🟢They had 17 losing seasons in a row—still sold out their stadium—then they hired this guy...

[PlummMeanGreen]

A few lessons “we hiring experts”🙄 
can still learn from. 

https://magazine.foriowa.org/archive/archive-story.php?ed=true&storyid=1677

 

❇️🦅❇️

Edited September 28, 2021 by PlummMeanGreen

[ADLER]

Idiots Out Wandering Around

 

[MGNation92]

Did someone say IOWA?

[Hookset]

Selling out a stadium in Iowa even when teams are losing is easier there than here. They have no pro teams and few large cities with alternate activities to take away attendance. When the weather turns bad, they are accustomed to it and that is huge. 
Down here there are so many other options that people have to spend their money on. When our weather gets bad, people shelter in place for a couple days until it warms back up. 

[southsideguy]

I really think coach Mac problem was alcohol.  It think he was a good coach but alcohol became more important to him than coaching.  

[wardly]

25 minutes ago, southsideguy said:

I really think coach Mac problem was alcohol.  It think he was a good coach but alcohol became more important to him than coaching.  

Speaking as an alcoholic who has not had a drink since Christmas of 1988, once an alcoholic always an alcoholic. AA has the best "cure" rate of any institution and its only 5%. Mac was under a great deal of stress and pressure as a head football coach and "slipped" badly. That is not uncommon, and you need to just get back on the bicycle. Alcoholism is an insidious generic disease that can only be controlled by abstaining from drinking. Usually you need to find new friends as most of the ones you probably have now are heavy drinkers. I was fortunate in that I woke up one morning, said I am done, and never looked back, never had any craving or desire to drink again. Coach Mac wasn't so lucky.

[PlummMeanGreen]

If we are hiring a new coach, we almost need a celebrity head football coach; a “WOW!” kind of hire our present players are aware of & potential portal transfers are aware, too.   He needs to be in his 50’s (or early 60’s) & will not immediately start freshin’ up his resume for just a 2-3 year run in Denton.  Someone like that kind of hire  almost needs to fall out of the sky because I don’t know who’d that be right now.  

Maybe a Chris Petersen would fit that criteria, but he looked very comfortable in front of the TV cameras the other day as an analyst. 

Wren Baker may already have someone in mind. 

If we don’t better our conference affiliation, I honestly don’t care who we hire. It would be a moot point to be in CUSA where we old timers have seen multiple schools go beep! beep! right past us.  Counting our Mo Valley affiliation, I’ve lost count of all the schools who better’d themselves over our (still) favorite school.  
We all bleed green—where else would we as fans go or change to? The Walmart Conference of Maroon & Burn’t Orange T-shirts? 🥺

🦅

Edited September 28, 2021 by PlummMeanGreen

[greenjoe]

I know this sounds crazy, but I think Plumm is right.  We need a proven winner AND a celebrity hire.  The name that comes to mind for me along those lines is Charlie Strong.  A well known name, familiar with Texas, an automatic invite into high school locker rooms and recruit’s living rooms.  Expensive, you bet.  Losing is costing us 1.8 mil per year.  The worst he could say is “no.”

[wardly]

Didn't he get fired at South Florida after getting fired from Texas?

[untjim1995]

3 hours ago, wardly said:

Didn't he get fired at South Florida after getting fired from Texas?

Yes he did…

[untjim1995]

Iowa and Kansas State both had something rebuild from when they each hired Hayden Fry and Bill Snyder, respectively. They both were members in great conference and that meant they got home games against great programs that people wanted to go see, even if they sucked. Iowa always had games with Minnesota, Wisconsin, Michigan, Ohio State, Illinois, Purdue, Indiana, Michigan State, and Northwestern to get people to Iowa City for games. Kansas State always had games against Nebraska, Oklahoma, Colorado, Oklahoma State, Missouri, Kansas, and Iowa State, so they had people who would still go to games in Manhattan, not to mention they had a great basketball tradition and played in a great hoops league.

North Texas has never had that luxury to get people to Denton. As a matter of fact, on the few times we have gotten decent crowds to Fouts or Apogee, we have almost always crapped the bed hard, usually early in the season, meaning nobody would show up for our games against conference opponents later on. 
 

