit next to at a game, or even to sit down and talk sports with. But at the end of the day, he is just one person whose job is completely dependent on the satisfaction of Dallas Lee and the BOR. But, even if he likes athletics more than the previous presidents (which I cannot say for certain is true or false), what difference does it make if those above him won't come clean publically about the way they want to run the athletic department?

We have a great football stadium and a great basketball venue--and almost always put mediocre to crappy teams out there for the few fans to see. The football stadium was never built as an investment by the university, just built on the backs of students, the majority of whom never even knew that a vote was going down becasue of the effectiveness of the stealth campaign of UNTFlyer's brilliance...the basketball arena was built by the City of Denton, IIRC...I am going back 33 years to 1982--how can anyone tell us that this mindset of not caring about winning in sports truly helped the university? The endowment is woeful and the number of alumni who give back to UNT in some form or fashion is pitiful. We have seen these coaches come thru here for the two main revenue sports: Bob Tyler, Corky Nelson, Dennis Parker, Matt Simon, Darrell Dickey, Todd Dodge, and Dan McCarney in football, not one of whom left here because they got hired somewhere else--all of them got fired, except for Mac because he is still coachin. In hoops, we saw Tommy Newman, Jimmy Gales, Tim Jankovich, Vic Trill, Johnny Jones, and now Tony Benford. Johnny Jones is the only coach out of the 13 listed that has been hired somewhere else from his job here at UNT since the early 80s.

Again, Smaestrek might be the biggest college sports fan in the world--I really don't know. But until the BOR says to him, "This is ridiculous. If we are playing sports that make money, we have to win. No more accepting of losing in any way from the three revenue sports going forward!!", Smaestrek, RV, McCarney, Benford, and Petersen are all probably set for a while in their job security here.