Seth Littrell Sighting

[UNTLifer]

16 minutes ago, Travis said:

I didn’t get the impression DD wanted to leave at all. 

Maybe not, but his actions on the way out were ridiculous even if it was in reaction to having to work with RV. Of course, he has never been a HC again so maybe he realized we were his only shot. Seth will be a HC again and a successful one at that. 

[Travis]

59 minutes ago, UNTLifer said:

Maybe not, but his actions on the way out were ridiculous even if it was in reaction to having to work with RV. Of course, he has never been a HC again so maybe he realized we were his only shot. Seth will be a HC again and a successful one at that. 

Agreed. Beyond childish.
I have always been curious if we would ever consider DD as an offensive coordinator given his growth in the position since he has left. 

[MeanGreenTexan]

12 hours ago, UNTLifer said:

Maybe not, but his actions on the way out were ridiculous even if it was in reaction to having to work with RV. Of course, he has never been a HC again so maybe he realized we were his only shot. Seth will be a HC again and a successful one at that. 

He's going to have to do some soul searching first, and make some changes to his demeanor if he's going to lead an entire program again.   He certainly CAN.  I just don't know if he WILL.    

[El Paso Eagle]

3 hours ago, MeanGreenTexan said:

He's going to have to do some soul searching first, and make some changes to his demeanor if he's going to lead an entire program again.   He certainly CAN.  I just don't know if he WILL.    

You always have to wonder if the way he left North Texas is the reason he is not been a head coach since. It most likely put up a red flag to many athletic directors.

[GoGreenBeans]

48 minutes ago, El Paso Eagle said:

You always have to wonder if the way he left North Texas is the reason he is not been a head coach since. It most likely put up a red flag to many athletic directors.

Coaches have done far worse and gotten HC jobs, so I think Seth is fine on the character side. Getting fired from a mid tier school like UNT is what set his career down a peg. Being OC at OU is his way of beefing up his resume. I can't imagine too many schools were clamoring to hire him to lead their squad after we let him go. He's gotta earn his respect again

[greenminer]

17 hours ago, Wag Tag said:

Twins stay he is still our coach today.  

I'm not convinced.

[MeanGreenTexan]

55 minutes ago, El Paso Eagle said:

You always have to wonder if the way he left North Texas is the reason he is not been a head coach since. It most likely put up a red flag to many athletic directors.

I guess I'm confused here.   
If you mean "the way he left North Texas" to be: a middling, uninspired, .500 coach who has difficulty getting his teams fired up for big games... then yes, I agree.
If you mean "the way he left North Texas" to be what some here are insinuating: that he was a bitter/spiteful coward who ran off with cash and didn't express gratitude to fans who were calling for his head, & those who fired him... then no, I don't agree, because I don't think that is entirely true.

[El Paso Eagle]

14 minutes ago, MeanGreenTexan said:

I guess I'm confused here.   
If you mean "the way he left North Texas" to be: a middling, uninspired, .500 coach who has difficulty getting his teams fired up for big games... then yes, I agree.
If you mean "the way he left North Texas" to be what some here are insinuating: that he was a bitter/spiteful coward who ran off with cash and didn't express gratitude to fans who were calling for his head, & those who fired him... then no, I don't agree, because I don't think that is entirely true.

My bad. I was referencing DD, not Seth. 

[NT80]

46 minutes ago, greenminer said:

I'm not convinced.

Agree.  His biggest roster issue was he couldn't find an elite QB after Mason Fine.  Not winning a Bowl game didn't help his case either.

[greenminer]

8 hours ago, NT80 said:

Agree.  His biggest roster issue was he couldn't find an elite QB after Mason Fine.  Not winning a Bowl game didn't help his case either.

If our leadership was thinking, "man, year THREE of SL and the Twins will be the charm", then I would question the decision-making abilities of our leadership.

Edited January 3 by greenminer

[KingDL1]

On 12/30/2023 at 2:15 PM, Mean Green 93-98 said:

Seth Littrell has the best winning percentage of any coach since the Hayden Fry era.  We may feel like he underachieved, but apparently his tenure represents our ceiling.

The reality is that he had the easiest schedules ever at North Texas, he had the most money for assistants, and the best facilities. Highest paid in the conference and never won a bowl or a conference championship.  Do not let stats be the only guide, if he had the three to four body bag games a year others had to deal with his record would have sucked also. 

[Mean Green 93-98]

15 minutes ago, KingDL1 said:

The reality is that he had the easiest schedules ever at North Texas, he had the most money for assistants, and the best facilities. Highest paid in the conference and never won a bowl or a conference championship.  Do let stats be the only guide, if he had the three to four body bag games a year others had to deal with his record would have sucked also. 

It's been years since 3-4 bodybag games has been our norm.  Not since the early Dickey years.  And it seemed Dickey had better years WITH the bodybag games than without them.

[NorthTexasWeLove]

26 minutes ago, KingDL1 said:

The reality is that he had the easiest schedules ever at North Texas, he had the most money for assistants, and the best facilities. Highest paid in the conference and never won a bowl or a conference championship.  Do let stats be the only guide, if he had the three to four body bag games a year others had to deal with his record would have sucked also. 

