The Future of UNT Football

[DeepGreen]

55 minutes ago, oahu eagle said:

The future is same ole same ole. Drop football and concentrate on Basketball.

You should be banished from GMG.com!

[Army of Dad]

I wasn’t close to UNT athletics for as long as you, but I’ve come to the conclusion that UNT will always be ‘little ole UNT’ forever. No where near enough of the alumni or local community care if North Texas wins or loses. That’s partly because the school itself doesn’t care if they win or lose and partly because it’s always been that way. Just watch, they’ll find a way to douchebag up a decent basketball program again.

For as nice as Apogee is, it’s not very big and is never full. Even with all the alumni within 90 minutes of Denton it’s never full. The school and the vast majority of it’s alumni simply do not care about Mean Green athletics. I used to think that eagle could change its colors, but after years of futility the Benford debacle was finally enough to get me to see that UNT will always be UNT. ‘Twas ever thus. 
 

Should North Texas be more than it is? Maybe/probably. Will it ever really fulfill that potential? Almost certainly not. (I think that’s mostly it’s own damn fault, but outside forces will also act to help stop substantive advancements)
 

Ultimately you have to choose to take the sane and sensible course where you understand that nothing will ever really change or stay in the crazy house with hundreds of your fellows. 

[kj86]

10 hours ago, Army of Dad said:

I wasn’t close to UNT athletics for as long as you, but I’ve come to the conclusion that UNT will always be ‘little ole UNT’ forever. No where near enough of the alumni or local community care if North Texas wins or loses. That’s partly because the school itself doesn’t care if they win or lose and partly because it’s always been that way. Just watch, they’ll find a way to douchebag up a decent basketball program again.

For as nice as Apogee is, it’s not very big and is never full. Even with all the alumni within 90 minutes of Denton it’s never full. The school and the vast majority of it’s alumni simply do not care about Mean Green athletics. I used to think that eagle could change its colors, but after years of futility the Benford debacle was finally enough to get me to see that UNT will always be UNT. ‘Twas ever thus. 
 

Should North Texas be more than it is? Maybe/probably. Will it ever really fulfill that potential? Almost certainly not. (I think that’s mostly it’s own damn fault, but outside forces will also act to help stop substantive advancements)
 

Ultimately you have to choose to take the sane and sensible course where you understand that nothing will ever really change or stay in the crazy house with hundreds of your fellows. 

There is no G5 program in the country that will fill 30,000 seats to watch a loser.  Get the right guy in here and win games and you'll see the place full.  The lack of interest is solely based on the quality of the product.

[TheColonyEagle]

54 minutes ago, kj86 said:

There is no G5 program in the country that will fill 30,000 seats to watch a loser.  Get the right guy in here and win games and you'll see the place full.  The lack of interest is solely based on the quality of the product.

[Mo Green]

On 10/24/2021 at 9:28 AM, Wag Tag said:

Venting is very therapeutic. Being competitive and winning solves everything. I just want to be a strong Mid Major program. 

[Stix]

On 10/24/2021 at 9:28 AM, Wag Tag said:

Venting is very therapeutic.

 

 

[Army of Dad]

8 hours ago, kj86 said:

There is no G5 program in the country that will fill 30,000 seats to watch a loser.  Get the right guy in here and win games and you'll see the place full.  The lack of interest is solely based on the quality of the product.

History would indicate otherwise. 
 

I get it, that green kool aid tastes great. If you drink enough of it you start seeing sleeping giants and sold out home games. Lord knows I’ve drank a bunch of it myself (as well as making literal mean green alcoholic drinks).

‘You just wait until we get/do “X”!’

I’ve heard that before and so have you…

[TreeFiddy]

20 hours ago, Army of Dad said:

I wasn’t close to UNT athletics for as long as you, but I’ve come to the conclusion that UNT will always be ‘little ole UNT’ forever. No where near enough of the alumni or local community care if North Texas wins or loses. That’s partly because the school itself doesn’t care if they win or lose and partly because it’s always been that way. Just watch, they’ll find a way to douchebag up a decent basketball program again.

For as nice as Apogee is, it’s not very big and is never full. Even with all the alumni within 90 minutes of Denton it’s never full. The school and the vast majority of it’s alumni simply do not care about Mean Green athletics. I used to think that eagle could change its colors, but after years of futility the Benford debacle was finally enough to get me to see that UNT will always be UNT. ‘Twas ever thus. 
 

Should North Texas be more than it is? Maybe/probably. Will it ever really fulfill that potential? Almost certainly not. (I think that’s mostly it’s own damn fault, but outside forces will also act to help stop substantive advancements)
 

Ultimately you have to choose to take the sane and sensible course where you understand that nothing will ever really change or stay in the crazy house with hundreds of your fellows. 

