Why 2013 impacts the Littrell momentum

Harry · May 22, 2017

There is no doubt that Littrell taking this program to a bowl game last year, after a one-win disaster in 2015 was a great accomplishment.

In fact, for many programs, you might see an even stronger sense of momentum on the back of this sea change. Don't get me wrong, I think many of our die hards realize how much things have changed and what a great game coach Littrell appears to be.

The problem as I see it is some of our fan base is hesitant to jump all in at this particular time. I was scratching my head as to why and I believe the 2013 season under Mac is the main culprit.

2013 was our first year in a new conference (C-USA) and after 2 losing seasons under Mac we were treated to an amazing 9-4 winning bowl year. many including myself believed that Mac had finally turned a corner with the program. As we all know that season turned out to be more of an enigma or outlier than anything else. In 2014 Mac went 4-8, and of course the meltdown in 2015 where Mac went 0-5 was of epic proportions.

So, I don't put too much stock in the current perception of the football program at UNT. It is going to take time and consistent wins to get this thing back on track. This should not cause discouragement from either Littrell, Wren or their respective staffs. When you combine that with the extremely long off season we have without baseball and it can seem fairly quiet.

Ben Gooding · May 22, 2017

I can kind of see what you're saying.

To me, it's the .380 winning % and HOW we lost. Yes, we went to a bowl. But it technically wasn't earned through our on the field play. We were not a "bowl eligible" team. The other concerning part is, outside of the bowl, we were blown out in all of our other losses. We were -169 points in our 8 losses. That is -21.15 points per loss. We were handily beaten too often. We were +58 in our wins for a margin of +11.6 points per win. This tells me the margin between the better teams on our schedule is greater than the worse teams on our schedule. So we are a below average team, per our schedule. I would be more comfortable if those margins were swapped while still holding the 5-8 record coming into this upcoming season. If we were losing by 10 a game and winning by 21 a game last season, I think people would be more optimistic and rightfully so. I think the X factor of the lack of optimism coming into this off season is the factor of the unknown, because there are a lot of them.

Mean Green 93-98 · May 22, 2017

Good point. And it's sad, considering how many people were ready to jump on the bandwagon back on Jan. 1, 2014. The huge turd Mac laid after that really will take some time to clean up in the minds of the UNT fanbase.