Is the MWC Better for UNT

[MeanGreenTexan]

42 minutes ago, ColoradoEagle said:

Success is fleeting, though, for most G5 teams. They haven't really proved anything yet, and they have some severe negatives (low athletic budget, rented football stadium, laughable basketball arena, no basketball success, etc). The one thing they have going for them is exclusivity in the San Antonio market, but that isn't helping them fill up the Alamo Dome or anything.

It's hard to reconcile 'possibly a sleeping giant, because of the San Antonio market' with the first two games of the season drawing 16k. If anything, their history and lack of attendance show they're a project.

 

Also, glass houses when comparing attendance!

[untjim1995]

48 minutes ago, SMU2006 said:

Looks to me like the UNT home attendance when SMU comes to Denton is better than just about anyone you've played since the stadium opened.  Why would you ever want to do away with that?

To not give you guys an easy win that helps you out recruit us easily…

[ColoradoEagle]

19 minutes ago, MeanGreenTexan said:

Also, glass houses when comparing attendance!

I'm not saying ours is much better. However, the "they have no competition in the SA market!" part doesn't match up with reality. So if they can't even beat us in attendance, it means that whole argument holds no water.

[MeanGreenTexan]

1 minute ago, ColoradoEagle said:

I'm not saying ours is much better. However, the "they have no competition in the SA market!" part doesn't match up with reality. So if they can't even beat us in attendance, it means that whole argument holds no water.

Gotcha.   
That part is certainly comparable to us delivering the DFW market.   It really doesn't matter where you are in the state of Texas (with the exception of the panhandle which has about as many people as Sanger), UT & A&M are going to deliver all markets (OU will help deliver the DFW market).

So both UTSA & UNT are stuck with pipe dreams of delivering their market, that neither can do, but one team is winning in football right now, and the other one is getting trashed by UAB.

I know that's a significant reduction, and NT has a TON MORE going for us than UTSA does as far as infrastructure, recent b-ball success, and most-importantly academics, but man this is really bad timing for this movement to be happening.

[ColoradoEagle]

19 minutes ago, MeanGreenTexan said:

So both UTSA & UNT are stuck with pipe dreams of delivering their market, that neither can do, but one team is winning in football right now, and the other one is getting trashed by UAB.

I know that's a significant reduction, and NT has a TON MORE going for us than UTSA does as far as infrastructure, recent b-ball success, and most-importantly academics, but man this is really bad timing for this movement to be happening.

If either program were to start racking up top 25 rankings, they'd deliver their markets. You'd see wall to wall coverage in San Antonio or DFW. The Alamo Dome would sell out. Apogee would sell out. Some games may need to be played at Jerry World until Apogee can be expanded.

But neither team is in that situation. That's why if you're comparing apples to apples, UNT is in a far better position than UTSA, as you said. The past 13 months are not going to determine who ends up in which conference.

[Wag Tag]

15 minutes ago, ColoradoEagle said:

If either program were to start racking up top 25 rankings, they'd deliver their markets. You'd see wall to wall coverage in San Antonio or DFW. The Alamo Dome would sell out. Apogee would sell out. Some games may need to be played at Jerry World until Apogee can be expanded.

But neither team is in that situation. That's why if you're comparing apples to apples, UNT is in a far better position than UTSA, as you said. The past 13 months are not going to determine who ends up in which conference.

Rankings hasn’t worked for SMU?

[PlummMeanGreen]

23 minutes ago, ColoradoEagle said:

If either program were to start racking up top 25 rankings, they'd deliver their markets. You'd see wall to wall coverage in San Antonio or DFW. The Alamo Dome would sell out. Apogee would sell out. Some games may need to be played at Jerry World until Apogee can be expanded.

But neither team is in that situation. That's why if you're comparing apples to apples, UNT is in a far better position than UTSA, as you said. The past 13 months are not going to determine who ends up in which conference.

