The number is 9 now

untjim1995 · December 28, 2017

1 hour ago, Rudy said:

I was able to make my plans a week out, so unless you already have plans that weekend, that's not an excuse. To say that CUSA has a bad commissioner is an understatement. From bad TV deals to having 4 of your 9 bowl teams play on the first day is a joke. So far, Judy MacLeod is nothing more than Karl Benson reincarnate.

Neither the SBC or CUSA have enough teams to garner much interest from decent bowls. In CUSA, Marshall, USM, and MUTS are pretty well received nationally, with LT also getting some attention. But that’s it. No one in the SBC gets national respect, but Troy might be changing that with their ability to compete with P5s.

Benson and McLeod aren’t good, but they don’t exactly have a winning hand to play most of the time, either.

FAU Connoisseur · December 28, 2017

6 hours ago, Mean Green Matt said:

Yes, MAY not have had a choice. I was vocally against the NOB, but I am not privy to the knowledge necessary to make a definitive statement on how it all happened. I guess one can always throw out the generic "oh, well our administration should have done better", but there's a better chance than not that we were not the most powerful entity in the room. I think the odd FAU/Akron matchup tells you there was plenty of funny business going on.

I agree with that...I think the conference commissioner is a joke. I think they were more concerned about geography than matchups that would have made conference competitive. On a side note, I don't necessarily think we would have beaten FSU, but I think we would have given a competitive game. Word is FSU didn't want to play us in a down year in a bowl that 4 of their players chose not to play.

Matt from A700 · December 28, 2017

7 hours ago, NM Green said:

The New Orleans bowl was only missing a few ingredients:

1. A UNT win

2. More UNT fans

3. A UNT party bar pre and post game

the date is always going to pose a challenge. So if you are not graduating that weekend of 2018, start saving now for an amazingly fun destination and weekend! I personally don’t think we get there next year but prep time for that trip to boca and New Orleans or New Mexico is vital.

You don’t want to miss Fine and Littrell’s first Bowl Win! Heck let’s make our trip to pig land like a bowl game with fan hotel, fan bar, fan tailgate and friendly travel packages.

GMG

I am not missing another UNT bowl game as long as I'm alive.

MeanGreenTexan · December 28, 2017

8 hours ago, UNT90 said:

May not have had a choice? It’s the responsibility of the Athletic Department to make sure that NEVER happens as the West Champs of CUSA. Ever.

Last year when we didn’t even deserve a bowl invite? Sure, take what you can get. THis year? The AD got outflanked by a more experienced USM AD.

Period.

Oh, FSU team speed kills? Well, so did Troy’s. And at least USM gets an opponent worth 2 craps Inc the eyes of their uniformed fans.

Well, no, not “period”. There was no “outflanking” by USM’s AD, unless you call having no choices & waiting around for someone to invite you as “outflanking”.

USM would have LOVED to go to the NO Bowl. NO Bowl gave us an expiring offer. After that, they would have likely extended an offer to USM & we would be waiting on the Indy Bowl to invite us. With the right plays by our Commish, they would have... but WB chose to take the bird in hand (safer bet) instead over the NM bowl or the Frisco Bowl, just in case we didn’t get the call from the Indy committee (which, I’m almost certain we would have).

1 hour ago, FAU Connoisseur said:

I agree with that...I think the conference commissioner is a joke. I think they were more concerned about geography than matchups that would have made conference competitive. On a side note, I don't necessarily think we would have beaten FSU, but I think we would have given a competitive game. Word is FSU didn't want to play us in a down year in a bowl that 4 of their players chose not to play.

It did not matter one iota what FSU wanted. They were stuck in the Indy Bowl no matter how much politicking they did (and they did... hence the delayed Indy invites), & they were not going to stay home.

CUSA Commish let 2 teams down regarding the Indy Bowl. One of them would have likely won. The other may have lost a little less than they did to a (top 25) SBC school.

FAU Connoisseur · December 28, 2017

21 minutes ago, MeanGreenTexan said:

It did not matter one iota what FSU wanted. They were stuck in the Indy Bowl no matter how much politicking they did (and they did... hence the delayed Indy invites), & they were not going to stay home.

CUSA Commish let 2 teams down regarding the Indy Bowl. One of them would have likely won. The other may have lost a little less than they did to a (top 25) SBC school.

It mattered what FSU wanted, they had enough cache to tell the Indy who they did or did not want to play from the available pool.

Which 2 schools did the commish let down?

Edited December 28, 2017 by FAU Connoisseur

Ryan Munthe · December 28, 2017

10 hours ago, Rudy said:

I was able to make my plans a week out, so unless you already have plans that weekend, that's not an excuse. To say that CUSA has a bad commissioner is an understatement. From bad TV deals to having 4 of your 9 bowl teams play on the first day is a joke. So far, Judy MacLeod is nothing more than Karl Benson reincarnate.

