Growth in MGC and Season Tickets 2002-2014

Harry · May 27, 2015

No. I think of it very much like the end of Dickey's run. There were some people who very unhappy (With DD it was lack off OOC success and his attitude, with RV it was MGC/attendence/baseball) but they really couldn't trumpet their concerns in the face of winning.

I remember telling you back then that DD was fine as long as he was winning, and when it stopped the long knives would come out. Well now JJ is gone and Mac has fallen back to the bottom of CUSA, and there is nothing to protect RV.

The fact is that Mac's coaching seat is starting to warm up, and Benford's is engulfed in flames. The thought of RV making the replacement hires is frankly terrifying to some of us.

This is a huge year for the AD no doubt. Mac got a pass for such a great run in 2013 but to see the program fall back that much was concerning.

Benford is heading to year 4 and really needs to produce. The Dickey scenario was a different animal as politics played a big part. I think with the accounting fiasco and other initiatives the BOR has not yet been inclined to make any rash moves.

Cerebus · May 27, 2015

The Dickey scenario was a different animal as politics played a big part.

I agree, that is why Dickey got fired 1.5 years after going to 4 straight bowl games. RV has been here a long time, but now people are starting to notice the numbers.

untjim1995 · May 28, 2015

RV isn't going anywhere, anytime soon, unless he decides to leave on his own merit. The MGC numbers are an embarrassment, but he will tell the BOR that its not on him becuase the alumni overwhelmingly don't care about UNT Athletics. Then they will look at the budget and see it is in good shape and give him another extension, just like they've done several times in that same 2002-2014 timeframe we are dissecting.

I predict that we go 4-8 this year in football and that Tony Benford gets replaced by Rob Evans on an interim basis sometime in January or February when it becomes clear that we aren't making any progress. Then, RV will begin the process of choosing another head coach, this time it's for men's hoops. Since 2007, he will have hired Todd Dodge, Shanice Stephens, Dan McCarney, Tony Benford, Karen Aston, Mike Petersen, and Jalie Mitchell. The next men's coach would be his 8th hire in the three revenue sports in the last 9 years. Yet, the same monied voices and BOR members still keep RV around, extending him every couple of years.

Edited May 28, 2015 by untjim1995

SilverEagle · June 1, 2015

RV isn't going anywhere, anytime soon, unless he decides to leave on his own merit. The MGC numbers are an embarrassment, but he will tell the BOR that its not on him becuase the alumni overwhelmingly don't care about UNT Athletics. Then they will look at the budget and see it is in good shape and give him another extension, just like they've done several times in that same 2002-2014 timeframe we are dissecting.
I predict that we go 4-8 this year in football and that Tony Benford gets replaced by Rob Evans on an interim basis sometime in January or February when it becomes clear that we aren't making any progress. Then, RV will begin the process of choosing another head coach, this time it's for men's hoops. Since 2007, he will have hired Todd Dodge, Shanice Stephens, Dan McCarney, Tony Benford, Karen Aston, Mike Petersen, and Jalie Mitchell. The next men's coach would be his 8th hire in the three revenue sports in the last 9 years. Yet, the same monied voices and BOR members still keep RV around, extending him every couple of years.

Interesting summary, which brings up an interesting question in my mind.

And the Question is "Are AD's regarded (or should be regarded) as administrators/bureaucrats or CEO's? Because if the answer is administrator/bureaucrat, then RV is doing a very average job. If the answer is CEO, then........well, go by your own standards of how a CEO should perform and/or be assessed.

I worked for a bureaucracy and I had to have monthly reviews of the goals that my supervisor and I set every month when we met. And these goals and the subsequent "action plan" were always in writing and signed by both parties. And as to the "accounting" issue affecting the progress of baseball, or anything else for that matter, we had a tornado hit our regional office back in 2000 that scattered just about everything we had in file cabinets to hell and gone. That was only allowed to be used as an excuse for lack of progress on a project for about 9 months.

Edited June 1, 2015 by SilverEagle

oldguystudent · June 1, 2015

well, go by your own standards of how a CEO should perform and/or be assessed.

If I go by just about any company in the past 20 years, CEOs are compensated with tens of millions of dollars and lauded as corporate heroes for running their companies into the ground and screwing the shareholders out of money.

UNTFan23 · June 1, 2015

If I go by just about any company in the past 20 years, CEOs are compensated with tens of millions of dollars and lauded as corporate heroes for running their companies into the ground and screwing the shareholders out of money.

