Darrell Dickey update

Mean Green Matt · June 23, 2021

7 hours ago, GrandGreen said:

Character should count.

Darrell was definitely a character.

emmitt01 · June 23, 2021

2 hours ago, Marty said:

Would take DD back only if he brings Ramon Flanagan with him.

Them’s fighting words.

(They quite literally are if you ask @SilverEagle)

Cr1028 · June 23, 2021

greenminer · June 23, 2021

51 minutes ago, Cr1028 said:

Not gonna lie, their latest branding efforts are a'ight IMO.

Cr1028 · June 23, 2021

2 minutes ago, greenminer said:

Not gonna lie, their latest branding efforts are a'ight IMO.

I don’t disagree

untjim1995 · June 23, 2021

17 hours ago, emmitt01 said:

I would take him back.

Name a coach that has done more (or even as much) since he left...don't worry, I'll wait.

And let's not forget that, when he rattled off four straight conference titles, North Texas was BEYOND the bottom of the barrel when it came to D1 football. Apogee doesn't get built without that run, period. When those who are less than 60 years old think of their favorite players the list goes something like this: Brandon Kennedy, Jamario Thomas, Cody Spencer, Patrick Cobbs, Johnny Quinn, Jonas Buckles...remind me, who was their coach???

If we want to keep playing the "well, his accomplishments aren't impressive when compared with the rest of the college football world" game, while conveniently forgetting that everyone outside of the University of Idaho (including most high schools), could boast better financial support and facilities please spare me. Have we forgotten that game days required generator rentals just to turn the lights on? Anyone wanna pee in a trough or step over the armies of crickets again? Remember when the FRONT row of our stadium was 30 yards from the field...I do, and my eyes aren't what they used to be so luckily we have upgraded. How about the athletic center with the decent weight room and training room...oh wait, he didn't have that to use as a recruiting tool.

All that MF'er has done since he left is show that he is fully capable of "exciting" offense when he has the horses to run it and kept an OC job in the SEC. You know, the same SEC that can literally pick ANY coach they want, from pretty much any other conference, and money whip them into jumping ship.

Oh, and we wear quite a few black jerseys these days.

Well, the black jerseys we wear today look a smidge better than the YMCA level outfits he put us in that night, all to send an FU to RV and the rest of the university.

Look, DD did his best here. He built us up to beat mostly spares--and I'm eternally thankful for that. It beat the hell out of losing to them, for damn sure. He had some great wins--at Tech, here against Boise State, the win over MUTS to turn his entire program around in 2001, Cincy in 2002 in NO, crushing Baylor at home in front of a sellout at Fouts, and beating SMU here in 2006. But those three years he had a winning record here don't whitewash the other 6 years where we lost often and usually got plastered OOC. That Tulsa game in 2005 was the beginning of the end, when we got hammered 54-2. After that, it was pretty obvious he had checked out, as his offensive game plans were even more vanilla than they had been when pounding the ball down the throats of SBC teams built up his resume. And that SMU game in 2006 really proved this point, as Woody Wilson at QB made plays with his feet and arm that were freelanced to get actual TDs and led us to that win over Phil Bennett's SMU team. It got him benched the very next week because he wouldn't adhere to the Buick offense. That got us exactly 2 more wins in his last year here.

DD got what he earned here, both good and bad. But what most of us on here couldn't believe is that our university decided to go even cheaper by hiring Todd Dodge and his HS coaching buddies. The leadership at that time was even more transparent in not caring about the program other than it being used to fund the rest of the athletic department as much as it could. It was very clear that they were content with us being at Fouts for the future. But in the only positive thing that came from Todd Dodge's tenure, over and over in the media, he made it clear he was promised a new stadium to recruit to, never letting that go, even when there was deafening silence from the BOR and administration on that. But UNTFlyer knew that the promise had been made and he made it his goal to get this thru the SGA, showing how decrepit Fouts really was and how many generators were needed to make that albatross be able to host a gameday. Once that got put on a referendum for the students, while keeping it very quiet, the vote passed. That never happens here under the Dickster...ever. HE would have just bitched about it to motivate his kids to believe everyone hated them. Hence, the MFers quote.

Darrell Dickey wasn't the right fit here, just as Matt Simon wasn't before him. Todd Dodge and Dan McCarney, weren't either. And quite honestly, the late returns on SL suggest that this place is too tough for him, as well. Being the best of these coaches, as it appears that DD can claim to be rather easily, doesn't exactly make us feel like he was some kind of great coach. He's an OC that follows orders pretty damn well for good head coaches at Memphis and A&M.

