2012 Southern Mississippi - Is This Us ?

[akriesman]

• In 2011, Southern Miss finished 12-2 under Larry Fedora, who then left to become the head coach at North Carolina.
• In 2012, Southern Miss went 0-12 under first year coach Ellis Johnson.  Who was FIRED after 1 year despite signing a 4-year contract at a minimum of $740,000 annually. 
• In 2013, Southern Miss hired current coach Todd Monken, whose team was a pathetic 1-11 until beating UAB on the last game of the season.
• In 2014, Southern Miss improved to 3-9 under Monken.
• In 2015, Southern Miss is now 3-2 under Monken.

If the wheels are not already off, they could come off very soon at UNT.    Look how long it is taking Southern Miss to recover from that disaster of 2012.    At least USM saw the writing on the wall and made a coaching change after only 1 year of a 4 year contract.    Southern Miss has consistently out-recruited us, even though the last time I looked our athletic budget was a little higher than theirs.   

Outside of a culture of losing in FB, there are so many positives around the UNT campus.   There should be no excuses about why it is hard to recruit here, compared to other CUSA teams.   Maybe there is something that I am missing as I am not as closely tied to the big name decision makers in our program.  But, I just don't see any big issues holding us back at UNT.  The students are finally on-board, we need to ride that wave.

If this year turns into a meltdown matching USM in 2012, I don't see any way changes are not made.   Too much time, effort and money has been spent trying to turn things around here at UNT.     Not making a change is going to cost the university a lot more in the future.  USM did it, so can we.   The only difference between USM and UNT have to do with a winning culture.

Was it easy for USM to buy-out the contract ?    No, but they got creative.

http://www.cbssports.com/collegefootball/eye-on-college-football/21192118/report-southern-miss-gives-up-home-game-to-pay-ellis-johnsons-buyout

Of course, school officials said they have the money and that the Nebraska game income was not required.    This is an interesting read.

http://www.hattiesburgamerican.com/article/20121208/NEWS01/312080020/Lucas-addresses-Johnson-contract-buyout

I know that a lot of people are upset with the direction of our basketball program, as we are down from the JJ years.   But, at least we are expected to be competitive in BB.   Our FB program is in dire straights.

I appreciate everything that our coaches and players have done here at UNT.   They are all hard workers and have done their best to represent the school.  Our students are much more involved and a lot of that has to do with our head coach.   However, I don't like it when our coach makes comments like "it's hard to recruit at North Texas".   Yeah, it's hard to recruit against the P5 here for obvious reasons (mid-major athletic budget).   It should not be hard to recruit against the rest of the G5 programs.

[untbowler]

USM knew what they had to do and did it, dealt with growing pains and now on upswing. UNT BOR, AD, President are scared of their own shadows and tolerate this garbage to continue and they wonder why such low amounts are raised by 100K + alumni

[Army of Dad]

I know that a lot of people are upset with the direction of our basketball program, as we are down from the JJ years.   But, at least we are expected to be competitive in BB.   Our FB program is in dire straights.

Who told you we expect to be competitive in basketball? On what did they base that? We had another massive turnover on the roster, are (generously) picked 8th on the preseason coaches/meadia CUSA poll and do not have a single player on the preseason all conference team. 

[MeanGreenD]

 

I know that a lot of people are upset with the direction of our basketball program, as we are down from the JJ years.   But, at least we are expected to be competitive in BB.   Our FB program is in dire straights.

 

Guess the would depend on your definition of "competitive" http://meangreenblog.dentonrc.com/2015/10/unt-picked-eighth-in-c-usa-for-mens-hoops.html/