DRC: Apogee five years later Part II (Fans reflect on seat investments 5 years later)

[Christopher Walker]

23 hours ago, Army of Dad said:

Maybe I'm just a hopeless idealist, but I tend to think you can have a clean winning program.

I believe TCU is the local proof of such. They have their fair share of player mistakes and stupid scandals, but by all accounts the "adults in charge" handle them in the correct, exacting manner.

[Aquila_Viridis]

What I meant was a mistake, was using up capital for a stadium, at a time when it should have been used to find a way to fund a much higher level of coaching staff than we've had all these last several years. And by capital I do not mean only money.  Then maybe by this point in time we could be fixing the stadium problem. Even today we are going very cheap on coaches. That stadium won't get us in the Big 12, but if we had been winning all the last several years, NT would be on the list regardless of a dump stadium, cause we could just play the games in Dallas or Arlington til we built one. Again, one of the worst mistakes I've ever seen, and not being on the list at this critical time is one of the consequences.

[Mean Green 93-98]

36 minutes ago, Aquila_Viridis said:

What I meant was a mistake, was using up capital for a stadium, at a time when it should have been used to find a way to fund a much higher level of coaching staff than we've had all these last several years. And by capital I do not mean only money.  Then maybe by this point in time we could be fixing the stadium problem. Even today we are going very cheap on coaches. That stadium won't get us in the Big 12, but if we had been winning all the last several years, NT would be on the list regardless of a dump stadium, cause we could just play the games in Dallas or Arlington til we built one. Again, one of the worst mistakes I've ever seen, and not being on the list at this critical time is one of the consequences.

While I will agree that coaching is more important for the present than facilities, even the stadium, I can't agree that the whole stadium idea should have been nixed.  Recall that it was the prospect of building a stadium that was behind the students voting for a dedicated athletics fee.  If the premise would have been, "Pay this fee so we can hire a better coach," I don't think it would have passed.

And the very year the stadium was built, we seriously upped the ante to hire (at least by their resumes) a legitimate FBS coaching staff.  Certainly compared to the salaries we paid the Dickey and Dodge coaching staffs, we seemed to be stepping up to the plate.

And with the Littrell hire, it doesn't seem like salary constraints kept us from getting our guy.  By all accounts, we were ready and willing to spend quite a bit more.

Other than the student fee, there are other new sources of revenue at least partly tied into the new stadium--$20 million (I know it's not all cash) from Apogee for one.  There just seems to be far more money around UNT athletics than ever before, as exemplified by buying out that huge McCarney contract.

And many elite coaches would have refused to come to North Texas on the basis of Fouts alone.  I really doubt we could have landed McCarney or Littrell with Fouts, much less a Mike Leach or Tom Herman.

I'm just not convinced that a failure to build Apogee would guarantee landing the coach who would make UNT a world-beater.

Edited July 21, 2016 by Mean Green 93-98