Who will help in buying out Seth Littrell’s contract?

NorthTexasSportsNetwork · September 27, 2020

13 hours ago, meangreen11 said:

After watching the games today, how long will it take for Seth to get us back up to par? I’m thinking we are at least 2-3 years a way from competing with Programs like SMU, Houston and La Tech.

With the talent we have, this shouldn’t be a rebuild but if Seth can’t develop these young guys, it’s gonna be a long few years and a lot of fans/students are gonna bail. It’s the sad truth

southsideguy · September 27, 2020

so if we win one to three games do you think he will be back next year? I think so this is a pass year. What I do is redshirt a lot of players and let them play four games and sit out the rest of the way and let them develop one more year.

Side Show Joe · September 27, 2020

2 hours ago, NorthTexasSportsNetwork said:

With the talent we have, this shouldn’t be a rebuild but if Seth can’t develop these young guys, it’s gonna be a long few years and a lot of fans/students are gonna bail. It’s the sad truth

Seth has some quality young talent, and I believe he can develop them into a team that can contend for the C-USA title in another year or two. The problem is that they will still get embarrassed by SMU and the better G5 programs. C-USA is a very bad conference. We have to aspire to more than just being able to win our conference championship. This is year 5 of the Littrell era. I wish more people around this board would be willing to raise the bar a little.

akriesman · September 28, 2020

On 9/27/2020 at 11:13 AM, southsideguy said:

so if we win one to three games do you think he will be back next year? I think so this is a pass year. What I do is redshirt a lot of players and let them play four games and sit out the rest of the way and let them develop one more year.

While I am not advocating this strategy, that is exactly what Darryl Dickey early in his career at NT. They were a bad football team his first few seasons. However, I clearly remember Dickey talking on The Ticket about redshirting a bunch of players for the future. I didn't really have faith in him at the time after 3 bad losing seasons. But, it worked starting in 2011 when he ran off all those consecutive Sun Belt wins and 4 straight bowl appearances. I am pretty convinced that the redshirting early on contributed to that 3 to 4 year run. After all those redshirted players graduated, the team went in the tank.

greenminer · September 29, 2020

5 hours ago, akriesman said:

I am pretty convinced that the redshirting early on contributed to that 3 to 4 year run. After all those redshirted players graduated, the team went in the tank.

I think the class with Booger, as well as the one right before, played the biggest part. Redshirts or true, their talents were worthy of a better league.

Any benefits from the redshirts....I don't necessarily disagree, but I think that part was secondary to just the overall talent level of those guys. Once they started graduating, the drop off (coupled with the conference's overall improvement) was too much to overcome.

Edited September 29, 2020 by greenminer

NorthTexasSportsNetwork · September 29, 2020

5 hours ago, akriesman said:

While I am not advocating this strategy, that is exactly what Darryl Dickey early in his career at NT. They were a bad football team his first few seasons. However, I clearly remember Dickey talking on The Ticket about redshirting a bunch of players for the future. I didn't really have faith in him at the time after 3 bad losing seasons. But, it worked starting in 2011 when he ran off all those consecutive Sun Belt wins and 4 straight bowl appearances. I am pretty convinced that the redshirting early on contributed to that 3 to 4 year run. After all those redshirted players graduated, the team went in the tank.

Dickey shared a conference title and went to a bowl in year 4 after 6 years back to FBS, while Seth has been to 3 bowls and blow out in them. That's it. Dickey had a much harder situation than Littrell, and he made the most of it by winning big games and a bowl.

ntmeangreen11 · September 29, 2020

https://www.espn.com/college-football/story/_/id/28649423/college-football-teams-most-returning-production-2020

We ranked 121st out of 130 schools in terms of returning production coming in to this season. I absolutely knee jerked after the SMU game when I should have taken in to account just how many guys were making their first meaningful start of their college careers. We only have ten scholarship seniors, 3 of which don't play at all. His record speaks for itself but I am now taking the approach of letting the season play out before calling for his job.

97and03 · September 29, 2020

34 minutes ago, ntmeangreen11 said:

https://www.espn.com/college-football/story/_/id/28649423/college-football-teams-most-returning-production-2020

We ranked 121st out of 130 schools in terms of returning production coming in to this season. I absolutely knee jerked after the SMU game when I should have taken in to account just how many guys were making their first meaningful start of their college careers. We only have ten scholarship seniors, 3 of which don't play at all. His record speaks for itself but I am now taking the approach of letting the season play out before calling for his job.

