DRC Sunday column: Guiding UNT to bowl shows why Seth Littrell is great fit with Mean Green

Cr1028 · December 20, 2021

9 minutes ago, Side.Show.Joe said:

Patterson would even have to move from Fort Worth. Doc Holiday was winning at Marshall with fewer resources. Skip Holts owned Littrell and won several bowls at LA Tech. Kindle Briles still hasn't been hire as a head coach. I'll post more later.

If these are the names that you think are so far ahead of Seth and will take us to that “next level”, I don’t even need to continue debating you and thank goodness Wren is running the show because you’d push that stick forward and put us right in the dirt. I thought you wanted to win. Doc Holliday won one CUSA title in 11 seasons. Skip Holtz didn’t win a single CUSA title in 9 seasons at LaTech. Gary Patterson is a clown that got chased away because he thought he was untouchable. We don’t want that headache. Enjoy your role as the “anybody but Seth” carnival barker but I can’t take you seriously. Do a little more research and make sure your own candidates meet your expectations before posting.

UNT 90 Grad · December 20, 2021

3 hours ago, meangreenbob said:

Bennett’s maturity, experience, and presence had a positive effect on this “whole” team and Littrell. Don’t think for a minute it didn’t.

Not sure where you are going with this, but I agree with you. He was a fantastic hire by Littrell.

GrandGreen · December 20, 2021

28 minutes ago, UNT 90 Grad said:

Not sure where you are going with this, but I agree with you. He was a fantastic hire by Littrell.

Some seem to think Bennett fail out of the sky. He is only here because of his relationship with Littrell.

Wag Tag · December 20, 2021

3 hours ago, Side.Show.Joe said:

A faction of the fan base will revolt. That's just the truth. Also, I don't care about down votes. You should know that by now. I've been on this board for a decade, and I'll still be here long after Littrell is gone. Wren too for that matter.

Who cares? You are just a side show. GMG

Edited December 20, 2021 by Wag Tag

shaft · December 20, 2021

The same six negative six posters sure are filling up this board with the same tired statements in direct opposition to the facts in this article. Now that's what I call #oldDenton.

TheReal_jayD · December 20, 2021

23 hours ago, Brett Vito said:

Jimmy Sexton is an amazing writer.

Side.Show.Joe · December 20, 2021

3 hours ago, texx2818 said:

So you think our fanbase wouldn’t “revolt” (lol) at a Briles at UNT? Most of our fanbase just goes to games for a photo op.

No. most of our fan base stays tailgating because Seth isn't good enough to draw them into Apogee. Most of the locals and alumni that would support us just stay home.

Side.Show.Joe · December 20, 2021

3 hours ago, Cr1028 said:

This is an opinion and based on your own subjective expectations. Your “truth” does not mirror the truth of the majority. Most of us are in wait and see mode. Most of us wrote Seth off for dead in mid-October; then he did something beyond what most of us thought was reasonably possible. One more season to see where this momentum goes does little to no harm. Blowing it all up prematurely has the potential to do tremendous harm.

There are no "my truth" or "your truth". There are just the facts. The facts are the truth. And the facts say Littrell is a .500 coach in C-USA. That shouldn't be acceptable to any UNT fan. How many more "one more season" arguments will we have to endure? We heard the same thing after last season's poor performance.

Side.Show.Joe · December 20, 2021

2 hours ago, Cr1028 said:

If these are the names that you think are so far ahead of Seth and will take us to that “next level”, I don’t even need to continue debating you and thank goodness Wren is running the show because you’d push that stick forward and put us right in the dirt. I thought you wanted to win. Doc Holliday won one CUSA title in 11 seasons. Skip Holtz didn’t win a single CUSA title in 9 seasons at LaTech. Gary Patterson is a clown that got chased away because he thought he was untouchable. We don’t want that headache. Enjoy your role as the “anybody but Seth” carnival barker but I can’t take you seriously. Do a little more research and make sure your own candidates meet your expectations before posting.

It's true. Every coach I named has flaws... but even so, they have all done more then Littrell and would be better then continuing to fail under Littrell. Funny, you want me to do more research on candidates, but fail to realize what the research says about Littrell. And, your twisting my opinion. I'm in favor of hiring a better coach, not just any coach. That would be stupid. But I guess it 's easier to misrepresent my position than to use facts and argue in favor of Seth's accomplishments.

greenminer · December 20, 2021

20 minutes ago, Side.Show.Joe said:

There are no "my truth" or "your truth". There are just the facts. The facts are the truth. And the facts say Littrell is a .500 coach in C-USA. That shouldn't be acceptable to any UNT fan. How many more "one more season" arguments will we have to endure? We heard the same thing after last season's poor performance.