I truly don’t know what it would take in Denton to build a winner. I’ve never seen it since I started following the program in 1990. We fired Corky Nelson just before I got to school and hired Dennis Parker from Marshall HS over Dennis Franchione. Why? Because he was not expensive and we played I-AA football. That led to three years of losing seasons. So we hired Matt Simon, the OC from New Mexico and the former RB coach at Washington. And we had one winning season in the last I-AA season, then reeled off three more losing seasons. So we hired SMU OC Darrell Dickey and we had 4 losing seasons, then 3 winning seasons, followed by two more disastrous seasons. So we went back to the HS route and hired Todd Dodge straight from Southlake Carroll and he won all of 6 games in 3.5 years here. So we hired former Iowa State HC Dan McCarney, who had one winning season in his 4.5 years and suffered the worst loss in modern college football history. So we hired UNC OC Seth Littrell and we have had two winning seasons out of 5.25 years on the job. 
 

7 winning seasons…out of 31.25 seasons. 1 as a member of the SLC, 3 as a member of the SBC, and 3 in CUSA. 

[DeepGreen]

Geez untjim1995,  good summation but depressing in so many ways.  We've made so many bad hires over the years.  When does it stop?

[DeepGreen]

12 hours ago, wardly said:

Speaking as an alcoholic who has not had a drink since Christmas of 1988, once an alcoholic always an alcoholic. AA has the best "cure" rate of any institution and its only 5%. Mac was under a great deal of stress and pressure as a head football coach and "slipped" badly. That is not uncommon, and you need to just get back on the bicycle. Alcoholism is an insidious generic disease that can only be controlled by abstaining from drinking. Usually you need to find new friends as most of the ones you probably have now are heavy drinkers. I was fortunate in that I woke up one morning, said I am done, and never looked back, never had any craving or desire to drink again. Coach Mac wasn't so lucky.

Off topic for this forum, but from what I learned from a person a long time ago who happened to be the top man at the Houston Council On Alcoholism and an alcoholic himself at one time, was that a person doesn't have to be sloppy drunk all the time to be an alcoholic.  The fact that he/she feels the need to always have/want to drink, even just one or two drinks every day socially, actually makes them an alcoholic.  Maybe drinking effects people in different ways, dunno.  But that's what I learned from this particular person.

[untjim1995]

32 minutes ago, DeepGreen said:

Geez untjim1995,  good summation but depressing in so many ways.  We've made so many bad hires over the years.  When does it stop?

It’s what I mean…I have no idea what can work here. It really makes no sense at all why we can’t win here. We have been an independent at I-A, a I-AA program, a member of the Big West, Sun Belt, and Conference USA. We have played games at Fouts Field and Apogee Stadium. We have had pass happy coaches, run happy coaches, HS coaches, coordinators at P5s and G5s, an interim coach, and an experienced head coach from a P5.  And that’s produced 7 winning seasons…and what almost certainly will be 25 losing seasons since 1990.

[PlummMeanGreen]

15 hours ago, greenjoe said:

I know this sounds crazy, but I think Plumm is right.  We need a proven winner AND a celebrity hire.  The name that comes to mind for me along those lines is Charlie Strong.  A well known name, familiar with Texas, an automatic invite into high school locker rooms and recruit’s living rooms.  Expensive, you bet.  Losing is costing us 1.8 mil per year.  The worst he could say is “no.”

48 years of Mean Green can make a man say lots of crazy things.😆  (Some of it true, of course). 

45(?) year old Hayden Fry had just gotten fired by SMU with a  7 & 4 record in 1972 when we hired him; albeit his W/L record on the Hilltop was way under .500.  
 Charlie Strong is definitely a name—hell, he had been at UT.  Where is Strong employed now?  

Kevin Sumlin?

