RV joins us on podcast tonight: Questions?

ColoradoEagle · September 2, 2015

My price went down.
Did you upgrade seats?

Did it? I'll have to check my statement from last year, but I thought the amount was the same. Withdraw question if true.

Army of Dad · September 2, 2015

So you're basically saying that RV is the George Costanza of CUSA ADs?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AnfbhdELQLA

I didn't say anything. FakeRV said it.

greenit · September 2, 2015

Serious question:

Have you looked at what it would take to eliminate the annual paycheck game from the schedule? Do you think it is realistic?

Not serious:

Do you hate UNT90?

foutsrouts · September 2, 2015

I'd love to hear what actually goes into scheduling a team. Things like how are teams identified; how the AD for another school is approached; etc. I don't think it's as easy as some feel it is.

It's probably much easier when you schedule half of your future OOC games against the same two schools 27 years in advance.

Censored by Laurie · September 2, 2015

If GoMeanGreen.com was a burning building and you could only save 4 people, who would you save and why?

why would Lydia Gooding need to be saved 4 times?

Travis · September 2, 2015

Boxers or briefs?

Cerebus · September 2, 2015

Could he explain this:

So despite being less than half our size, not having a winning season since 2002, losing an average of 9.8 games a season over each of the last 10 years, and having very few alumni who live in the area... they have managed to sell 1100 more tickets than we managed to sell coming off a bowl win?

Or better yet, this:

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.

Addendum:

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 2008-2013¹. 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))

Edited September 2, 2015 by Cerebus

DeepGreen · September 2, 2015

Not a bad list, but can he count saving himself? If not, we need one more.
Also, I'm not sure if UNTJim makes the push list, but not a bad start. It probably also needs Tasty, TulsaFaninTexas (who had his slow burn revenge by foiling our scheduling plans) and, of course, the mythical LoveMG.

If RV saves himself, that only leaves two others. You have to count him as two.

aztecskin · September 2, 2015

Do You Remember
When We Fell In Love
We Were Young
And Innocent Then
Do You Remember
How It All Began
It Just Seemed Like Heaven
So Why Did It End?

and as a follow up -- Does he feel weird for liking The Weeknd when dude is basically gankin' Mike Jackson out here? Or does he just appreciate a good song and therefore he's jammin' out to Taylor Swift (ugh)?

Also,

What's good? *minaj face*

cdizzle86 · September 2, 2015

How does the athlete stipend change the overall landscape of college athletics? And how do we take advantage to continue moving up in the food chain?
Why haven't we fired our retail licensing partner? There are smaller universities in the state that have more retailers selling their gear than North Texas. It's embarrassing.

EagleD · September 2, 2015

I want to hear him talk about scheduling, and take responsibility for this year's gauntlet. What are the steps to ensure a better schedule for future years HAS HE LEARNED FROM HIS MISTAKES???!!

I would also like to hear you guys thank him for everything he's done. The haters on this board clearly don't remember how deep in a hole this program was before RV. If you think it's bad now, you clearly don't remember Helwig. We played so many body bag FB games just to fund the other sports it was exhausting.

I'd like to hear about baseball, fundraising, and what will happen with the space Fouts occupies? Have they fixed the problem of long beer lines?

UNTnewbie · September 2, 2015

1.) Is the location of the New Track Facility still going to be around the Tennis Courts as shown in the Master Plan or are other areas being considered?

1a.) Is there already a budget associated with the Track facility or will that be part of the exploratory committee?

1b.) Will the Track facility be "State of the Art" like Apogee and include Offices for coaches and locker rooms, anything else of note that is being planned? Will the coaches have input into the construction of the facility?

2.) Can he expound on the Softball/Soccer upgrades in a little more detail?

3.) Will a Baseball program come back to being a very near future possibility, now that the accounting issue has been resolved?

3a.) Is the plan for the Softball/Soccer upgrades to still integrate aesthetically with a new Baseball complex?

4.) How is the Golf Training facility progressing? When will the players be able to utilize the facility?

5.) How are we able to provide Students with such inexpensive tickets to the SMU game? Is the cost being underwritten by a specific donation/s? I love that this is happening, just curious as to how since I know the stooges at SMU refused to budge on their ticket prices.

6.) Understand there are a couple of monetary announcements on the horizon, any idea when they might become public?

GMG

Mean_Green09 · September 2, 2015

Where there any players involved in picking the new uniforms? If they weren't why not?

Why are we always behind in the uniform game?

Why is the standard bar set so low around here?

When will a quality team play UNT in Apogee

What are the marketing strategies?

Can I be hired to help with the sports information department? Sports analytics?

Other teams are using new technology to track players health in practice. Will UNT be looking into that.

What steps are you taking to be progressive and grow the UNT athletic program?

MeanGreenDan · September 2, 2015

I predict a mysterious dropped call right before we get to the Q&A portion of this evening's presentation...

Travis · September 2, 2015

Do you think brinner is overrated? Underrated? or just the right rated?

MeanGreenTexan · September 2, 2015

Boy, we really have some hard-hitting journalists on here.

Brett,
You'd better be taking notes on how to interview.

Green P1 · September 2, 2015

Have you seen the pictures McNulty or his father must have of Dan? How bad could they be?