I did have plans. It’s the weekend before Christmas. It’s a busy weekend.

Plus for others it was graduation, etc. It’s a bad weekend for a lot of people.

I just hope HoD and Indy enjoy their small ticket sales.

VideoEagle · December 28, 2017

18 hours ago, Eagleisland said:

Nine bowls so far this season have had less attendance then this year's maligned by some New Orleans Bowl. These are the Cure Bowl in Orlando, the Carmillla Bowl in Montgomery, the Frisco Bowl. the Bahamas Bowl, Gasparilla Bowl in St. Petersburg, the Idaho Potato Bowl in Boise, the Hawaii Bowl, the Heart of Dallas Bowl and the Quick Lane Bowl in Detroit.

This is certainly good news for both NT and Troy. They showed they will travel to a bowl game despite scheduling challenges. That makes both of us more attractive in the future. The Indy and HOD bowls made it clear to our athletic department they were not going to invite us.

We did NOT choose New Orleans over either one. I wish that fiction would stop. USM didn't somehow cast a magic spell - the Indy bowl wanted to wait to see if a P5 school, ANY P5 school, would be available. If not, they planned early to ask USM and NOT either FAU nor NT.

MeanGreenTexan · December 28, 2017

8 hours ago, FAU Connoisseur said:

It mattered what FSU wanted, they had enough cache to tell the Indy who they did or did not want to play from the available pool.

Which 2 schools did the commish let down?

And the committee had to listen to them, why? “Don’t want to play FAU? Well, we’re going to invite them, feel free to stay home.” <FSU folds because they have no power>

FAU & NT.

Green Lantern · December 28, 2017

6 minutes ago, MeanGreenTexan said:

And the committee had to listen to them, why? “Don’t want to play FAU? Well, we’re going to invite them, feel free to stay home.” <FSU folds because they have no power>

FAU & NT.

FSU was the program the Indy Bowl wanted. They’re the blue blood P5 program that fell into the committee’s lap. They didn’t care about appeasing any of the CUSA backups to fill slots. CUSA is not a primary tie to this bowl. FSU had plenty of influence in this situation. Saying they didn’t doesn’t make it so.

FirefightnRick · December 28, 2017

Gotta stop dogging the start up programs like Troy and FAU. Makes us look football stupid.

Rick

meangreenJW · December 28, 2017

11 hours ago, FAU Connoisseur said:

It mattered what FSU wanted, they had enough cache to tell the Indy who they did or did not want to play from the available pool.

Which 2 schools did the commish let down?

As you probably know, part of the reason FAU got stuck in the Boca Bowl was waiting and pushing for the FSU matchup in the Indy Bowl. Sucks for FAU and CUSA because I think FAU is a top 20ish team.

MeanGreenTexan · December 28, 2017

2 hours ago, Green Lantern said:

FSU was the program the Indy Bowl wanted. They’re the blue blood P5 program that fell into the committee’s lap. They didn’t care about appeasing any of the CUSA backups to fill slots. CUSA is not a primary tie to this bowl. FSU had plenty of influence in this situation. Saying they didn’t doesn’t make it so.

CUSA was contractually tied to it as a secondary bowl. The other Primary (SEC) could not fill the slot since they got 2 in the CFP. The other contracted Secondary (AAC) did not have enough eligible teams to fill all their primary slots & Indy. It was CUSA all the way...Hence USM is there.

meangreenJW · December 28, 2017

3 hours ago, MeanGreenTexan said:

And the committee had to listen to them, why? “Don’t want to play FAU? Well, we’re going to invite them, feel free to stay home.” <FSU folds because they have no power>

FAU & NT.

They don't "have" to listen to FSU. They "do" have to listen to the ACC Commissioner who probably listens to FSU. Bowl agreements don't last forever. And there would be a LONG line for an ACC team (pretty much every bowl in the CUSA lineup for starters). So the bowl directors are beholden to the P5 commissioners because if they lose the P5 tie-in their bowl will be substantially less relevant and profitable.

Edited December 28, 2017 by meangreenJW

MeanGreenTexan · December 28, 2017

2 minutes ago, meangreenJW said:

As you probably know, part of the reason FAU got stuck in the Boca Bowl was waiting and pushing for the FSU matchup in the Indy Bowl. Sucks for FAU and CUSA because I think FAU is a top 20ish team.

The BR Bowl was announced at the same time as ours. FAU was in the same situation as we were & made the same call (accepting the invite in hand, or risk getting left out).

