It’s a Culture Problem

[meaniegreenie]

12 hours ago, UNTLifer said:

* Incorporate the community.  Make every home game an elementary school night. There are enough schools to recognize two for each game. Also, recognize a local community. For example, have a Robson Ranch Night. Sell them a block of tickets, bus them over, drop them off at a dedicated tailgate tent with food, cash bar and music, tickets to the game, post game entertainment in their tent and then bus them home. 
* Recognize local North Texas towns. Sanger night, Krum Night, etc…

I've said this before, but we need to embrace Frisco.  This makes sense for so many reasons, including it's nearby, we have a campus relationship, it's a growing area, etc.  Do we still have a Cowboy's relationship? If so, that's another reason.  If not, maybe try to restore it.  Denton seems to be a lost cause. 

[NT80]

2 hours ago, meaniegreenie said:

I've said this before, but we need to embrace Frisco.  This makes sense for so many reasons, including it's nearby, we have a campus relationship, it's a growing area, etc.  Do we still have a Cowboy's relationship? If so, that's another reason.  If not, maybe try to restore it.  Denton seems to be a lost cause. 

It's always been silly for UNT Athletics to focus on Denton when 5 million people live just outside Denton.  Plus, the vast majority of fans/alums live in other areas of the Metroplex, not Denton.  If we are truly going to be the U. of NORTH TEXAS, we must market to ALL of NORTH TEXAS, not just Denton.

Edited September 14, 2023 by NT80

[Green Otaku]

2 hours ago, Meangreen Fight said:

TCU and SMU aren’t “bigger schools”.  Their leadership cares more and have consistently invested more for over 50 years.   Texas Tech has a student body the same size as ours.   The only universities in the state bigger than ours Houston, Texas A&M, and UT Austin.  We are the flagship university of a system.  I believe that if we want to distance ourselves from being UT Arlington North (UTA has 40k students like us) we have to be serious about football and stop making conservative head coaching hires.  We also can’t afford to give a mediocre coach too much job security.

If FAU can bring in a guy like Lane Kiffin, and Liberty hire Hugh Freeze we should be hiring coaches with resumes similar to theirs.   Kliff Kingburry, Gary Patterson, Sonny Dykes, and Tom Herman are all coaches with resumes would have signaled to fans we are serious.  We always have excuses for not pursuing these guys.

 

 

I can't agree with this more. We always seem to go the low cost route, and that sends a message that we are a program trying to do things on the cheap. Then at the same time Herman went to FAU for 750k, which is 200k less than what we are paying Morris, so I don't know. 

[CMJ]

4 hours ago, Salsa_Verde said:

Way out of touch. 

Potentially I suppose.  But I do remember when Ryan made the State Final when I was at NT back in 2000 or so, and I felt very little buzz in town for it.  Certainly not like your South Lake Carrol's of the world, who always had great fan support even when they only had like 10K total residents. 

 

I graduated the following year and moved, so it very well may have improved once they began to win consistently, but I never saw it.

Edited September 14, 2023 by CMJ

[untjim1995]

2 hours ago, meaniegreenie said:

I've said this before, but we need to embrace Frisco.  This makes sense for so many reasons, including it's nearby, we have a campus relationship, it's a growing area, etc.  Do we still have a Cowboy's relationship? If so, that's another reason.  If not, maybe try to restore it.  Denton seems to be a lost cause. 

At a minimum, we should be playing a Saturday spring scrimmage in The Star, just to make inroads over in Frisco.

And I’d do the same thing with basketball too—play some spare OOC game over there, just to get people in the UNT Frisco community a chance to see us play.

[rojomojo]

When I first toured UNT after looking at schools like Nebraska, Louisville, Pittsburgh, etc, I noticed that UNT felt the most authentic out of all the places I looked. You can walk into pretty much any class and find any type of person you could imagine. While the campus wasn't the prettiest, I was immediately impressed by the cleanliness and effort that the administration seemed to have placed upon new campus facilities and the physical environment. During my flight back home from touring UNT, I remember talking to my dad about how I felt UNT was a "hidden gem" not only in the DFW area, but honestly the entire country.

My point is that UNT is starting to get noticed by people on a grand scale. I chose this school because I loved the potential it had to offer and I was immersed with the benefits that other students are finally starting to see. Hell my freshman class had the largest number of out of state students UNT had ever seen.