UNT_FH_FR_YR · June 23, 2021

5 minutes ago, untjim1995 said:

That Tulsa game in 2005 was the beginning of the end, when we got hammered 54-2.

My first UNT game as a freshman! Walking to The Tomato afterwards a student leaning over the rail at College Inn was shouting to anyone that would listen it was time to fire DD.

greenminer · June 23, 2021

21 hours ago, greenminer said:

Any animosity DD made public (black jerseys being the big one) was IMO towards RV, and not the fans or our program.

Having said that, some fans took it personally anyways and wish he never comes back.

EVIDENCE A:

59 minutes ago, untjim1995 said:

Well, the black jerseys we wear today look a smidge better than the YMCA level outfits he put us in that night, all to send an FU to RV and the rest of the university.

El Paso Eagle · June 23, 2021

1 hour ago, untjim1995 said:

Darrell Dickey wasn't the right fit here, just as Matt Simon wasn't before him. Todd Dodge and Dan McCarney, weren't either. And quite honestly, the late returns on SL suggest that this place is too tough for him, as well. Being the best of these coaches, as it appears that DD can claim to be rather easily, doesn't exactly make us feel like he was some kind of great coach. He's an OC that follows orders pretty damn well for good head coaches at Memphis and A&M.

I will always believe that he Todd Dodge era was the biggest lost opportunity North Texas every had (and wasted). I wish we would have had an AD and President at the time would would have made sure that he actually hired college level coaches at the coordinators levels; either by making it a condition of hiring or making sure the funds were available if that was the case - however I will never believe he could not have found coaches at he college level who would have taken the jobs. We had National attention that was worth millions. Interest was coming in from people who had never paid attention to NT Football.

Mean Green 93-98 · June 23, 2021

3 minutes ago, El Paso Eagle said:

I will always believe that he Todd Dodge era was the biggest lost opportunity North Texas every had (and wasted). I wish we would have had an AD and President at the time would would have made sure that he actually hired college level coaches at the coordinators levels; either by making it a condition of hiring or making sure the funds were available if that was the case - however I will never believe he could not have found coaches at he college level who would have taken the jobs. We had National attention that was worth millions. Interest was coming in from people who had never paid attention to NT Football.

I want to agree, but...the funny thing is, once the high school coordinators were replaced with FBS-level coordinators, there was no marked improvement. You'd think replacing Ron Mendoza with Gary DeLoach would bring immediate improvement, but our defense actually got worse. The same with the offense once Coach Chico replaced Todd Ford.

SilverEagle · June 23, 2021

Quote

The Dickster did his best to build us up, but in the end, his offense here was as boring as it gets and his personality was even worse.

I thought he had a pretty funny sense of humor..... Funnier that SL.

And as to his statement that "this is the hardest and/or worst place to coach and/or recruit to" ...to me truer words were never spoken. Thanks to our administration, our history AND our culture, IT WAS the hardest place to coach and recruit players. A good bit of that has changed, but it was in full effect when he tried to coach here. Dickey was not the first to notice. As I've recounted many times, former SEC coach Bob Tyler basically wondered out loud in an interview "what the hell is wrong with these people?"

15 hours ago, emmitt01 said:

Them’s fighting words.

(They quite literally are if you ask @SilverEagle)

You know, waving your arms and making a lot of noise at someone is not my idea of a fight.....it's, (at it's worst), a verbal confrontation. I was professionally trained to know the difference........even though I already did........😉

emmitt01 · June 23, 2021

2 hours ago, Mean Green 93-98 said:

I want to agree, but...the funny thing is, once the high school coordinators were replaced with FBS-level coordinators, there was no marked improvement. You'd think replacing Ron Mendoza with Gary DeLoach would bring immediate improvement, but our defense actually got worse. The same with the offense once Coach Chico replaced Todd Ford.

The damage was already done. One of the quotes from Deloach once he took over that debacle, during a hitting drill, was "I gotta work the "P" out of these guys first". He had to fix the fact that Dodge's teams actually hit someone for the first time in games most seasons.