🦅

 

Edited September 29, 2021 by PlummMeanGreen

[denton_days]

1 hour ago, untjim1995 said:

I truly don’t know what it would take in Denton to build a winner. I’ve never seen it since I started following the program in 1990. We fired Corky Nelson just before I got to school and hired Dennis Parker from Marshall HS over Dennis Franchione. Why? Because he was not expensive and we played I-AA football. That led to three years of losing seasons. So we hired Matt Simon, the OC from New Mexico and the former RB coach at Washington. And we had one winning season in the last I-AA season, then reeled off three more losing seasons. So we hired SMU OC Darrell Dickey and we had 4 losing seasons, then 3 winning seasons, followed by two more disastrous seasons. So we went back to the HS route and hired Todd Dodge straight from Southlake Carroll and he won all of 6 games in 3.5 years here. So we hired former Iowa State HC Dan McCarney, who had one winning season in his 4.5 years and suffered the worst loss in modern college football history. So we hired UNC OC Seth Littrell and we have had two winning seasons out of 5.25 years on the job. 
 

I am a much younger UNT fan so I have a bit more optimism, but it seems like we have more money than ever tied up in getting our program off the ground, and a university that really sees the value in athletics. I don't think we'll be firing a coach to hire a much cheaper one anytime soon. 

[ADLER]

10 hours ago, PlummMeanGreen said:

If we are hiring a new coach, we almost need a celebrity head football coach; a “WOW!” kind of hire our present players are aware of & potential portal transfers are aware, too.   He needs to be in his 50’s (or early 60’s) & will not immediately start freshin’ up his resume for just a 2-3 year run in Denton.  Someone like that kind of hire  almost needs to fall out of the sky because I don’t know who’d that be right now.  

Hi there North Texas, my name is Prime Time

[greenjoe]

Wouldn’t it be funny if we hired Deion Sanders and be brought Greyson Thompson back to North Texas!

[wardly]

11 hours ago, DeepGreen said:

Off topic for this forum, but from what I learned from a person a long time ago who happened to be the top man at the Houston Council On Alcoholism and an alcoholic himself at one time, was that a person doesn't have to be sloppy drunk all the time to be an alcoholic.  The fact that he/she feels the need to always have/want to drink, even just one or two drinks every day socially, actually makes them an alcoholic.  Maybe drinking effects people in different ways, dunno.  But that's what I learned from this particular person.

This is correct. I was responding to a post that brought up Coach Mac's problem with drinking and attempting to explain that based upon my own experience  he didn't " choose " alcohol over coaching at UNT, it chose him.

[SilverEagle]

12 hours ago, DeepGreen said:

Off topic for this forum, but from what I learned from a person a long time ago who happened to be the top man at the Houston Council On Alcoholism and an alcoholic himself at one time, was that a person doesn't have to be sloppy drunk all the time to be an alcoholic.  The fact that he/she feels the need to always have/want to drink, even just one or two drinks every day socially, actually makes them an alcoholic.  Maybe drinking effects people in different ways, dunno.  But that's what I learned from this particular person.

Quote

Posted 47 minutes ago

This is correct. I was responding to a post that brought up Coach Mac's problem with drinking and attempting to explain that based upon my own experience  he didn't " choose " alcohol over coaching at UNT, it chose him.

https://www.pbs.org/kenburns/prohibition/

The title of the first episode "A Nation of Drunkards"  pretty much says it all.  Until the 20th Century America did not have a safe water supply. So for most of America, drinking alcohol was the only safe thing to drink.

• 
   

[SilverEagle]

9 hours ago, ADLER said:

Hi there North Texas, my name is Prime Time

 

5 hours ago, greenjoe said:

Wouldn’t it be funny if we hired Deion Sanders and be brought Greyson Thompson back to North Texas!

At the risk of offending most of the more religious posters on this forum........Jesus Christ!......🙄

[PlummMeanGreen]

9 hours ago, SilverEagle said:

 

At the risk of offending most of the more religious posters on this forum........Jesus Christ!......🙄

We all remember how when Prime Time was a cornerback how he could almost cover his side of a football field.  He was phenomenal, but I’m not sure UNT would be his kind of gig right now.  

If we end up looking for a football coach, I have liked Kevin Sumlin since his days at UH.

🦅❇️🦅

[wardly]

On 9/28/2021 at 8:46 PM, untjim1995 said:

Yes he did…

So what makes him a fit for UNT? Just asking.