 

Given society is still around in 20 years, I genuinely believe UNT is on a track to compete with pretty much any school in America. I am glad I chose this school and proud

[Meangreen Fight]

3 hours ago, meaniegreenie said:

I've said this before, but we need to embrace Frisco.  This makes sense for so many reasons, including it's nearby, we have a campus relationship, it's a growing area, etc.  Do we still have a Cowboy's relationship? If so, that's another reason.  If not, maybe try to restore it.  Denton seems to be a lost cause. 

If you want to win a community over than has a lot of other options to spend the sport’s entertainment time and money on I agree ANY CITY is a “lost cause” when you consistently produce a subpar product.  Moreover it look from the outside you are striving for mediocrity not greatness.  Now greatness is extremely hard to achieve but striving for it will usually make you good.  
 

Everyone who is a sports fan can sense when an organization is really trying to win.  Fans in the entire DFW community will come from all city limits when they see we are trying.  As I am reading this I see Terry Bowden being interviewed on the Paul Finebaum show as the coach of ULM of all places.  We need a coach that can get on national media platforms with their resume.  Why Coach McCarney was the ONLY coach on that level we have hired tells Denton and everyone else we are just hoping to win.  

[UNTLifer]

10 minutes ago, rojomojo said:

Given society is still around in 20 years, 

Where would it go?

[rcade]

On 9/10/2023 at 2:15 PM, MGNation92 said:

I can completely understand why they dropped to FCS in the first place. Did it set us back decades? Absolutely. But that administration saw it, and they gave up.

This is the spot where I parachuted out of your rant.

No one should be able to understand the drop because it was the worst decision a North Texas Board of Regents has ever made. It wasn't after a long period of football mediocrity that might lead any school's leadership to despair. It was just four years after Hayden Fry left for Iowa. The football world knew that the Mean Green could be a strong program even in the conference wilderness because Fry had proven it.

Instead of building on that, school execs told themselves the "we'll focus on basketball" rationalization. UT-Arlington did the same thing when it murdered football in the 1980s. Can anyone name a single moment of greatness that the Movin' Mavs have produced on the basketball court the past four decades with that extra focus? A single player? Do they even play basketball any more? "We'll focus on basketball" is just what their presidents say every few years to shut up new students who organize to bring back football.

North Texas dropping to I-AA in 1982 solved a short-term financial problem caused by staggering financial mismanagement in athletics. Among the mistakes was spending big promoting a country concert-football event at Texas Stadium so poorly attended that the singer invited all fans to come down onto the field to watch. Another was having the athletic department handle the ad sales for the North Texas-Kentucky game instead of letting the TV station do it, which left 47 out of 48 ad slots unsold. So we got out of a $976,000 hole by creating a long-term perception of being small time, which UNT athletics is still fighting today.

I kind of became accidental besties with Big Al Hurley after graduating, but how he, Eddie Chiles and the rest of the board thought dropping from I-A was a good move I'll never understand.

[rojomojo]

2 hours ago, UNTLifer said:

Where would it go?

it'll either become too hot for outdoor sports to take place sometime during the late 21st century, or DFW will become a "coastal city" if you know what I mean.

[UNTLifer]

1 minute ago, rojomojo said:

it'll either become too hot for outdoor sports to take place sometime during the late 21st century, or DFW will become a "coastal city" if you know what I mean.

Nope.  Don't buy into that pseudo-science.  Complete nonsense.

[TreeFiddy]

4 minutes ago, rojomojo said:

it'll either become too hot for outdoor sports to take place sometime during the late 21st century, or DFW will become a "coastal city" if you know what I mean.

Interesting.  Which coast?

[Coffee and TV]

9 minutes ago, rojomojo said:

it'll either become too hot for outdoor sports to take place sometime during the late 21st century, or DFW will become a "coastal city" if you know what I mean.

You went from 20 years to the end of the 21st century. It's probably somewhere in between and it'll be because of the heat. Even if all the ice caps melted the shore line still wouldn't get halfway to Denton. We won't be playing any more away games in Boca Raton though lol. 

[rcade]

On 9/10/2023 at 2:22 PM, untjim1995 said:

I’ll be interested to see how things are here in the 2030s and beyond, though. Our alumni since 2011 have seen us at least try to have a legitimately funded program. And Denton has turned into a place where students do want to go instead of settling on going there because it was cheap and close. Maybe that will help with giving from alumni in the next 5+ years ahead?

When I come back to DFW and see how much it has changed since I left in the 1990s, I have a little less pessimism about the future at UNT in athletics. Dallas/Fort Worth is a giant financially powerful beast and the number five TV market in the country. There are 325,000 Mean Green alumni living in DFW. If we ever put a consistent winner out there in the big sports we don't know what the ceiling is.