From all I’ve heard—you are exactly right.👍   

Reading elsewhere it’s largely about facilities & budget.  UNT is fine with both compared to many in the G5.         •••  I still don’t think our location hurts, either plus 25 minutes from DFW Airport & 15 minutes from Alliance Airport? 
 

🦅

Edited September 23, 2021 by PlummMeanGreen

[MeanGreenTexan]

13 minutes ago, ColoradoEagle said:

If either program were to start racking up top 25 rankings, they'd deliver their markets. You'd see wall to wall coverage in San Antonio or DFW. The Alamo Dome would sell out. Apogee would sell out. Some games may need to be played at Jerry World until Apogee can be expanded.

But neither team is in that situation. That's why if you're comparing apples to apples, UNT is in a far better position than UTSA, as you said. The past 13 months are not going to determine who ends up in which conference.

Our problem is that we've had 100 years of football and have never had the scenario you played out above happen to us.    Whereas schools like USF and UCF have 20-30 years of playing football & have already seen this kind of scenario, and UCF has parlayed it into a P5 invite (for however much longer the Big12 retains that label).
UTSA could most-certainly see the same kind of results if they play their cards right, and it might have started in 2020!  Meanwhile, we're nowhere near that kind of scenario.

[ColoradoEagle]

9 minutes ago, Wag Tag said:

Rankings hasn’t worked for SMU?

Are you talking about football? They're rumored to be on the waiting list for the Big 12. If you're talking about attendance, their attendance did get a decent bump from being ranked. Keep in mind, you're not going to see the same gigantic leap in attendance for a small private school as you would a large public school. They did get a ton of media coverage for that and when they were running the table in basketball.

4 minutes ago, MeanGreenTexan said:

Our problem is that we've had 100 years of football and have never had the scenario you played out above happen to us.    Whereas schools like USF and UCF have 20-30 years of playing football & have already seen this kind of scenario, and UCF has parlayed it into a P5 invite (for however much longer the Big12 retains that label).
UTSA could most-certainly see the same kind of results if they play their cards right, and it might have started in 2020!  Meanwhile, we're nowhere near that kind of scenario.

I don't think you can really parlay lack of history into promise of future success. In their first 9 years (not counting this season) they went 48-60. If they really hit the ground hard, I could see some of the argument for it being a program on the come up. But they've been basically an average G5 program, and all the current talk is ~potential~, which plenty of schools, including our own, have.

[TIgreen01]

2 hours ago, untjim1995 said:

I'm in the minority on this, big time, but the SMU series does nothing for us, except get our fans all kinds of bent out of shape when we play yall. We get our asses kicked, yall get the recruits and the favorable local coverage, as well as a thousands of fans to come to your stadium to watch us get prions raped. And when yall come to Denton, you bring about 50 fans.

We would be much better off just playing other G5s than playing SMU. When we lose to Ohio, Lousiana, Wyoming, or Tulsa, no one gets angry about it, except for the few thousand MG faithful. Lose to SMU and its basically watching the entire program completely fall apart--see 2015, 2019, 2020, and 2021. Only season that a SMU loss didn't lead to a complete dumpster fire was in 2017, when Mason Fine led us to close wins in games against LT, UTSA, and Army.

This is so insane.  Yes, let’s play more games against schools and teams that we don’t care about …because when we lose we won’t care?!?  WTF.  

[wardly]

5 hours ago, Hookset said:

Yep, exactly. We aren’t a dominant program in our current conference. Why would a stronger conference want us? In 10 years we haven’t even sold out our 31K seat stadium. When we came close, it was because we had a great visitor crowd. We don’t bring people to home games so we damn sure aren’t going to travel to Utah, Idaho, California…

I personally don’t like seeing our poor showings for football now. I damn sure don’t want to see us get clobbered by better programs every week.

I know many of our programs are starting to show success (MBB, WBB, track, softball, golf, volleyball). And soccer has always been good (more people should praise that program for it’s success). I want to see if we can maintain this more than 3-4 years at a time before a coach leaves and we regress. 
For football, we need to quit scheduling SMU (6 wins in almost 50 tries! Most of those wins from before I was born!!!). I am tired of getting curb stomped by them. What’s the definition of insanity? Doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result.