Meet Johnny. Johnny is my employee. 3 years and a total ace. Perfect attendance. Goes out of his way to help others. Exceeds sales. Then one day, Johnny flips. He shows up every other day for a week. Grumpy. Coworkers are complaining. I pull him into my office to talk. He flips me off, says he is fine, then pukes on his way out the door.

By your logic, we keep Johnny. His career is stellar. We don't care about this recent streak.

....isn't that absurd?

Inversely, I walk into work one day ready to fire Suzy. Suzy has been awful from the beginning. Why did we waste so many months on this girl? I show up ready to "have the talk", but she's clearly different. The employees love her. She came in on time and made a sales record. I hold off. After 7 days, she is employee of the week. I pull her aside, and say "look, you've been great. Let's keep it up." I've explained to her that she needs to keep this up for her employement here to continue.

But, you wouldn't want that. Because of Suzy's "big picture".

...I know I'm not going to change your mind. I just can't escape the idea that you deep down think this team under SL will never be better than 0.500. Just come out and say that, and I think it'd feel less confrontational. This "big picture" take just seems stubborn and illogical.

meangreenbob · December 21, 2021

3 hours ago, UNT 90 Grad said:

Not sure where you are going with this, but I agree with you. He was a fantastic hire by Littrell.

Not so sure this was a Littrell hire. I think the higher ups made the move because Littrell needed help, was not good at picking assistants and it was a lot less expensive than firing Littrell.

GrandGreen · December 21, 2021

2 minutes ago, meangreenbob said:

Not so sure this was a Littrell hire. I think the higher ups made the move because Littrell needed help, was not good at picking assistants and it was a lot less expensive than firing Littrell.

The odds of that being true are miniscule.

You really think Baker would have a hc, he has so little faith in that he would not allow to pick his own staff?

MeanGreenTexan · December 21, 2021

52 minutes ago, greenminer said:

Meet Johnny. Johnny is my employee. 3 years and a total ace. Perfect attendance. Goes out of his way to help others. Exceeds sales. Then one day, Johnny flips. He shows up every other day for a week. Grumpy. Coworkers are complaining. I pull him into my office to talk. He flips me off, says he is fine, then pukes on his way out the door.

By your logic, we keep Johnny. His career is stellar. We don't care about this recent streak.

....isn't that absurd?

Inversely, I walk into work one day ready to fire Suzy. Suzy has been awful from the beginning. Why did we waste so many months on this girl? I show up ready to "have the talk", but she's clearly different. The employees love her. She came in on time and made a sales record. I hold off. After 7 days, she is employee of the week. I pull her aside, and say "look, you've been great. Let's keep it up." I've explained to her that she needs to keep this up for her employement here to continue.

But, you wouldn't want that. Because of Suzy's "big picture".

...I know I'm not going to change your mind. I just can't escape the idea that you deep down think this team under SL will never be better than 0.500. Just come out and say that, and I think it'd feel less confrontational. This "big picture" take just seems stubborn and illogical.

Weird, I thought you were going somewhere with the first example, but you truncated it (SLs first 3 years here, then the puke/flip-off stuff for 2.5 yrs). PIggybacking though, if in every attempt to help Johnny succeed in Q3 & Q4 after 2.5yrs of flipping-off/puking, you lowered some standards and he knocked them out, would you still want to bring him back if you knew there would be a very qualified pool of replacement candidates? I mean, what if he starts back up again as soon as the standards are raised back up again?

MeanGreenTexan · December 21, 2021

15 minutes ago, meangreenbob said:

Not so sure this was a Littrell hire. I think the higher ups made the move because Littrell needed help, was not good at picking assistants and it was a lot less expensive than firing Littrell.

Bennett is 100% here for Littrell & saved his job. Seth would be wise to take his entire bowl game bonus & just Zelle it all to Bennett.

Cr1028 · December 21, 2021

1 hour ago, Side.Show.Joe said:

There are no "my truth" or "your truth". There are just the facts. The facts are the truth. And the facts say Littrell is a .500 coach in C-USA. That shouldn't be acceptable to any UNT fan. How many more "one more season" arguments will we have to endure? We heard the same thing after last season's poor performance.

Technically he is 5 games above .500 in CUSA.

meangreenbob · December 21, 2021

25 minutes ago, GrandGreen said:

The odds of that being true are miniscule.

You really think Baker would have a hc, he has so little faith in that he would not allow to pick his own staff?

Happened to Littrell when he was courting Kansas St and they’re a P5.

GrandGreen · December 21, 2021

2 hours ago, meangreenbob said:

Happened to Littrell when he was courting Kansas St and they’re a P5.

I doubt it.

Even if you believe the story, it was one coach.

97and03 · December 21, 2021

On 12/20/2021 at 9:10 PM, Side.Show.Joe said:

None of the Old Denton crowd want to talk about the first half of the season when we were facing real competition. They don't believe Littrell should be judged based on what he did against good teams.

