North Texas belongs on your list of C-USA teams with promising new coaches

Harry · March 7, 2017

You get better by making good hires. That goes for conferences, too. We talk a lot about potential and markets and history and geography and all sorts of factors that go into improving as a group, but the straightest line between where you are and improvement is, simply, hiring good coaches.

Some of the large changes you see are due to conference realignment. The Big East got raided, changed names, and dropped. The Mountain West lost Utah and TCU and dropped. The Pac-12 added Colorado at its most dismal and dropped. Conference USA (and, to a degree, the Mountain West) took on a bunch of start-ups and fixer-uppers and dropped. Et cetera.

That said, a lot of these upward and downward trends have to do with the coaches walking in and out the door.

Conference USA has been pretty dismal for a few seasons now. It rose in 2014, but that was primarily due to a surge by Marshall. After peaking at an average S&P+ rating of minus-3.3 in 2008 and nearly matching that in 2011, the conference has been demonstrably worse.

There could be a surge coming, though. And if it happens, hires are predictably the reason. Two have earned quite a bit of recent attention: Butch Davis at FIU and Lane Kiffin at FAU. This duo could drastically change recruiting within the state of Florida and beyond.

But if this rise occurs, it began last year when UTSA brought in Frank Wilson and North Texas hired Seth Littrell.

read more: http://www.sbnation.com/college-football/2017/3/7/14814744/north-texas-football-2017-preview-schedule-roster

jtm0097 · March 7, 2017

Great article. Very informative.

outoftown · March 7, 2017

Was waiting for the Conelly preview. There are few guys out there looking closer at more teams. Surprisingly optimistic.

Mean Green 93-98 · March 7, 2017

A very thorough, balanced, and objective look at things. Although I find it hard to see where he arrives at the conclusion, "Almost every game is winnable or losable, and if North Texas improves again, then that could mean another three- or four-win improvement." According to the Projection Factor statistics in the article, there are only 5 wins on the schedule with another 2 games being close. He does point out that there are a lot of question marks, though.