This is not all CEOs but some. In my company, the stock is near an all time high, revenue and profit continue to go up, yet same store sales (in the US) continue to be a struggle. If we went off the most just the store sales comps, people on this board would want the CEO fired.

untjim1995 · June 1, 2015

Interesting summary, which brings up an interesting question in my mind.
And the Question is "Are AD's regarded (or should be regarded) as administrators/bureaucrats or CEO's? Because if the answer is administrator/bureaucrat, then RV is doing a very average job. If the answer is CEO, then........well, go by your own standards of how a CEO should perform and/or be assessed.
I worked for a bureaucracy and I had to have monthly reviews of the goals that my supervisor and I set every month when we met. And these goals and the subsequent "action plan" were always in writing and signed by both parties. And as to the "accounting" issue affecting the progress of baseball, or anything else for that matter, we had a tornado hit our regional office back in 2000 that scattered just about everything we had in file cabinets to hell and gone. That was only allowed to be used as an excuse for lack of progress on a project for about 9 months.

A CEO-type AD exists at your big time college athletics schools, mostly P5s, with a few G5s sprinkled in. We don't qualify in that definition, obviously, so I think of RV more as a department head, or division leader, just to try and compare it something that most of us in the private world could relate to.

If you look at his job from a w/l perspective or from a fundraising perspective, how anyone could say he deserves to keep his job is beyond me. If you look at it from an intangible level--goodwill, team player, and stays within budget, it can be argued that he has done a very good job. So looking at those two perspectives, its kind of easy to see what the BOR and the few big-monied donors around here really value in that position and in RV himself. He's been here 14 years, so its pretty obvious, at least to me.

Cerebus · June 1, 2015

If you look at his job from a w/l perspective or from a fundraising perspective, how anyone could say he deserves to keep his job is beyond me. If you look at it from an intangible level--goodwill, team player, and stays within budget, it can be argued that he has done a very good job.

So wiffing on all the major sports and delivering some intangibles is worth $300,000? Terry Mohajir is running rings around what we are doing and he makes $190,000. WKU dominated the SBC all sports championship and just won it in their first year of CUSA, Todd Stewart makes $186,000. We can't seem to beat UTSA even though Lynn Hickey only makes $215,000.

Some of these excuses would fly if we paid the worst in CUSA. It just seems to me for $300,000 we can hire some who can deliver the intangibles AND increase MGC number by more than 864 in the same 12 years the University added 72,000 alumni.

Army of Dad · June 1, 2015

If I go by just about any company in the past 20 years, CEOs are compensated with tens of millions of dollars and lauded as corporate heroes for running their companies into the ground and screwing the shareholders out of money.

How else are they supposed to pay off their student loans?

untjim1995 · June 1, 2015

So wiffing on all the major sports and delivering some intangibles is worth $300,000? Terry Mohajir is running rings around what we are doing and he makes $190,000. WKU dominated the SBC all sports championship and just won it in their first year of CUSA, Todd Stewart makes $186,000. We can't seem to beat UTSA even though Lynn Hickey only makes $215,000.
Some of these excuses would fly if we paid the worst in CUSA. It just seems to me for $300,000 we can hire some who can deliver the intangibles AND increase MGC number by more than 864 in the same 12 years the University added 72,000 alumni.

Cerebus, I totally agree with you--I was just trying to lay out some reason that RV seems to still keep his job here, despite poor revenue sports hires and a pathetic w/l percentage under his watch as the AD. Literally, the only reasons that I can come up with are instituting tailgating, schmoozing with the big money donors, and staying within the BOR's budget without complaining publicly.

RV has the easiest AD job in America at a FBS school--and it ain't really close. Just stay in budget, don't complain, and play nice with the few monied donors we have that think schmoozing with RV is the exact same as their Longhorn buddies schmoozing with DeLoss Dodds...

I just don't see him ever getting fired here--he has this job as long as he wants to have it.

SilverEagle · June 1, 2015

We can't seem to beat UTSA even though Lynn Hickey only makes $215,000.

...and I've posted before that Lynn Hickey has been quoted as saying that she would have preferred that UTSA not have a football program. That's like saying "if I was really trying, I'd be kicking your ass, big time, as an administrator.,

Some of these excuses would fly if we paid the worst in CUSA. It just seems to me for $300,000 we can hire some who can deliver the intangibles AND increase MGC number by more than 864 in the same 12 years the University added 72,000 alumni.

If our alumni population had only increased by 10K during the same time frame, those would still be some pretty damning numbers. As it is..........damn!

Edited June 1, 2015 by SilverEagle

Cerebus · June 7, 2015

Someone asked me for a copy of the publication. I'll try to scan it next week and upload it in JPG and PDF formats.

Cerebus · September 13, 2015

I am bumping this again. Why? So if at the end of another losing season you sit there and think "Mac had a terrible year, why is he coming back?" you'll know the answer. The answer is the AD has done a terrible job of increasing these two numbers. These two numbers mean we don't have enough money to buyout big contracts until they are almost out.