MeanGreenTexan · December 28, 2017

3 minutes ago, meangreenJW said:

They don't "have" to listen to FSU. They "do" have to listen to the ACC Commissioner who probably listens to FSU. Bowl agreements don't last forever. And there would be a LONG line for an ACC team (pretty much every bowl in the CUSA lineup for starters). So the bowl directors are beholden to the P5 commissioners because if they lose the P5 tie-in their bowl will be substantially less relevant and profitable.

Agree. Wish our Commish would have done the same.

untjim1995 · December 28, 2017

2 hours ago, FirefightnRick said:

Gotta stop dogging the start up programs like Troy and FAU. Makes us look football stupid.

Rick

Too late...

And yes, I completely agree with you on this. It makes us look really dumb, like we are a music school and don't like football kind of dumb...

BTG_Fan1 · December 28, 2017

2 hours ago, FirefightnRick said:

Gotta stop dogging the start up programs like Troy and FAU. Makes us look football stupid.

Rick

The only reason people hate on Troy is one thing.. The conference they are in. If they had been in the MAC or AAC or CUSA and UNT was in the SBC it would have been fine. Because Troy is a solid team, they are just from a crap conference that UNT shouldn’t want anything to do with.

Playing an old SBC NO Bowl game is what pissed off fans. The NO bowl was an “OldDenton” location vs an OldDenton Matchup”.

DeepGreen · December 28, 2017

Seriously, had we beaten Troy in New Orleans, would this conversation have a different tone?

Ryan Munthe · December 28, 2017

6 hours ago, FirefightnRick said:

Gotta stop dogging the start up programs like Troy and FAU. Makes us look football stupid.

Rick

Yeah, mingling amongst programs like Troy who can barely keep their head above water makes us look football stupid.

When’s the last time UH has played a SBC school in a bowl?

Edited December 28, 2017 by Ryan Munthe

untjim1995 · December 28, 2017

40 minutes ago, Ryan Munthe said:

Yeah, mingling amongst programs like Troy who can barely keep their head above water makes us look football stupid.

When’s the last time UH has played a SBC school in a bowl?

You aren't seriously comparing us to UH, right? We might both be Texas public schools that are classified as G5s, but that is where the comparison ends. UH has money and prestige and history. We literally don't have anything close to what they have.

-1 me all you want. Our dream should be to get somewhere near UH. That's probably as high as any G5 can get, where they have recently been, along with UCF or USF.

UH doesn't play in a conference that even allows SBC teams to play them in a bowl. Unfortunately, we do--and its a conference leadership that doesn't even give two $hits about who they get matched up with in a bowl game or where its played. Our best team played in a bowl game in their home stadium...against Akron, a team that finished 7-7 in the MAC. Our 2nd best team got to play Troy in New Orleans. That gave Marshall the nice beautiful trip to Albuquerque from WV. And they have a tie-in to a bowl game in Bahamas where our temas get to play in front of a few dozen fans.

UH literally has none of this to deal with...zero, zip, nada. The lowest G5 conference that the AAC will play is a CUSA team, otherwise its playing Big XII, ACC, MWC, and Army in its 2017 bowl lineup.

You want to know why UH has that and we don't? UH decided long ago to make major sports their window. We didn't. End of story. One school has gone from MVC days in the 50s/60s to being in the SWC and finds itself as one of the very top G5s in the country. The other one couldn't get into the SWC so they literally gave up for a dozen years and made sure we had two windows for the university, music/arts and cheap tuition. Its waaaayyyy better today than it ever has been, but don't fool yourself into believing this thing can or should be looking down on playing Troy in a bowl game--because tot he rest of the college football world, Troy has a reputation for being an upstart team that will come to beat your ass, P5, G5, or FCS. If anyone looks at us, they'll see no P5 wins since 2003, mostly awful results as a G5 team since we moved up in 1995, and we suffered the worst loss in modern college football history to a FCS team at home on Homecoming. Fans of programs like ours make ourselves look REALLY dumb when we out down Troy or FAU and we look colossally stupid when we infer that we should be like UH. That be like UH fans looking down on playing a CUSA team, while making the comparison to how things are done and not done in Austin or College Station. Those two things aren't the same--no matter how hard we wish it was...

meangreenJW · December 29, 2017

2 hours ago, Ryan Munthe said:

Yeah, mingling amongst programs like Troy who can barely keep their head above water makes us look football stupid.

When’s the last time UH has played a SBC school in a bowl?

AAC bowl matchups are below. So only 1 game vs Sunbelt. This year CUSA got that bid due to some last minute trading (Miami Beach Bowl is now Frisco bowl).