Happy to talk about the first part of the season. It was shit. He totally wasted multiple opportunities to beat superior opponents despite a great chance to do so. I called for Seth’s head.
Then he adjusted and we started winning. And I am damn happy about that. And even though he beat a ranked opponent for the first time in 50 years, I would have been fine with his firing because of the entire body of work. Even the nine win seasons were somewhat of a mirage. Honestly this year and 2016 were better coaching jobs than ‘17 and ‘18.
But I am also a realist: there was no way Wren was going to fire Seth after that winning streak. It just isn’t where we are and it honestly wouldn’t make a ton of sense to our fans and donors given the hype over the big win and bowl berth. Should we expect more? Perhaps. But unless you are giving six figures - and you are not- then you don’t really get a say. Me either. I would have fired Seth after Liberty. But like Dickey, he didn’t get fired at his lowest point and turned it around.

So rather than bitch and moan in every damn thread about how much he sucks I am going to enjoy the streak and our unexpected success. And root for SL to break his bowl drought because this team deserves my support and a win.
And if he starts out slowly next season I will again be at the front of the line calling for his firing but always rooting he has finally figured it out. We win less than 7 next year and he should be gone.

UNTcrazy727 · December 21, 2021

14 hours ago, MeanGreenTexan said:

Bennett is 100% here for Littrell & saved his job. Seth would be wise to take his entire bowl game bonus & just Zelle it all to Bennett.

You mean Littrell saved his own job because he knew Bennett is a great defensive mind and was able to convince him to come out of retirement?

Side.Show.Joe · December 21, 2021

16 hours ago, greenminer said:

Meet Johnny. Johnny is my employee. 3 years and a total ace. Perfect attendance. Goes out of his way to help others. Exceeds sales. Then one day, Johnny flips. He shows up every other day for a week. Grumpy. Coworkers are complaining. I pull him into my office to talk. He flips me off, says he is fine, then pukes on his way out the door.

By your logic, we keep Johnny. His career is stellar. We don't care about this recent streak.

....isn't that absurd?

Inversely, I walk into work one day ready to fire Suzy. Suzy has been awful from the beginning. Why did we waste so many months on this girl? I show up ready to "have the talk", but she's clearly different. The employees love her. She came in on time and made a sales record. I hold off. After 7 days, she is employee of the week. I pull her aside, and say "look, you've been great. Let's keep it up." I've explained to her that she needs to keep this up for her employement here to continue.

But, you wouldn't want that. Because of Suzy's "big picture".

...I know I'm not going to change your mind. I just can't escape the idea that you deep down think this team under SL will never be better than 0.500. Just come out and say that, and I think it'd feel less confrontational. This "big picture" take just seems stubborn and illogical.

What you have presented is not a good analogy to our situation. Littrell is not a cog in the machine, like your employees. The head coach is the motor that drives them. When he fails it all fails. When he succeeds it all works... like McCasland.

Old Denton is too concerned about next season. The right coach will get more out of our team's talent. Wren did a great job of finding McCasland. Now it's time for Wren to finally hire his football coach. I look at the "big picture" because that's how you build a winning program, not just try to hold together a team for next season. The right coach will get the players to stay or find even better players. Remember when Woolridge left for Gonzaga... McCasland brought in Hamlet. Great coaches find great players and develop them to win. We have to build for joining the American. I don't want UNT football to be a bottom feeder in the AAC. The American is a much tougher conference than C-USA, even with Houston, Cincy, and UCF gone.

I think overall Littrell will be a less than .500 coach if he remains at UNT. Sure he may produce a 6 or 7 win season next year in our weak C-USA, but that won't translate to success in the American. An American schedule is much tougher than a C-USA schedule, and our OOC schedules are tougher now too. He isn't the coach you think he's going to be. Do you actually believe Littrell can win the American conference title when we join? If your answer is "No", than it's time to hire a new head coach. Waiting another year equals wasting another year... maybe even more than just one year.

Side.Show.Joe · December 21, 2021

50 minutes ago, 97and03 said:

Happy to talk about the first part of the season. It was shit. He totally wasted multiple opportunities to beat superior opponents despite a great chance to do so. I called for Seth’s head.
Then he adjusted and we started winning. And I am damn happy about that. And even though he beat a ranked opponent for the first time in 50 years, I would have been fine with his firing because of the entire body of work. Even the nine win seasons were somewhat of a mirage. Honestly this year and 2016 were better coaching jobs than ‘17 and ‘18.
But I am also a realist: there was no way Wren was going to fire Seth after that winning streak. It just isn’t where we are and it honestly wouldn’t make a ton of sense to our fans and donors given the hype over the big win and bowl berth. Should we expect more? Perhaps. But unless you are giving six figures - and you are not- then you don’t really get a say. Me either. I would have fired Seth after Liberty. But like Dickey, he didn’t get fired at his lowest point and turned it around.