A very logical and well-reasoned post.

get out GIF

MeanGreenTexan · September 29, 2020

9 hours ago, NorthTexasSportsNetwork said:

Dickey shared a conference title and went to a bowl in year 4 after 6 years back to FBS, while Seth has been to 3 bowls and blow out in them. That's it. Dickey had a much harder situation than Littrell, and he made the most of it by winning big games and a bowl.

While I agree the situation Dickey coached in was more difficult than Littrell's, I don't think we're giving Littrell enough credit for turning around the situation he took over. That was a 1-11 team that had the most lopsided loss to a FCS team in NCAA history. Outside of Jeff Wilson, he had virtually nothing to work with. What he did in 2 years is incredible.

On the flipside, I think we're letting him skate a little too much on the monumental dropoff that happened last year.

At the beginning of the year, I thought SMU is the best team we were going to face this year (outside of A&M). I'll stick by that, so we should be able to win every other game we play this year if we play at full strength. ...How many more we play remains to be seen.

untjim1995 · September 29, 2020

1 hour ago, MeanGreenTexan said:

While I agree the situation Dickey coached in was more difficult than Littrell's, I don't think we're giving Littrell enough credit for turning around the situation he took over. That was a 1-11 team that had the most lopsided loss to a FCS team in NCAA history. Outside of Jeff Wilson, he had virtually nothing to work with. What he did in 2 years is incredible.

On the flipside, I think we're letting him skate a little too much on the monumental dropoff that happened last year.

At the beginning of the year, I thought SMU is the best team we were going to face this year (outside of A&M). I'll stick by that, so we should be able to win every other game we play this year if we play at full strength. ...How many more we play remains to be seen.

The biggest improvement you always see a team make is going from really bad to average--SL did that in one year. The next year, he oversaw the next step up, going from average to good.

But the hardest thing to do is going from good to great and you cannot do that with the lack of defense we roll out. We are already at a huge disadvantage over the non-Texas CUSA West teams just because of the lack of linemen development that TX HS give us. LT, UAB, and USM always have much more physical lines than we ever roll out by a lot. And when the defense can't make stops, you aren't going to beat all of those teams for a division title.

greenminer · September 29, 2020

1 hour ago, untjim1995 said:

LT, UAB, and USM always have much more physical lines than we ever roll out by a lot.

Don't they recruit Texas?

untjim1995 · September 29, 2020

1 minute ago, greenminer said:

Don't they recruit Texas?

I'm sure they do, but there are obvious positions that Texas HS provides better players for your team--and it ain't linemen.

greenminer · September 29, 2020

9 minutes ago, untjim1995 said:

I'm sure they do, but there are obvious positions that Texas HS provides better players for your team--and it ain't linemen.

I don't have the time right now, but it might be interesting to look across their rosters and see where they got their linemen.

I know you have a very strong opinion about the state of Texas HS programs, specifically the passing game and all the QB/WR camps.

Edited September 29, 2020 by greenminer

GrandGreen · September 29, 2020

13 hours ago, NorthTexasSportsNetwork said:

Dickey shared a conference title and went to a bowl in year 4 after 6 years back to FBS, while Seth has been to 3 bowls and blow out in them. That's it. Dickey had a much harder situation than Littrell, and he made the most of it by winning big games and a bowl.

DD had generally a much harder oc schedule, however the brand new Belt was not near as good as CUSA is now.

NT was the most established program in the the Belt and DD's team dominated until DD decided he was much better than NT deserved and started bad mouthing the school and his recruiting deteriorate to one of the worse in the league.

untjim1995 · September 29, 2020

5 minutes ago, greenminer said:

I don't have the time right now, but it might be interesting to look across their rosters and see where they got their linemen.

I know you have a very strong position about the state of Texas HS programs, specifically the passing game and all the QB/WR camps.

I took the liberty of looking this up and I was surprised at the findings--I'm gonna eat some crow on this. Those three teams have a grand total of 12 linemen from Texas, which includes 11 for LT.