American Athletic Bowl Ties

2017 Season
BBVA Compass Bowl, Birmingham, Ala. – vs. SEC
Beef ‘O’ Brady’s Bowl St. Petersburg, St. Petersburg, Fla. – vs. Conference USA
Miami Beach Bowl, Miami, Fla. – vs. Sun Belt
Military Bowl presented by Northrop Grumman, Annapolis, Md. – vs. ACC
Sheraton Hawaii Bowl, Honolulu, Hawaii – vs. Mountain West
Boca Raton Bowl, Boca Raton, Fla. – vs. Conference USA

So Houston is going to face non sunbelt teams for the most part because that's the bowls the AAC negotiated. And calling Troy a middling program struggling to stay above water is a position of ignorance. Troy has better history and tradition than have of CUSA. They have better facilities as well. Here's the reality of modern day college football. You have the Power 5, you have the AAC and then 4 conferences that there isn't a hairs difference between. I don't like it, but CUSA is better than the MAC or Sunbelt in name only. And the value of the name is because of institutions that all left CUSA (Louisville, Memphis, Cincy, Houston, etc.). Year and year out, if we played the sunbelt in every sport matching up 1 seed vs 1 seed, it would be a wash.

The same applies to the MWC. It's no better either but enjoys the best "brand" of the four

Ryan Munthe · December 29, 2017

12 hours ago, meangreenJW said:

AAC bowl matchups are below. So only 1 game vs Sunbelt. This year CUSA got that bid due to some last minute trading (Miami Beach Bowl is now Frisco bowl).

American Athletic Bowl Ties

2017 Season
BBVA Compass Bowl, Birmingham, Ala. – vs. SEC
Beef ‘O’ Brady’s Bowl St. Petersburg, St. Petersburg, Fla. – vs. Conference USA
Miami Beach Bowl, Miami, Fla. – vs. Sun Belt
Military Bowl presented by Northrop Grumman, Annapolis, Md. – vs. ACC
Sheraton Hawaii Bowl, Honolulu, Hawaii – vs. Mountain West
Boca Raton Bowl, Boca Raton, Fla. – vs. Conference USA

So Houston is going to face non sunbelt teams for the most part because that's the bowls the AAC negotiated. And calling Troy a middling program struggling to stay above water is a position of ignorance. Troy has better history and tradition than have of CUSA. They have better facilities as well. Here's the reality of modern day college football. You have the Power 5, you have the AAC and then 4 conferences that there isn't a hairs difference between. I don't like it, but CUSA is better than the MAC or Sunbelt in name only. And the value of the name is because of institutions that all left CUSA (Louisville, Memphis, Cincy, Houston, etc.). Year and year out, if we played the sunbelt in every sport matching up 1 seed vs 1 seed, it would be a wash.

The same applies to the MWC. It's no better either but enjoys the best "brand" of the four

So you’re okay with us being in the Sun Belt?

FAU Connoisseur · December 29, 2017

22 hours ago, Green Lantern said:

FSU was the program the Indy Bowl wanted. They’re the blue blood P5 program that fell into the committee’s lap. They didn’t care about appeasing any of the CUSA backups to fill slots. CUSA is not a primary tie to this bowl. FSU had plenty of influence in this situation. Saying they didn’t doesn’t make it so.

Exactly! My point is FSU did not have a lot of options, BUT the Independence Bowl was going to do everything they can to accommodate them and there wishes. FSU did not want to play FAU and take a chance of losing to an in-state school (not sure we would have won, but we would have given a better game than USM). They had the power to say we don't want Conference USA school A over B. FSU just finished their worst season in 35 years they didn't want to roll the dice with FAU. If they lose, its disastrous, if they don't win by enough its disastrous. No win situation for FSU. A long way from Howard Schnellenberger's mantra of we will play you anywhere anytime.

FAU Connoisseur · December 29, 2017

22 hours ago, MeanGreenTexan said:

And the committee had to listen to them, why? “Don’t want to play FAU? Well, we’re going to invite them, feel free to stay home.” <FSU folds because they have no power>

FAU & NT.

Do you think UNT would have fared better over FSU compared to Troy?

UNT90 · December 29, 2017

42 minutes ago, FAU Connoisseur said:

Do you think UNT would have fared better over FSU compared to Troy?

Yes.

Because UNT would have gotten two extra weeks of practice time.

Because UNT wouldn’t have gotten their teeth kicked in by an opponent from the Sun Belt, a conference this program spent years ineptly trying to escape from.

Because UNT fans (like me) would have actually attended the bowl game. I didn’t even watch the Troy game on TV.

Because UNT grads who don’t pay attention to UNT would have had their head turned by a game against a team that they perceived mattered. For almost a full month. Local media would have paid attention to UNT playing FSU. They didn’t for Troy. At all. In the 13 days between the conference championship game and bowl game.

You don’t understand our culture, so I get your questions. The sad thing is many fans here think the same way you do, which is why this is the dumbest fanbase in college football. By a long shot.

Edited December 29, 2017 by UNT90