It's why Mac will be here for at least a couple more years. It's why Dodge kept getting brought back. It's while you'll see Benford constantly substituting players out in an almost empty Super Pit.

Conveniently, it's also why we won't have enough money to easily buy out the AD contract either.

After the 2001 season the AD published the Game Plan For Success. This thirteen page booklet laid out the plans of the department to meet their mission, which included "Position(ing) the Mean Green to compete in the upper echelon of intercollegiate athletics and attract top athletes from the Metroplex...."

It went on to layout current MFG and FB season tickets numbers, and goals for each. All numbers from 2001 are taken from that booklet. The 2014 MGC numbers come from me hand counting the numbers off the AD website. The 2014 FB season ticket numbers come from the twitter link above.

Before we get into the details, here are the numbers:

Here are the header meanings:

2002 Actual: Number of MGC/FB Season ticket holders per Game Plan For Success (GPFS).
2004 Goal: Goal numbers set to be reached by GPFS.
2014 Actual: Number of MGC/FB Season ticket holders per AD Website/Twitter respectively.
Diff: How short we fell of the 2004 goal in 2014.
Avg Yearly Change: Average MGC/FB Season Ticket Holders added per year between 2002 and 2014 seasons.
YTG: Years to Goal, number of years with Avg Yearly Change to reach 2004 goals from current.

The year 2004 goals included:
*10,000 FB Season Ticket Holders.
*3,000 MGC members.
*40 MGC district directors.
*$600,000 in ad, radio, and sponsorship sales.
*30 spring/summer events.
*$10 million in capital fund raising for athletics.

Just for UNT90, GPFS also listed some scheduling goals, including:
* Only two "money" games per year.
* Goal to have six home games in twelve game seasons.

I'll leave the interpretation of this data/performance up to the reader. If you have any questions about the data sources, hit me.

I've made an addition to the spreadsheet, the growth between 2002 and 2004. You can see that between those two dates we added 864 MGC members, and 4,285 season ticket holders.

Now, of course we need some context for this growth. The latest alumni numbers I have seen from the University state 300,000 alumni, with 225,000 of them living in the area. Of course most of those people became alumni long before the current AD was here.

Enrollment has grown from ~29,000 in 2002 to ~36,000 in 2014. Everyone of those students pays the Athletics Fee, but it's not by choice.

I think recent grads are the best metric to compare MGC growth. Unfortunately I don't have official numbers for the number of alumni who graduated between 2002 and 2014, but I do have numbers for 2008-2013
¹
. In those five the University awarded 41,102 degrees, an average of 8,220.4 degrees a year. Lets round that off to 8000 to be conservative (even though we know it's too low). I know 2014 degrees are "over 8000" but I don't have an official final number. So I think 8000 is an overly fair number per year for the last six years,

This still leaves us with no data official data for the first six years. We know enrollment grew about 24% over those years, so we could take that percentage off the average degrees awarded number, but I am going to be
extremely conservative
and say that we take off a full 50%. So lets assume for the first six years we awarded 4000 degrees per year.

That would leave us with an
estimate of 72,000* degrees awarded 2002-2014
. Again, I think that is a very low ball number, but I wanted to be conservative since we only have date for half the range.

We stated off with 211 MGC members in 2002. Some of those members stopped giving, some of them went to that great big stadium club in the sky. New members joined and by 2014 the MGC totaled 1075.

In the period of 2002-2014 the MGC grew by 864 members, while the university added (conservatively) ~72,000 new alumni.

If anyone has better data sources, or sees any flaw in my numbers or logic, please advise.

¹UNT Publication: Institutional Research and Effectiveness 2013-2014 Fact Book

*
((8000x6)+(4000x6))

KingDL1 · September 13, 2015

I am bumping this again. Why? So if at the end of another losing season you sit there and think "Mac had a terrible year, why is he coming back?" you'll know the answer. The answer is the AD has done a terrible job of increasing these two numbers. These two numbers mean we don't have enough money to buyout big contracts until they are almost out.
It's why Mac will be here for at least a couple more years. It's why Dodge kept getting brought back. It's while you'll see Benford constantly substituting players out in an almost empty Super Pit.
Conveniently, it's also why we won't have enough money to easily buy out the AD contract either.

Any idea how many MG Club memberships we have so far this year?

Cerebus · September 13, 2015

Any idea how many MG Club memberships we have so far this year?

I have not.

Green Mean · September 13, 2015

After reading this whole thread just now....

anigif_enhanced-buzz-1748-1385239231-17.

MeanMag · September 13, 2015

You all don't think RV getting his contract extended anytime a coach of his gets an extension is an accident or coincidence, do you?