 

[untjim1995]

I think it’s possible to eventually be what UTSA has become in Denton, as the university’s commitment to athletics has changed, just as Denton as a college town has changed. More people live on campus or near it and actually stay in town on the weekend. 
 

[NorthTexasWeLove]

1 hour ago, Army of Dad said:

History would indicate otherwise. 
 

I get it, that green kool aid tastes great. If you drink enough of it you start seeing sleeping giants and sold out home games. Lord knows I’ve drank a bunch of it myself (as well as making literal mean green alcoholic drinks).

‘You just wait until we get/do “X”!’

I’ve heard that before and so have you…

He's right though. Be competitive and people come. When we had momentum going the home Army game was great. Even the flame out game vs latech was great. There is a demand for UNT football to be good. People are just waiting on the supply. 

[UNTLifer]

3 hours ago, Army of Dad said:

History would indicate otherwise. 
 

 

Please be specific. 

[Salsa_Verde]

Welp…I believed that we would never be in the same conference as SMU…and as of right now we are so, anything is technically possible 😅🤷🏽‍♂️

[Green Lantern]

11 hours ago, NorthTexasWeLove said:

He's right though. Be competitive and people come. When we had momentum going the home Army game was great. Even the flame out game vs latech was great. There is a demand for UNT football to be good. People are just waiting on the supply. 

Yes. A 9 win team once or twice every decade isn’t enough. Just enough to get footballed to the groin as a fan base every couple of years.

Tired of people blaming fans. 

[mad dog]

As a very lapsed fan (haven't touched season tickets since Portland State, been to maybe 3 games in the last 5 years), I think the truth of the matter is very simple: we live in a place that values winning. Win a little and you see a bump. Win a lot and you'll see a bigger bump. Win consistently over time and you'll see the biggest bump. But the second you lose, it all falls apart. Inertia only goes one way. It's one step forward and one step back, and has been for decades. Your fan base, generation after generation, is conditioned to expect the bottom to fall out because it always does. Until we consistently win over a long period of time, nothing will change. Just my two cents.

[untjim1995]

I still think that the 2013, 2017, and 2018 seasons prove that we can get large (for us) crowds if we win in any way. In 2013, we were 6-3, playing a terrible UTEP team at home for Homecoming, and we got 26,400 to show up. In 2017, we had crowds over 25k for Army and UTEP, IIRC. And in 2018, the La Tech game had a big crowd, obviously, but we blew it. Even in 2019, when we started losing, we hosted UH before a very big crowd, too.

Its there if we can get folks interested, but it takes winning and playing someone people have heard of and care about…

[MCMLXXX]

On 10/24/2021 at 10:59 PM, Army of Dad said:

I wasn’t close to UNT athletics for as long as you, but I’ve come to the conclusion that UNT will always be ‘little ole UNT’ forever. No where near enough of the alumni or local community care if North Texas wins or loses. That’s partly because the school itself doesn’t care if they win or lose and partly because it’s always been that way. Just watch, they’ll find a way to douchebag up a decent basketball program again.

For as nice as Apogee is, it’s not very big and is never full. Even with all the alumni within 90 minutes of Denton it’s never full. The school and the vast majority of it’s alumni simply do not care about Mean Green athletics. I used to think that eagle could change its colors, but after years of futility the Benford debacle was finally enough to get me to see that UNT will always be UNT. ‘Twas ever thus. 
 

Should North Texas be more than it is? Maybe/probably. Will it ever really fulfill that potential? Almost certainly not. (I think that’s mostly it’s own damn fault, but outside forces will also act to help stop substantive advancements)
 

Ultimately you have to choose to take the sane and sensible course where you understand that nothing will ever really change or stay in the crazy house with hundreds of your fellows. 

Have you been to a Basketball game since Benford left? 

Obi Wan McCasland has given us hope.

[ttunt1970]

Jim you correct the commuter school thing has changed in the last 20 years because I would say 60% live on campus now or in Denton, before that it might have been in 30-40% range(that’s been generous) also the Denton county transplants from other states and areas will come if you give them a decent product.(my 2 cents)

[meanJewGreen]

3 hours ago, mad dog said:

As a very lapsed fan (haven't touched season tickets since Portland State, been to maybe 3 games in the last 5 years), I think the truth of the matter is very simple: we live in a place that values winning. Win a little and you see a bump. Win a lot and you'll see a bigger bump. Win consistently over time and you'll see the biggest bump. But the second you lose, it all falls apart. Inertia only goes one way. It's one step forward and one step back, and has been for decades. Your fan base, generation after generation, is conditioned to expect the bottom to fall out because it always does. Until we consistently win over a long period of time, nothing will change. Just my two cents.