Todd Dodge didn't care about defense, never has. And he has seldom run a successful offense where his players weren't either A) more talented than the man across from them, or B) had access to year round coaching or C) ran the same offense for years

UNTLifer · June 23, 2021

49 minutes ago, emmitt01 said:

The damage was already done. One of the quotes from Deloach once he took over that debacle, during a hitting drill, was "I gotta work the "P" out of these guys first". He had to fix the fact that Dodge's teams actually hit someone for the first time in games most seasons.

Todd Dodge didn't care about defense, never has. And he has seldom run a successful offense where his players weren't either A) more talented than the man across from them, or B) had access to year round coaching or C) ran the same offense for years

C. His success in Southlake was due to the fact that his offense was installed at every junior high/middle school in town. By the time Dodge got a hold of them, they were well versed in the system. He is a great QB coach, but he has succeeded due to the above and being in affluent school systems. Look at his records at Newman Smith and Marble Falls for reference.

untjim1995 · June 23, 2021

2 hours ago, emmitt01 said:

The damage was already done. One of the quotes from Deloach once he took over that debacle, during a hitting drill, was "I gotta work the "P" out of these guys first". He had to fix the fact that Dodge's teams actually hit someone for the first time in games most seasons.

Todd Dodge didn't care about defense, never has. And he has seldom run a successful offense where his players weren't either A) more talented than the man across from them, or B) had access to year round coaching or C) ran the same offense for years

Quite frankly, that’s no different than Seth Littrell so far. He’s a Leach acolyte—get a stop or two to allow us to keep scoring and we will win. Hal Mumme, Mike Leach, Art Briles, Kliff Kingsbury (at Tech), and Seth Littrell have all shown the same interest in defense…which is very, very little. Todd Dodge was certainly no different, albeit with high school coaches.

Its amazing that we have hired a boring, vanilla coach in Dickey, followed with a higher octane offense that couldn’t stop a YMCA offense themselves on defense, then hire a guy who acted like the Dickster 2.0 with his offensive scheme, only to replace him with Littrell who looks like a more Polished and experienced at college coaching version of Dodge. I fully expect that our next coach will be someone that is an OC at some place like Wisconsin or Iowa, where we completely go backwards in our offensive and defensive schemes….

emmitt01 · June 23, 2021

untjim1995 · June 23, 2021

3 minutes ago, emmitt01 said:

And graces the name of our practice fields, so you know he’s been good…

Still really glad Hayden Fry didn’t get anything named after him in Denton…I mean 40-23-3 in six seasons was just ok, I guess. He must have not been too great, winning only one conference title here and being so spare to never even get to go to a bowl. IIRC, I believe he beat some ranked teams and got us ranked, too. Clearly getting hired away as a head coach at Iowa was not that great, either…definitely.

I guess it’s impossible to get anyone here to duplicate that kind of success for a full 6 seasons, especially when you have to face the gauntlet of SBCUSA teams we play year in and year out…I mean UT-satellite schools, Rice, F_Us, and other directional schools are just really, really tough to beat year-in and year-out.

emmitt01 · June 23, 2021

20 minutes ago, untjim1995 said:

And graces the name of our practice fields, so you know he’s been good…

Still really glad Hayden Fry didn’t get anything named after him in Denton…I mean 40-23-3 in six seasons was just ok, I guess. He must have not been too great, winning only one conference title here and being so spare to never even get to go to a bowl. IIRC, I believe he beat some ranked teams and got us ranked, too. Clearly getting hired away as a head coach at Iowa was not that great, either…definitely.

I guess it’s impossible to get anyone here to duplicate that kind of success for a full 6 seasons, especially when you have to face the gauntlet of SBCUSA teams we play year in and year out…I mean UT-satellite schools, Rice, F_Us, and other directional schools are just really, really tough to beat year-in and year-out.

My point was not that DD is Knute Rockne (I picked an old school reference to keep everyone’s interest). My point was that, relevant to North Texas history, he’s not measured against some group of legends…and yes, that includes Hayden Fry who is exalted only in the minds of North Texas faithful.

untjim1995 · June 24, 2021

14 minutes ago, emmitt01 said:

My point was not that DD is Knute Rockne (I picked an old school reference to keep everyone’s interest). My point was that, relevant to North Texas history, he’s not measured against some group of legends…and yes, that includes Hayden Fry who is exalted only in the minds of North Texas faithful.