Cerebus · November 29, 2016

On 5/26/2015 at 2:56 PM, Cerebus said:

In the period of 2002-2014 the MGC grew by 864 members, while the university added (conservatively) ~72,000 new alumni.

I'm digging this thread backup because I found out the number of members in Rice's Owl Club.

Owl Club Soars in Record-Setting Year

Quote

The record total was bolstered by 193 previous donors (15%) increasing their gifts and the average gift per donor rose 3% to $1,831.

If 193 donors makes up 15% of the Owl Club, that means there is about 1286 members of the Owl Club.

For comparison Rice has an enrollment of ~6700, ours is about ~38,000. Rice has about ~52,000 living alumni, North Texas has about 4 times that amount in DFW alone.

For NT to get to the same donor/enrollment ratio, we would need about ~7200 members in the MGC.

I hope that sometime next year, definitely before the football season starts, Wren Baker is ready to:

Release the current number of members in the MGC.
Set a new MGC membership goal for his department to reach.
Set a deadline for reaching that goal.

untjim1995 · November 29, 2016

10 minutes ago, Cerebus said:

I'm digging this thread backup because I found out the number of members in Rice's Owl Club.

Owl Club Soars in Record-Setting Year

If 193 donors makes up 15% of the Owl Club, that means there is about 1286 members of the Owl Club.

For comparison Rice has an enrollment of ~6700, ours is about ~38,000. Rice has about ~52,000 living alumni, North Texas has about 4 times that amount in DFW alone.

For NT to get to the same donor/enrollment ratio, we would need about ~7200 members in the MGC.

I hope that sometime next year, definitely before the football season starts, Wren Baker is ready to:

Release the current number of members in the MGC.

Set a new MGC membership goal for his department to reach.

Set a deadline for reaching that goal.

Great stuff, Cerebus...I do think Wren will be able to raise the standards here, if only because he won't depend solely on 17 BMDs. To see us raise our MGC numbers by 864 people over 12 years illustrates RV's ineffectiveness as an AD better than any other stat we can roll out there to explain why he had to go.

Wag Tag · November 29, 2016

49 minutes ago, Cerebus said:

I'm digging this thread backup because I found out the number of members in Rice's Owl Club.

Owl Club Soars in Record-Setting Year

If 193 donors makes up 15% of the Owl Club, that means there is about 1286 members of the Owl Club.

For comparison Rice has an enrollment of ~6700, ours is about ~38,000. Rice has about ~52,000 living alumni, North Texas has about 4 times that amount in DFW alone.

For NT to get to the same donor/enrollment ratio, we would need about ~7200 members in the MGC.

I hope that sometime next year, definitely before the football season starts, Wren Baker is ready to:

Release the current number of members in the MGC.

Set a new MGC membership goal for his department to reach.

Set a deadline for reaching that goal.

Club "a big stick" not in our case! You join a club for special access, insight, and in some cases networking. In the 7 yrs I have been a member I have seen none of this. That needs to change!

MeanGreenMailbox aka TFLF · December 1, 2016

In the parking lot, I always notice a car that has a bunch of pro-vegan bumper stickers on it. One of the stickers reads, "Humane Meat Is Yuppie Bullsh*t."

The NT athletic directors, surely, have rowed a boat upstream when it comes to getting alumni and others to buy tickets, join up, and so forth. But, the boat they row will never have as difficult a trip through life as "Humane Meat Is Yuppie Bullsh*t" guy.

THE END.

KingDL1 · December 1, 2016

When do the 2016 MGC numbers get released. I wonder how many we lost after last year. It could be interesting graph

I delayed rejoining until I saw Wren was hired. I wonder if the year started off dropping like crazy and the hiring of Littrell and then Wren Baker made a huge swing back. So did we rebound fully or total for a loss? Inquiry minds want to know?

VideoEagle · December 1, 2016

1 hour ago, KingDL1 said:

When do the 2016 MGC numbers get released. I wonder how many we lost after last year. It could be interesting graph

Actually, it's DO the 2016 MGC numbers get released?

Cerebus · December 1, 2016

1 hour ago, VideoEagle said:

Actually, it's DO the 2016 MGC numbers get released?

Not officially.

Names get listed in the game day guide. The numbers I had listed before came from hand counting those names.

I have been too lazy to do so this year, but if one of you wants to do it in return for a Snazzy Custom Title....

forevereagle · December 1, 2016

8 minutes ago, Cerebus said:

Not officially.

Names get listed in the game day guide. The numbers I had listed before came from hand counting those names.

I have been too lazy to do so this year, but if one of you wants to do it in return for a Snazzy Custom Title....

Do we know if the website is up to date?