 
How about we try playing some of the lower MWC schools or lower Sunbelt schools or WAC?

As we are I don't know if we can beat anyone as low in their conference as we are in ours. On another note the AAC said they will be adding teams in a matter of weeks, not months. I hope they at least get AFC and Colorado State from the MWC which could open up a spot for us.

[MeanGreenTexan]

31 minutes ago, ColoradoEagle said:

...

I don't think you can really parlay lack of history into promise of future success. In their first 9 years (not counting this season) they went 48-60. If they really hit the ground hard, I could see some of the argument for it being a program on the come up. But they've been basically an average G5 program, and all the current talk is ~potential~, which plenty of schools, including our own, have.

Right, but don't you remember UCF's permanent position in ESPN's Bottom 10 for what seemed like forever?  You gotta start somewhere in order to show potential.   Thing is, in order to start, you gotta be able to beat UAB, not lose to them 40-6.

[ColoradoEagle]

1 minute ago, MeanGreenTexan said:

Right, but don't you remember UCF's permanent position in ESPN's Bottom 10 for what seemed like forever?  You gotta start somewhere in order to show potential.   Thing is, in order to start, you gotta be able to beat UAB, not lose to them 40-6.

Yeah, but then they played lights out for three years, including an undefeated season and Peach Bowl win over Georgia. UTSA went 7-5 and lost in the First Responders Bowl to a Sun Belt team...

[MeanGreenTexan]

8 minutes ago, ColoradoEagle said:

Yeah, but then they played lights out for three years, including an undefeated season and Peach Bowl win over Georgia. UTSA went 7-5 and lost in the First Responders Bowl to a Sun Belt team...

I think you know you're downplaying LALa's ranking there.
They did all of that after coming off a 4-win season.    I look forward to doing that next year with OUR new coach.
And heaven forbid that 7-5 season is the beginning of UTSA's run to an undefeated season and Peach Bowl win over some SEC powerhouse in 2024.   They've already beat Illinois on the road this year.  If they happen to win this weekend VS Memphis, I dont see another loss on their schedule (maybe UAB).   At least today, while all of this restructure posturing is happening they can argue they're on their way.

[ColoradoEagle]

My posts are getting repetitive, so I'll just leave it at people are anointing UTSA when they have shown nothing historically to earn that praise the way programs like UCF or Cincinnati have. I think discussions of an undefeated 2021 season are a bit premature.

 

[Wag Tag]

1 hour ago, ColoradoEagle said:

Are you talking about football? They're rumored to be on the waiting list for the Big 12. If you're talking about attendance, their attendance did get a decent bump from being ranked. Keep in mind, you're not going to see the same gigantic leap in attendance for a small private school as you would a large public school. They did get a ton of media coverage for that and when they were running the table in basketball.

I don't think you can really parlay lack of history into promise of future success. In their first 9 years (not counting this season) they went 48-60. If they really hit the ground hard, I could see some of the argument for it being a program on the come up. But they've been basically an average G5 program, and all the current talk is ~potential~, which plenty of schools, including our own, have.

I was referring to crowd size and student support.

[Hookset]

7 hours ago, DentonLurker said:

So what you're saying is all schools should only move into better conferences when they are good in their current conference even if there are solid financial, exposure, rivalry, recruiting reasons to move up? Just trying to make sure I understand your argument.

The better MWC schools are likely going to leave when they get an invite to the PAC12 or BIG12. The current TV contract will be voided. The next TV contract won’t pay as much. 
We will play lesser MWC schools with more travel expenses and a poor TV contract. 
That will be our reality.

[Hookset]

7 hours ago, SteaminWillieBeamin said:

Very strange defeatist arguments going on here. We don't deserve better, so don't do better? Like the abused spouse... 