You arent wrong. This is a 100% bandwagon metro other than the Cowboys. 

[ColoradoEagle]

4 hours ago, mad dog said:

Your fan base, generation after generation, is conditioned to expect the bottom to fall out because it always does. Until we consistently win over a long period of time, nothing will change. Just my two cents.

We've been to five bowl games in the last 8 years. I realize a lot of us want to do better than that, but it's a hell of a difference from the drought of 2005-2012. The only thing that kept me going back then was Johnny Jones.

We're on an upward trajectory, and I have no doubt that will continue even higher once we move on from Littrell.

[Aquila_Viridis]

We've never had executive leadership that would commit enough to get the right people to build a winning program. The clods we've had over the years do lots of stupid things like our microscopic logo against all the real logos on the espn NCAAF weekly schedules. Stupid.

Like AOD, I have no expectation that will ever change. I mean, I demand and reasonably should expect it, but maybe the people in Austin keep doing us in at the executive level. All the crap rolls down from there. We'd have to cause a mass scene down there for there to be a significant enough change. It's sickening.

[mad dog]

20 hours ago, ColoradoEagle said:

We've been to five bowl games in the last 8 years. I realize a lot of us want to do better than that, but it's a hell of a difference from the drought of 2005-2012. The only thing that kept me going back then was Johnny Jones.

We're on an upward trajectory, and I have no doubt that will continue even higher once we move on from Littrell.

Perhaps on a long enough time scale, you may be right that it's more upward than not. But here's another way to view the same period you just mentioned:

Average wins: 5.5
Averages losses: 6.1
Number of bowl wins: 1
Number of bowl losses: 4
Average margin of defeat in bowl losses: 23.5 points.

To my admittedly uninformed, casual fan eye, this reads to me as a "one step forward and one step back" team that routinely gets housed whenever they play outside a middling-to-low-end G5 conference. Which is, to my understanding, exactly who they have been since I started following UNT football in 2000. Maybe I'm wrong.

[UNT Texas Hooligan]

A lot of doom and gloom in this thread. At least let Wren get a football hire in before we relegate ourselves to the dregs of college football forever.

[TreeFiddy]

If you looked at this from the opposite side could you make a case that Littrell stayed loyal to the program and passed on supposed offers from Tech and KState when things were really rolling.  Do you just turn your back on that loyalty at the first sign of adversity?

The more I look around, the more I start to wonder if a move will actually be made after the season or if he will be given 1 more year now that a conference change is not hanging in the balance.  I suppose a lot will depend on how the rest of the season goes.  Last week could have been the final nail if it would have been a Portland State type blowout, but the team actually showed some fight.  I guess we will find out soon enough.

[ColoradoEagle]

23 minutes ago, mad dog said:

To my admittedly uninformed, casual fan eye, this reads to me as a "one step forward and one step back" team that routinely gets housed whenever they play outside a middling-to-low-end G5 conference. Which is, to my understanding, exactly who they have been since I started following UNT football in 2000. Maybe I'm wrong.

We have a lot of work to do. The next coach will need to hit brand new heights, especially if we're going to compete for AAC titles. We've taken a step back, but after taking several steps forward. One step forward after that abysmal drought would've been a winning season. In the past eight years, we've had three winning seasons. In the eight years prior to that? Zero winning seasons.

Again, we have tons of progress to make, and I want to start seeing us flirting with the top 25. But at the same time, we've come back from a really dark place in the program's history. Enough to where it is expected that a coach who isn't winning will be terminated within a month despite being on the hook for millions.

[UNT Texas Hooligan]

26 minutes ago, TreeFiddy said:

If you looked at this from the opposite side could you make a case that Littrell stayed loyal to the program and passed on supposed offers from Tech and KState when things were really rolling.  Do you just turn your back on that loyalty at the first sign of adversity?

The more I look around, the more I start to wonder if a move will actually be made after the season or if he will be given 1 more year now that a conference change is not hanging in the balance.  I suppose a lot will depend on how the rest of the season goes.  Last week could have been the final nail if it would have been a Portland State type blowout, but the team actually showed some fight.  I guess we will find out soon enough.

I don't think this is the case. This team has regressed significantly in several areas including penalties, blown assignments, and play calling. All of which are on coaching. Last week notwithstanding, this team has also noticeably quit on the field in several games, which is also on coaching. With 2 seasons left before we join the new conference, now is the time to bring in a new coach, give him time to establish their system, look to compete in CUSA, and hit the ground running in the American. Anything other than this would be a massive mistake.