Hayden Fry is a sainted legend in Iowa, as he should be…but as for North Texas, he’s been impossible to replace, so I get it. Of course, he had credibility with Texas HS coaches, parents, recruits, and media in a time that was even harder for us to compete and recruit against one of the best conferences in the country, many of whom wanted nothing to do with us ever even being considered for membership in the club.

Look, I’m probably too hard on Darrell Dickey and that’s just because I felt like he quit on us. And maybe he should have? We had the most inept AD being softpeddled forward year after year for being in budget by the BOR and administration. Dickey never got one hint of appreciation from outside a few voices in Denton for what he did in the SBC run. That told me a lot about how little anyone thought of the conference and our program during those years. Was that fair? Probably not…but it was obvious that Dickey couldn’t believe it and that he wasn’t going anywhere nor was he getting any help with facilities or budget either. This place basically drove him crazy…which it also did to both Matt Simon and Dan McCarney when they got fired. Dodge seemed resigned to his fate and even seemed eager to go back to HS coaching at his pick of schools in Texas. It’ll be interesting to see how SL handles it in the season(s) ahead. He may be content with being a P5 OC and making similar money with less pressure or he might go insane trying to keep his job. Neither would surprise me after seeing what this Place does to head football coaches.

If I had been a student during the DD days, maybe I’d feel different about him. But getting crushed with a run-out-the-clock mindset versus most OOC opponents was just defeating, especially after he would put us down afterwards in interviews. As I said, DD deserved his accolades while here and he deserved getting fired. It’s why I don’t have too big of an issue with him being in the UNT HoF, which probably also means absolutely nothing to him.

Edited June 24, 2021 by untjim1995

Cr1028 · June 24, 2021

8 hours ago, Mean Green 93-98 said:

I want to agree, but...the funny thing is, once the high school coordinators were replaced with FBS-level coordinators, there was no marked improvement. You'd think replacing Ron Mendoza with Gary DeLoach would bring immediate improvement, but our defense actually got worse. The same with the offense once Coach Chico replaced Todd Ford.

Actually, we showed improvement in 2010 until we lost our top 3 quarterbacks, top 2 centers and at least 5 other starters to injury.

https://www.dallasnews.com/sports/unt-mean-green/2010/10/07/football-baine-ready-for-starting-chance/

Cr1028 · June 24, 2021

3 hours ago, emmitt01 said:

Don’t forget 12% of total losses. He had a worse conference record than Matt Simon and a worse overall record than both Seth and McCarney. He was fortunate enough to have the Big West collapse right before Boise got good and that Troy and FAU didn’t join the Belt until the end of his “miraculous” run. (He lost at least once to each during that 26 game streak).

Edited June 24, 2021 by Cr1028

Harry · June 24, 2021

4 straight bowl games and he beat Cincinnati which may go down as one of the biggest wins in the entire history of the program. Did not have a pot to piss in facility wise. I kid you now, when recruits were in town they AVOIDED Fouts and basically tried to pretend it was not there. I think they would all killed to have the resources we have today.

Mean Green 93-98 · June 24, 2021

24 minutes ago, Cr1028 said:

Actually, we showed improvement in 2010

No, we didn't. Certainly not offensively speaking. Once TD was fired and Coach Chico took over, that gave them a little spark. But early 2010 was clearly worse than 2009 on the offensive side of the ball.

Cr1028 · June 24, 2021

23 minutes ago, Mean Green 93-98 said:

No, we didn't. Certainly not offensively speaking. Once TD was fired and Coach Chico took over, that gave them a little spark. But early 2010 was clearly worse than 2009 on the offensive side of the ball.

The stats show he was moving to a more 50/50 mix and away from his pass-heavy offense in order to help the defense.

letsgiveacheer · June 24, 2021

1 hour ago, Harry said:

4 straight bowl games and he beat Cincinnati which may go down as one of the biggest wins in the entire history of the program. Did not have a pot to piss in facility wise. I kid you now, when recruits were in town they AVOIDED Fouts and basically tried to pretend it was not there. I think they would all killed to have the resources we have today.

We have played Cincinnati seventeen times in all, winning nine of those games and tying one.

Travis · June 24, 2021

On 6/22/2021 at 11:04 AM, DeepGreen said:

Who on this board would take Dickey back as our head coach should Seth fail this season? I would. Dickey would have the facilities and the backing at UNT.

Not for a million dollars would I take him back.

well maybe for a million. But I wouldn’t be happy about it!

Edited June 24, 2021 by Travis