Dickey to A & M

[FirefightnRick]

8 hours ago, GTWT said:

It's been asked before by others - why would any UNT 'fan' want to denigrate our school's accomplishments?  It's perverse.

Agree.  It reminds me sort of how some Americans continually denigrate our country's accomplishments.  It's perverse.

 

Rick.

[GrayEagle]

For a former (and current) offensive coordinator I thoght that DD ran a boring offense.  It's as if he ascribed to the Darrell Royal theory about a pass.

I remember in the TCU game that it seemed that the entire North Texas fans began chanting as one..."Throw the Ball!!!

Somewhere along the way he switched to a passing offense, which he used at Memphis, and he became successful.  

Darrell seemed to be a good guy, always reminding us that he was one of us...a Mean Green Club member.  Then he did the unforgivable with the ill-fitting black shirts in his finale.  That really put a damper on his legacy.  If he apologized for that episode I've yet to hear or see it.

[GTWT]

1 hour ago, GrayEagle said:

For a former (and current) offensive coordinator I thoght that DD ran a boring offense.  

What's really boring is going to three high school games in three weeks to watch 6 teams all run some version of a spread offense.

Somewhere along the way he switched to a passing offense, which he used at Memphis, and he became successful.

Dickey was successful long before he got to Memphis.  He was successful at NT.

[TIgreen01]

On 7/21/2018 at 8:32 AM, outoftown said:

All of his tenure was mostly before my time. And I am just amused/astonished at how strong and divergent opinions on his tenure are. I don't think that is true for any other UNT coach, good or bad.

Has there ever been another FBS level coach get on TV and claim that he had the hardest job in America?  There were a couple years there where it seemed that he went out of his way to bad mouth the program every time he got in front of a camera.  I can't remember a single other coach, at any school, behaving this way.

There were times I loved DD, and times I could not stand him.  So I think it makes sense that opinions on him are so wildly different from person to person.

[greenminer]

28 minutes ago, TIgreen01 said:

get on TV and claim that he had the hardest job in America?

I personally never saw this, or any replays of such.  Then again, I didn't have TV lol

[Aldo]

I hear Dickey's OOC record thrown around a lot. North Texas was trying to pay bills back then (in a worse way than recently). So let's look at his *in season* OOC schedule while in the Sun Belt. In season because we have control of who we schedule (in a sense).

Losses unless otherwise noted

2001 OOC (First year in SBC)

• TCU
• #3 Oklahoma
• Texas Tech
• USF
• Troy

2002 OOC

• #3 Texas
• Nicholls (Win)
• Alabama
• TCU
• Arizona
• USF

2003 OOC

• #1 Oklahoma
• Baylor (Win)
• Air Force
• #14 Arkansas
• Troy (Win)

2004 OOC

• #7 Texas
• Colorado
• Baylor

2005 OOC

• Tulsa
• Kansas State
• La Tech
• #7 LSU

2006 OOC

• #3 Texas
• SMU (Win)
• Tulsa
• Akron
• La Tech

Rough.

[Travis]

On 7/22/2018 at 11:14 AM, Cr1028 said:

Matt Simon beat Tech, Oregon State, and Boise.

Yeah but did he beat UL-Monroe, UL-Lafeyette, and New Mexico State all in the SAME SEASON?!?!  Then do it all over again two more seasons?!?!?!!?  A coach who does that should never ever ever be fired. Tenured for life. 

[GrandGreen]

On 7/22/2018 at 10:52 AM, BIMG said:

During Dickey's tenure UNT had a rare nationally televised game on a weeknight. Instead of wearing a North Texas cap Dickey wore a Gallery Furniture cap.  Not what I would call putting your best foot forward on the national stage.

I assume that had to do with that $1m contribution.   I wouldn't mind Littrell doing the same for that kind of donation.  

[SteaminWillieBeamin]

4 hours ago, Aldo said:

I hear Dickey's OOC record thrown around a lot. North Texas was trying to pay bills back then (in a worse way than recently). So let's look at his *in season* OOC schedule while in the Sun Belt. In season because we have control of who we schedule (in a sense).

Losses unless otherwise noted

2001 OOC (First year in SBC)

• TCU
• #3 Oklahoma
• Texas Tech
• USF
• Troy

2002 OOC

• #3 Texas
• Nicholls (Win)
• Alabama
• TCU
• Arizona
• USF

2003 OOC

• #1 Oklahoma
• Baylor (Win)
• Air Force
• #14 Arkansas
• Troy (Win)

2004 OOC

• #7 Texas
• Colorado
• Baylor

2005 OOC

• Tulsa
• Kansas State
• La Tech
• #7 LSU

2006 OOC

• #3 Texas
• SMU (Win)
• Tulsa
• Akron
• La Tech

Rough.