TheTastyGreek · September 2, 2015

I thought about Tasty, but since he seems to be in (self imposed) exile it would be tough to be trapped in a burning GMG.

I just don't have a lot to say that hasn't been said already. We're going into basketball season with a failure of a coach, and we're going into football season intending to start a quarterback (seems like a great kid, not his fault if he's actually our best option) who doesn't appear likely to lead us to success, or even entertaining near-success.

I'm out on basketball entirely, and I'm out on non-home football (luckily, only 5 games!) until McNulty shows something (or gets replaced by someone who can at least generate some on-field excitement). I'm skipping SMU to go to a baby shower in the afternoon and a fish fry in the evening.

And I'm not posting much because I don't take much happiness from it, because even arguing about any of it is stupid and pointless. Anyone who doesn't realize where we're at... It isn't for any lack of evidence or discussion.

I thought about posing a question for RV. But, I don't really care what he has to say. About any of it. Don't talk, just show me at least 2nd winning season out of the past 11 in football. Don't talk, just get rid of our embarrassing disgrace of a basketball suit-wearing-guy (can't really call him a "coach") and try to salvage anything possible from when we actually seemed like a real program with potential sustained success and pride in that sport (though, it's probably a year or two too late for that). Don't talk, just put a damn 6th game on the calendar and don't make any bullshit excuses about Tulsa.

I don't care what Rick V. has to say. And, more and more... I just flat out don't care that much about North Texas sports like I used to. Maybe I'll start caring again if I see something (ANYTHING) that makes me believe it's worth the emotional investment. But, nothing he says on a podcast or in a newspaper article is going to make that happen. Prove it, don't say it.

UNTexas · September 2, 2015

Why Lamar? Why Portland State? Why Abilene Christian? Why garbage teams like this when other school get quality home opponents?

Then listen to the bullsh$t...

jdennis82 · September 2, 2015

1. Scheduling - With Power 5 schools' schedules being dissected in eyes of the selection committee (and, in turn, fans/boosters), how is NT's ability to schedule these schools impacted? Might it improve NT's opportunity to schedule lesser P5 schools in an effort for those opponents to think they can boost their own records thereby improving the resume of their conference's champion (Ex. Colorado vs NT - Colorado incentivized by Pac12 to schedule a G5 school thinking an extra W for Colorado improves USC's strength of schedule at season's end...)

2. CUSA - Update on conference commissioner? News on TV contract?

3. Current Events - Given the situation at Baylor, I'd be interested to hear him unpack the approach NT takes with new players who may need extra attention (either before accepting the player and/or after admitted to the program). What checks, balances, and oversight exist to protect against a similar error in judgement/procedure taking place in Denton

Edited September 2, 2015 by jdennis82

MeanGreenTexan · September 3, 2015

1. Scheduling - With Power 5 schools' schedules being dissected in eyes of the selection committee (and, in turn, fans/boosters), how is NT's ability to schedule these schools impacted? Might it improve NT's opportunity to schedule lesser P5 schools in an effort for those opponents to think they can boost their own records thereby improving the resume of their conference's champion (Ex. Colorado vs NT - Colorado incentivized by Pac12 to schedule a G5 school thinking an extra W for Colorado improves USC's strength of schedule at season's end...)
2. CUSA - Update on conference commissioner? News on TV contract?
3. Current Events - Given the situation at Baylor, I'd be interested to hear him unpack the approach NT takes with new players who may need extra attention (either before accepting the player and/or after admitted to the program). What checks, balances, and oversight exist to protect against a similar error in judgement/procedure taking place in Denton

I concur on these last two points.

@TheTastyGreek: Can't blame you one bit man. Hate that the apathy bug bit such a once-ardent supporter, but you were much more invested than most.

GM1998 · September 3, 2015

Men's soccer? Ever gonna happen?

UNTexas · September 3, 2015

Men's soccer? Ever gonna happen?

Remember, our boy's resume for his reality TV show & acting? HE was awesome on UNTs 95, 96, 97, & 98 soccer team. I'm shocked you don't remember. HE was amazing.

Side bar, same dude said a slide tackle was just as violent as any football hit. He said that all the time until I got him a sideline pass.

Aldo · September 3, 2015

If UTSA is making a tradition out of bringing castanets to their games, can we bring vuvuzelas?

H-towngreen · September 3, 2015

Uniforms, why do we suck so bad at this? Not only fans but the players themselves were pissed with these. It's laughable bc it's UNT and it's the norm.

Scheduling, why do we suck so bad at this? 5 home games? How is everyone else landing 1 for 1 and were not even close. We just schedule the same 2 teams for THE NEXT 20 YEARS!?!?! It's laughable bc it's UNT and it's the norm.

Mens basketball. Remember when we were close. We were almost there. Almost top 25 vote worthy. WELL WHAT THE FUDGE HAPPENED?!?! It's laughable how far we've fallen bc it's UNT and it's the norm.

Fan apathy. Does RV realize he's losing us?????

And I'm not actually going to listen to the podcast as I don't give a crap about the nonsense RV is going to spew. Think of it as my silent protest of the state of the athletic program.

Edited September 3, 2015 by H-towngreen