Ron Mendoza history lesson

untjim1995 · June 6, 2016

No, RV's biggest failure is a tie between hiring an inexperienced assistant coach that had made his name as a recruiter to take over the best basketball program we had in decades. The Dodge experiment was a head coaching failure more than an AD failure--as it was a Hail Mary hire. The problem on the AD's end with Dodge was not making him hire college coaches for his staff in the first few years.

Our low point in existence was Portland State beating us 66-7 on our Homecoming, but Dodge gave us the 2nd one, when we were annihilated at Rice 77-20 in his second year. Rice had 77 points in the 3rd quarter and easily could have scored 100+ if they had wanted to.

We have had horrible leadership and personnel in place for revenue athletics for a long time, sans Johnny Jones. Hopefully, Jalie Mitchell and Seth Littrell are going to be the ones to change course for us for a long time in the right direction, as well as whoever gets hired as our next AD.

Got5onIt · June 7, 2016

17 hours ago, MeanGreenHoops said:

I know what you mean and he was bad in the W/L but I disagree to the extent that hiring Dodge was the kind of move that we needed. In fact it may have been the best thing RV did wile he was here.

Maybe you weren't there, but that hiring gave us national press. It changed the brand albeit temporarily. People in DFW especially alums began to think maybe we cared about being good.

Do you remember the crowd at the 1st spring game with Dodge? It was a potentially AD direction changing move.

Remember how many more people started coming to games? And this was back at Fouts. Remember how he started talking about the stadium and then the students finally voted for it. I think mostly because it seemed like the AD was serious by hiring this winning HS coach and so they supported it.

I mean we all witnessed it go terribly wrong but, that hiring did many things right. Fan support, financial support, publicity, a brand improvement.

Those are the types of things that no other hire has done, including Littrell.

And just to say it again, his tenure was terrible as a coach, and he should have been gone sooner, but it was the right "kind" of move.

Oh, I was there and was against it from day 1. Dodge brought a brief circus with him in the beginning, but it was very apparent the knucklehead was in way too deep. The 1st game at OU was pathetic from the game plan to in-game coaching. Stoops & Co. laughed at Dodge and fell out of their chairs laughing at him at the post game presser. He had no idea how to handle a diverse group of players. Remember the NAACP fiasco? Yeah, that put us in the national spotlight didn't it?

Dodge should be thanking NT for giving him millions of dollars for nothing. He stole money from NT in my book....

Edited June 7, 2016 by Got5onIt

VideoEagle · June 7, 2016

Dodge's popularity made a lot of things possible. Remember, ticket sales went up almost every year he was there despite the record. Dodge's popularity helped get Apogee built. Dodge was key to a LOT of the dog and pony shows to get money at the "quiet stage" of funding. We simply had to have a "name" to get people to donate and someone from a DII school wasn't going to cut it.

Plus, simply having him around gave RV the ability to raise the salary of the position of head football coach at NT to a level much more in line with FBS coaches. Dodge got a number of undeserved raises, but BECAUSE of those the BOR had an expected salary level that got Coach Mac. Again, the wrong guy but with the right credentials to show donors and outsiders like CUSA that we were more serious than ever before.

MeanGreenTexan · June 7, 2016

10 minutes ago, VideoEagle said:

Dodge's popularity made a lot of things possible. Remember, ticket sales went up almost every year he was there despite the record. Dodge's popularity helped get Apogee built. Dodge was key to a LOT of the dog and pony shows to get money at the "quiet stage" of funding. We simply had to have a "name" to get people to donate and someone from a DII school wasn't going to cut it.

Plus, simply having him around gave RV the ability to raise the salary of the position of head football coach at NT to a level much more in line with FBS coaches. Dodge got a number of undeserved raises, but BECAUSE of those the BOR had an expected salary level that got Coach Mac. Again, the wrong guy but with the right credentials to show donors and outsiders like CUSA that we were more serious than ever before.

Uh, that's not what I've heard...

I agree with your first paragraph though. Failed as a 1st-time FBS coach, no doubt, but he was able to drum-up alot of interest rather quickly.

Cerebus · June 7, 2016

1 hour ago, MeanGreenTexan said:

Uh, that's not what I've heard...

Dickey made $217K base + $55K in stipends and a possible additional $40K in incentives on his last contract.

Dodge made $185K base and I don't recall his exact stipends, but I think total compensation was in the $220K range.

BTW Dickey made $250K as as assistant at Memphis and TD now makes $120K* at Austin Westlake.

Edited June 7, 2016 by Cerebus

oldguystudent · June 7, 2016

Still waiting for someone to regale me with the tale of Mendonza's "Unfortunate incident with a fan."

Cerebus · June 7, 2016

1 minute ago, oldguystudent said:

Still waiting for someone to regale me with the tale of Mendonza's "Unfortunate incident with a fan."

It was a dark, moonlit night, Harry had drank a few too many margaritas, we had just somehow beat WKU at home, romance was in the air... we're really not supposed to talk about it much.

oldguystudent · June 7, 2016

4 minutes ago, Cerebus said:

TD now makes $450K at Austin Westlake.

$120,775 for 2014

I think that $450K number got bandied about from some college gig and incorrectly appropriated to the high school gig.

UNTLifer · June 7, 2016

10 minutes ago, Cerebus said:

Dickey made $217K base + $55K in stipends and a possible additional $40K in incentives on his last contract.

Dodge made $185K base and I don't recall his exact stipends, but I think total compensation was in the $220K range.

BTW Dickey made $250K as as assistant at Memphis and TD now makes $450K at Austin Westlake.

Dodge is not making $450,000 at Austin Westlake.

Cerebus · June 7, 2016

4 minutes ago, oldguystudent said:

$120,775 for 2014

I think that $450K number got bandied about from some college gig and incorrectly appropriated to the high school gig.

Thanks. Corrected.

I found Dodge's contract.

$185K Base + $6K Car Allowance + $75K in other stipends = $266K

Plus a ton of incentives you can see in the contract.

MeanGreenHoops · June 7, 2016

3 hours ago, VideoEagle said:

Dodge's popularity made a lot of things possible. Remember, ticket sales went up almost every year he was there despite the record. Dodge's popularity helped get Apogee built. Dodge was key to a LOT of the dog and pony shows to get money at the "quiet stage" of funding. We simply had to have a "name" to get people to donate and someone from a DII school wasn't going to cut it.

Plus, simply having him around gave RV the ability to raise the salary of the position of head football coach at NT to a level much more in line with FBS coaches. Dodge got a number of undeserved raises, but BECAUSE of those the BOR had an expected salary level that got Coach Mac. Again, the wrong guy but with the right credentials to show donors and outsiders like CUSA that we were more serious than ever before.

Also good points.

I realize it's not a popular position to say Dodge was a good hire, but he was. That hire did a lot to change the perception of the brand from which we are still reaping the rewards

Imagine if we had hired Jimmy Johnson to be our head coach this year rather than Litrell. What do you think would have happened? The same kinds of things that happened when Dodge was hired, although on a more national scale. Even if Jimmy never got off his boat in Florida and showed only for games and the team was terrible for 3 straight years (Dodge) the perception of the brand would have changed. People would have jumped on board, people would have paid attention, people would have thought hey maybe NT is serious about athletics. These are all things that happened with Dodge. The fact he was terrible did not undo those perception changes. We need more thinking like that and it's what I want from our next AD.