Not really *so* rough. 
2001: 

TCU was a 6-6 C-USA team. Not some world beater.
USF provisional DIV1 - without a conference and got smacked by Rice 52 - 21. This is not the modern day USF. 
Troy provisional DIV1 - and got killed by MTSU 54-17.  Again, not the modern Troy. 
 

2002:

TCU - again C-USA.
Nichols State (DivAA)
USF (still provisional)
Arizona -- a 4-8 team. 

.. ah ...  who cares. I lost interest in typing. 

Tulsa, Akron, La Tech, Baylor, Kansas State,  Troy, USF, SMU, Nichols State ... hardly high caliber back then. 

We had Texas, OU, LSU and Alabama as the top teams over 6 seasons? I'd take it. Keep our name out there. Have my coworkers talking football... I mean, sure, it is harder than loading up on the Holy Smokes of Catechisms and the Fighting Falwells.

I would rather have the old schedule and be somewhat competitive than what we are getting the next couple of years with the DIV1AA schools. 

Edited July 24, 2018 by SteaminWillieBeamin

[Aldo]

13 minutes ago, SteaminWillieBeamin said:

I would rather have the old schedule and be somewhat competitive than what we are getting the next couple of years with the DIV1AA schools. 

Look I'm not making excuses for Dickey. He should have won slightly more of the non-money OOC games. What I don't expect is to win multiple money games per season when only being reintroduced to D-I for a few years.

We got paid by these ranked teams to lose. I feel like we've grown up a little since then, and so I'm looking forward to playing teams like Memphis to beat them and Cal to beat them. 

Dickey got dealt a crap hand, which he did what he could, and maybe he did it wrong or did it right, but we were where we deserved to be given the circumstances of the program and the support from the administration. 

I want to be more than somewhat competitive and beat up on teams and also bring in our own money. I feel like we finally have an administration and infrastructure in place that has the ability to do it better in order for us to be "somewhat competitive" against the money games that are already on the schedule per the previous admin.

That's the past and whether it's the 80s game against Texas that got stole, or Dickey hurt someone's feelings, we're crawling out of a hole that someone else dug, and they hid the shovel.

[SteaminWillieBeamin]

For the record - I agree that UNT was in a pretty bad state back then.  So were most of the schools in our category though -- the arms race had not quite hit the mid-majors. Our conference mates and most the teams we were playing had old stadiums, no jumbo-trons, shared facilities amongst their sports, etc. 

Back then, I had gone to games at ULM, La Tech, MTSU, Arkansas Sate, ULALA, Tulsa...  They were all about in the same shape as us. ULALA had the best stadium.  Otherwise, they were almost all fairly falling down 60+ year old structures with metal stands somewhere. Hell, MTSU is nothing but one big temporary metal seat stadium. 

It wasn't until the end of DD's tenure that the race for improvements kicked in and it was dire. But most of those other schools have improved just like us and we are still in the same category.. we aren't light years ahead of where we were, since everyone else moved us with us too. 

I don't think our scheduling was significantly harder than what we have seen since -- except we no longer kept winning in conference games so we no longer can tout our OOC loses as moral victories. Though we do have wins against  Ball State and Indiana in that span - so already doing better OOC than Dickey? I joke. Maybe. 

[Cr1028]

Beating 4 teams with a .500 or above record during a 4 year span of conference championships does not make you a great coach. It means you beat who you were supposed to. Winning 26 straight conference games and 4 consecutitittittive (thanks director of New Orleans sports foundation)  SunBelt championships and then not receiving a single offer to be a head coach anywhere else over the next 12-14 years does not make a great coach either. Dickey was not a great coach. He had some great players but he was not a great coach. Matt Simon would’ve won those Sun Belt titles too. Dare I say Todd Dodge could’ve led North Texas to an above .500 record in the 2001-2004 Sun Belt with the talent and defensive staff we had. I mean even Dana Dimel got another head coaching job. What did all of the other D1 athletic directors see that our Dickey was a great coach can’t?

[meanrob]

20 minutes ago, Cr1028 said:

Beating 4 teams with a .500 or above record during a 4 year span of conference championships does not make you a great coach. It means you beat who you were supposed to. Winning 26 straight conference games and 4 consecutitittittive (thanks director of New Orleans sports foundation)  SunBelt championships and then not receiving a single offer to be a head coach anywhere else over the next 12-14 years does not make a great coach either. Dickey was not a great coach. He had some great players but he was not a great coach. Matt Simon would’ve won those Sun Belt titles too. Dare I say Todd Dodge could’ve led North Texas to an above .500 record in the 2001-2004 Sun Belt with the talent and defensive staff we had. I mean even Dana Dimel got another head coaching job. What did all of the other D1 athletic directors see that our Dickey was a great coach can’t?