I have always wanted us to be dominant in all sports and move up to a better conference. 
Reality is football drives realignment opportunities. So if we go to the MWC now because they currently have a better TV contract, we will again be setting us up for failure. 
When the better MWC schools make their jump to the PAC12 and or BIG12 the current TV contract will be voided. The new TV contract for the MWC won’t pay as much. We will be stuck in a weak conference and now have even greater travel expenses. 
UNT can’t cover our current scholarship expenses.

It is sad to say, but money drives what happens.

Just saying…

[untjim1995]

2 hours ago, TIgreen01 said:

This is so insane.  Yes, let’s play more games against schools and teams that we don’t care about …because when we lose we won’t care?!?  WTF.  

It’s really not that hard to comprehend that losing to said school that kicks your ass on the reg, while you bring thousands to their stadium and then get dozens to come to yours, as you get said ass kicked, really doesnt help with recruiting or local coverage.

But North Texas fans are a special breed. We think SMU is some kind of powerhouse that is just awesome to get to play. We then overload the entire staff and players with this intense dislike of a school that doesn’t give one rip about us and then said squad falls apart as soon as SMU starts beating us. But by all means, let’s keep this all going…it’s worked out awesome for us so far!!

[casual fan]

2 hours ago, Hookset said:

The better MWC schools are likely going to leave when they get an invite to the PAC12 or BIG12. The current TV contract will be voided. The next TV contract won’t pay as much. 
We will play lesser MWC schools with more travel expenses and a poor TV contract. 
That will be our reality.

EXACTLY.   If you got into a watered down MWC, it would be a monumental mistake.  

[SteaminWillieBeamin]

2 hours ago, Hookset said:

We will be stuck in a weak conference and now have even greater travel expenses. 
 

When a conference loses its money and it's no longer sustainable, changes happen. This is what always happens and is happening now. This craphole CUSA isn't the conference we joined, those teams left and it is going to transition to something else.. like always.

It isn't a marriage until death. It's dating while the host is buying you steak. 

[PlummMeanGreen]

I think most agree the only way it would make sense is if 3-4 CUSA West schools joined the MWC; otherwise, it would be foolish for North Texas to go it alone into that conference.  
 

[Hookset]

17 hours ago, TIgreen01 said:

This is so insane.  Yes, let’s play more games against schools and teams that we don’t care about …because when we lose we won’t care?!?  WTF.  

I am not saying that at all. Many Power 5 programs schedule powderpuff games for their non conference schedule. Look at Alabama’s non conference this year. They are the best team in the nation for several years now. 
Why can’t we do this??? Guarantee a couple more wins every year. Become bowl eligible. Get 5 extra weeks of practice to develop players and sell to recruits they can travel to bowl sites and play.

This attitude that we need to play the best teams in the best conference every year isn’t working. 

[SteaminWillieBeamin]

23 minutes ago, Hookset said:

Why can’t we do this???

We do. I hate it. I can't stand playing HBU, Abilene Christian or Incarnate Word. It is a complete waste of my hubclub money. I can't even give the tickets away. Any other powderpuff games are going to be within CUSA by natural course (UTEP, Rice, etc), but we can't seem to win those consistently either. 

[TIgreen01]

16 hours ago, untjim1995 said:

It’s really not that hard to comprehend that losing to said school that kicks your ass on the reg, while you bring thousands to their stadium and then get dozens to come to yours, as you get said ass kicked, really doesnt help with recruiting or local coverage.

But North Texas fans are a special breed. We think SMU is some kind of powerhouse that is just awesome to get to play. We then overload the entire staff and players with this intense dislike of a school that doesn’t give one rip about us and then said squad falls apart as soon as SMU starts beating us. But by all means, let’s keep this all going…it’s worked out awesome for us so far!!

You and I have a completely different approach to competition, I guess.  Smu gets killed on the reg by tcu.  Michigan gets owned by Ohio st.  20 years of losing in both series.  Guess they should admit they can’t compete and just go find someone else to play.  Never mind that 90% of their fan base cares only about that one game every year.

 

Edited September 24, 2021 by TIgreen01