So rather than bitch and moan in every damn thread about how much he sucks I am going to enjoy the streak and our unexpected success. And root for SL to break his bowl drought because this team deserves my support and a win.
And if he starts out slowly next season I will again be at the front of the line calling for his firing but always rooting he has finally figured it out. We win less than 7 next year and he should be gone.

I support this team and program, but not this coach. He's had his chance, and hasn't done enough. Read my last post and you will better understand my opinions on why we need to make the change. By the way, the same "we need to win X number of games for Littrell to keep his job" arguments were made last season, but now those same fans are backing down. Just saying.

MeanGreenTexan · December 21, 2021

12 hours ago, texx2818 said:

We are a CUSA program. We are a terrible program historically.

UCF was a pretty terrible program historically, up until they changed expectations, then MET those lofty expectations!

I believe, with Baker & Smatresk at the helm, North Texas can do the same thing.

But the idea of what success means at North Texas has been “just make it to a bowl game & we’ll be happy”. This was me too. But if we ever want to achieve UCF’s kind of success, we have to get past our low expectations & hope for better.

If we didn’t already have a body of work to judge Littrell on, I might say let’s give him next season to see if he can’t get us back to those 9-win seasons. But we’re also moving to the AAC in 2023, so it would be nice to have that buffer year in 2022 to break in a new, better coach (that I have full-confidence Baker can find) to have us humming as we move into the AAC in 2023, instead of what I’m fearing: another circa-.500 season under Littrell… bringing no momentum into the AAC.

Cr1028 · December 21, 2021

1 hour ago, Side.Show.Joe said:

What you have presented is not a good analogy to our situation. Littrell is not a cog in the machine, like your employees. The head coach is the motor that drives them. When he fails it all fails. When he succeeds it all works... like McCasland.

Old Denton is too concerned about next season. The right coach will get more out of our team's talent. Wren did a great job of finding McCasland. Now it's time for Wren to finally hire his football coach. I look at the "big picture" because that's how you build a winning program, not just try to hold together a team for next season. The right coach will get the players to stay or find even better players. Remember when Woolridge left for Gonzaga... McCasland brought in Hamlet. Great coaches find great players and develop them to win. We have to build for joining the American. I don't want UNT football to be a bottom feeder in the AAC. The American is a much tougher conference than C-USA, even with Houston, Cincy, and UCF gone.

I think overall Littrell will be a less than .500 coach if he remains at UNT. Sure he may produce a 6 or 7 win season next year in our weak C-USA, but that won't translate to success in the American. An American schedule is much tougher than a C-USA schedule, and our OOC schedules are tougher now too. He isn't the coach you think he's going to be. Do you actually believe Littrell can win the American conference title when we join? If your answer is "No", than it's time to hire a new head coach. Waiting another year equals wasting another year... maybe even more than just one year.

You can rebuild a basketball team in a season because you can get away with having a few great players. Football is not easy to turn around in a short period of time because you need depth. McCasland and Littrell are faced with very different sports and circumstances. Johnny Jones has shown you can win at North Texas and McCasland took it to a step above what Jones did. Littrell is the first one to put a .500 or above record together here in football in 40 years.

Edited December 21, 2021 by Cr1028

Cr1028 · December 21, 2021

8 minutes ago, MeanGreenTexan said:

UCF was a pretty terrible program historically, up until they changed expectations, then MET those lofty expectations!

I believe, with Baker & Smatresk at the helm, North Texas can do the same thing.

But the idea of what success means at North Texas has been “just make it to a bowl game & we’ll be happy”. This was me too. But if we ever want to achieve UCF’s kind of success, we have to get past our low expectations & hope for better.

Pretty terrible when and compared to whom? UCF has been a good to great team for awhile. What were these lofty expectations? Go 13-0 and claim a mythical national title? UTSA was a North Texas away from doing the same thing with their “increased expectations” while playing in a borrowed 30 year old NFL stadium nobody wanted. If we somehow win 10+ games next season are you going to then talk about how we increased expectations?

MeanGreenTexan · December 21, 2021

1 minute ago, Cr1028 said:

You can rebuild a basketball team in a season because you can get away with having a few great players. Football is not easy to turn around in a short period of time because you need depth. McCasland and Littrell are faced with very different sports and circumstances. Johnny Jones has shown you can win at North Texas and McCasland took it to a step above what Jones did. Littrell is the first one to put a .500 or above record together here in 40 years.

I think there is an assumption that there would be a mass exodus of our best players if Littrell were to leave, causing us to have to “rebuild”? I just don’t think that would be the case.