I'd REALLY like for you to find where people on this board said he was a "great coach." 

 

[Marty]

Besides the black jersey game, anybody else remember DD wearing the Gallery Furniture cap on the sideline when we played NMSU ?

[FirefightnRick]

On 7/24/2018 at 4:21 PM, SteaminWillieBeamin said:

Not really *so* rough. 
2001: 

TCU was a 6-6 C-USA team. Not some world beater.
USF provisional DIV1 - without a conference and got smacked by Rice 52 - 21. This is not the modern day USF. 
Troy provisional DIV1 - and got killed by MTSU 54-17.  Again, not the modern Troy. 
 

2002:

TCU - again C-USA.
 

That TCU team in 01 was starting its rise to where we also want to be, and would eventually become one of the top defensive programs in the nation.  They had some bad losses that season but played an 11-2 Nebraska team to within 14 points in Lincoln,  beat an 11-2 Louisville and finished 6-5 in the regular season losing to an 8-4 A&M team in the Furniture bowl to finish 6-6.

The next year when we lost to them by 6....they were the top defensive team in the country, went 10-2 and won a co-conference championship and beat Colorado State in their bowl game...and we beat one of the two teams they lost to that season: Cincinnati.

I agree we should have won more of the easier non conference games, that was very frustrating.  But I don't think people fully appreciate the magnitude of the entire non conference DD coached against during his entire tenure.  He complained about it the day he was introduced as Simon's replacement by making a mocking joke about our new fund raiser....

"Yeah...I wanna announce we're having a fund raiser immediately...(long pause)....we're gonna have it in Norman Oklahoma, Lubbock Texas, Tempe Arizona and finally in Bryan College Station"...

.....followed by a half laugh, half grumble in the room.

It was obvious he was pissed and I guess he decided right there and then that a paycheck game was just that...a paycheck?

 

Rick

Edited July 26, 2018 by FirefightnRick

[GrayEagle]

7 hours ago, meanrob said:

I'd REALLY like for you to find where people on this board said he was a "great coach." 

 

What was really said was that he was a successful coach here.  Since this was his only head coaching job it would have to be here.  Personally, I don't call a winning percentage of less than 40% "successful"; and definitely not in the realm of "great coach". 

[KRAM1]

I am very happy for him and I wish him well. I have always thought of him as a very good assistant coach.

[untjim1995]

The Dickster was just a boring coach. His offenses here were boring. His interviews were usually boring. He gave up on many occasions when playing higher profile teams, many times before the game even started.

But the boring part of his offense worked our pretty well when: his defense was awesome and the opponent fell behind and he could let his defense and special teams (particularly his punters) control field position., as well as when he had a decent QB leading the charge.

But when those weren't in play, we were just flat out terrible. The FIU 7OT "win" was a very symbolic game of the Dickey Era that was not in 2002-2004. Just hang on to beat a bad Belt team by not trying anything risky on offense. I would also argue that the 2006 SMU win at Fouts doesn't happen if Woody Wilson doesn't basically chunk the play calls and take off running on his own. keeping Ramon Flanigan around as your OC was just as painful, since he couldn't coach himself out of a paper bag, and when confronted as being a bad coach in the stands and deciding to aggressively confront the fan, the dude should've been canned as soon as possible. 

I also believe that all of this has made Dickey a better coach today. And I believe he has made his name up the coaching ranks in FBS these days completely because of those lessons learned.

[SteaminWillieBeamin]

33 minutes ago, untjim1995 said:

I also believe that all of this has made Dickey a better coach today. And I believe he has made his name up the coaching ranks in FBS these days completely because of those lessons learned.

Completely agree. 

[Harry]

1 hour ago, untjim1995 said:

I also believe that all of this has made Dickey a better coach today. And I believe he has made his name up the coaching ranks in FBS these days completely because of those lessons learned.

Agree.  Well stated.

[GrandGreen]

I assume Dickey was smart enough to know what he got into when he took the NT job.

 I have never heard a hc anywhere bad mouth his employer the way that DD did.  Lessons learned maybe, but any half way intelligent coach should know better than to sabotage his own program.  

He had some success against the early Belt, but instead of building on it, he waited for that big offer that never came.  

He was a lazy recruiter and I use his own words to back that up.   He once stated he never lost a player that he offered.  No, because he never offered until the players were desperate for an offer. 

In retrospect I blame the President and BOR for allowing the whole mess.   They kept an insubordinate coach and hired a very inept AD.  Instead of trying to rectify this problem, they just apparently ignored it. 

Edited July 27, 2018 by GrandGreen