I'm even more depressed now. LT beats the crap out of our lines and they have a physicality I could only dream that we had. And seeing that they have 11 guys from this state in these positions really surprised me. I have watched the Big XII and A&M not be able to compete against physical teams from the Southeast, similar to what SMU and UH have run into against Memphis and UCF. And obviously, the Texas SBCUSA teams have been terrible for the most part against the teams in their conference that are SE based. I just figured it was due to the linemen being softer. But in the end, it just appears that the soft part of these Texas FBS programs appears to be in development of linemen to be legitimate players here.

UNTLifer · September 29, 2020

14 hours ago, NorthTexasSportsNetwork said:

Dickey shared a conference title and went to a bowl in year 4 after 6 years back to FBS, while Seth has been to 3 bowls and blow out in them. That's it. Dickey had a much harder situation than Littrell, and he made the most of it by winning big games and a bowl.

Other than beating Cincy in the NOLA Bowl, what would be considered "winning big games"?

untjim1995 · September 29, 2020

1 hour ago, UNTLifer said:

Other than beating Cincy in the NOLA Bowl, what would be considered "winning big games"?

He beat Tech in Lubbock, Boise and Baylor in Denton...and that was it

UNTLifer · September 29, 2020

52 minutes ago, untjim1995 said:

He beat Tech in Lubbock, Boise and Baylor in Denton...and that was it

Tech in Lubbock was a good win. The wins over Boise and Baylor were when they were way down. We all know his MO was to collect a check and get out of town in the "big" games.

untjim1995 · September 29, 2020

1 hour ago, UNTLifer said:

Tech in Lubbock was a good win. The wins over Boise and Baylor were when they were way down. We all know his MO was to collect a check and get out of town in the "big" games.

Baylor was, but when we beat Boise in 1999, they went 9-2.

greenminer · September 29, 2020

Man, early Dickey teams had Tech's number! Those were awesome games.

Monkeypox · September 29, 2020

That 1999 season, when we beat both Tech and Boise, those were our only two wins. We went 2-9, and scored 10 or fewer points in 8 games.

Side Show Joe · September 29, 2020

7 hours ago, untjim1995 said:

I took the liberty of looking this up and I was surprised at the findings--I'm gonna eat some crow on this. Those three teams have a grand total of 12 linemen from Texas, which includes 11 for LT.

I'm even more depressed now. LT beats the crap out of our lines and they have a physicality I could only dream that we had. And seeing that they have 11 guys from this state in these positions really surprised me. I have watched the Big XII and A&M not be able to compete against physical teams from the Southeast, similar to what SMU and UH have run into against Memphis and UCF. And obviously, the Texas SBCUSA teams have been terrible for the most part against the teams in their conference that are SE based. I just figured it was due to the linemen being softer. But in the end, it just appears that the soft part of these Texas FBS programs appears to be in development of linemen to be legitimate players here.

For years LA Tech, USM, and UAB have been able to recruit higher caliber talent on their lines. Just look into the position rankings of most of their lineman and compare them to ours. On the good side, Littrell has gotten much better at attracting more talented linemen over the last two years. But, it will take time for those players to contribute. Our pass blocking has improved over last season, but we still need to get a lot better at run blocking.

NorthTexasSportsNetwork · September 30, 2020

11 hours ago, UNTLifer said:

Other than beating Cincy in the NOLA Bowl, what would be considered "winning big games"?

I mean he won big time conference games like MTSU 2001 and New Mexico State in 2002 who both finished with 7+ wins. He also hung in with some bigger named teams unlike SL.

You could even say that 2006 SMU win was big considering we aren’t that good against them all time, even if they sucked

Edited September 30, 2020 by NorthTexasSportsNetwork

UNTLifer · September 30, 2020

4 hours ago, Side Show Joe said:

Our pass blocking has improved over last season, but we still need to get a lot better at run blocking.

Our stats would not agree with the second part of your statement.

https://meangreensports.com/sports/football/stats

UNTLifer · September 30, 2020

6 minutes ago, NorthTexasSportsNetwork said:

I mean he won big time conference games like MTSU 2001 and New Mexico State in 2002 who both finished with 7+ wins. He also hung in with some bigger named teams unlike SL.

You could even say that 2006 SMU win was big considering we aren’t that good against them all time, even if they sucked

Fair. Then I would give SL 2016 @ Army, La Tech and Army in 2017, 2018 SMU, Arkansas (although they were down) and FAU. Has he failed in bowl games and the one conference championship game? Yes. he has shown a weakness when given extra time to prepare or opponents extra time to prepare for us. That needs to change.