He still won games. He at least beat the likes of FIU. 

My knock wasn't really him not being able to win bowl games or conference championships, though frustrating. My knock on him was the product that he fielded in those games. It was putrid, and often embarrassing. Completely outclassed in most big games. I can count 6 games where the expectation going in was apathetic and left pleasantly surprised... bowl vs Army, vs Army, @Army, @Arkansas, The Drive, and the perfect season destroyer vs UTSA. The letdowns outnumbered those little pleasant surprises by double, maybe triple. 

[KingDL1]

43 minutes ago, Mean Green 93-98 said:

It's been years since 3-4 bodybag games has been our norm.  Not since the early Dickey years.  And it seemed Dickey had better years WITH the bodybag games than without them.

Well, Dodge may disagree with you, and the Strength of yearly schedules were still much harder even under Mac. 

Still it remains that his schedules were by far the easiest I have ever witnessed.

[Mean Green 93-98]

1 hour ago, KingDL1 said:

Well, Dodge may disagree with you, and the Strength of yearly schedules were still much harder even under Mac. 

Dodge never had 3 bodybag games in a season.  Unless you want to say that he made games against teams like Rice into bodybag games, kind of like Dickey did with Tulsa.

Regardless, my point was not to address all the different external factors that the different coaches have had to deal with.  Regardless of what contributed to make his tenure the winningest of any coach the past 40+ years, it was.

[KingDL1]

3 hours ago, Mean Green 93-98 said:

Dodge never had 3 bodybag games in a season.  Unless you want to say that he made games against teams like Rice into bodybag games, kind of like Dickey did with Tulsa.

Regardless, my point was not to address all the different external factors that the different coaches have had to deal with.  Regardless of what contributed to make his tenure the winningest of any coach the past 40+ years, it was.

For the money invested, I think Seth was a huge failure. 

[Mean Green 93-98]

3 hours ago, KingDL1 said:

For the money invested, I think Seth was a huge failure. 

Any coaches over the past 40 years whose tenures you want to say were successes?

[KingDL1]

12 hours ago, Mean Green 93-98 said:

Any coaches over the past 40 years whose tenures you want to say were successes?

I really only care about the last 25, and at North Texas, the answer is no. I think the AD and the University have mostly only half-assed their commitment to win. Looking back, Dickey did the most for the program with his 4-year run in the Belt. RV was the most detrimental to the Athletic Department and the football program. 

[MeanGreenTexan]

23 hours ago, KingDL1 said:

Well, Dodge may disagree with you, and the Strength of yearly schedules were still much harder even under Mac. 

Still it remains that his schedules were by far the easiest I have ever witnessed.

It's so weird... When you expect to win, the schedule suddenly becomes "easy".   This, most-certainly, has not been the case for very long around here.

Seth Littrell's tenure elevated our expectations.   That's a good thing!  Prior to Littrell's first 3 years, our (the fans') expectations were not nearly as high.  I mean, #Hit6 was a thing for crying out loud.
So, finishing 6-6 versus basically the same schedules as Dodge & McCarney was considered a failure for Littrell's final 3 seasons.  That's a good thing!
Compare that to finishing 7-5 with a HoD Bowl win in 2013, which is considered by fans as the greatest season UNT football has had since coming back from 1AA (this is a sad reality).

Do you not see the difference in fans' expectations from 1995-2015 (pre-Littrell's successes) VS 2019-2023 (post-Littrell's successes)?   If yes, who would you say is responsible for those raised expectations?    If no, and you think we, as fans, would still consider 7-5 a "GOAT" season, I can't help you.

And to clarify/reiterate, I don't think he should still be here.  It was time for him to go, as his tenure had grown stale.

[Mean Green 93-98]

2 hours ago, KingDL1 said:

I really only care about the last 25, and at North Texas, the answer is no. 

Okay, so you're basically in agreement with me.

[KingDL1]

1 hour ago, MeanGreenTexan said:

It's so weird... When you expect to win, the schedule suddenly becomes "easy".   This, most-certainly, has not been the case for very long around here.

Seth Littrell's tenure elevated our expectations.   That's a good thing!  Prior to Littrell's first 3 years, our (the fans') expectations were not nearly as high.  I mean, #Hit6 was a thing for crying out loud.
So, finishing 6-6 versus basically the same schedules as Dodge & McCarney was considered a failure for Littrell's final 3 seasons.  That's a good thing!
Compare that to finishing 7-5 with a HoD Bowl win in 2013, which is considered by fans as the greatest season UNT football has had since coming back from 1AA (this is a sad reality).

Do you not see the difference in fans' expectations from 1995-2015 (pre-Littrell's successes) VS 2019-2023 (post-Littrell's successes)?   If yes, who would you say is responsible for those raised expectations?    If no, and you think we, as fans, would still consider 7-5 a "GOAT" season, I can't help you.

And to clarify/reiterate, I don't think he should still be here.  It was time for him to go, as his tenure had grown stale.

I think scheduling more winnable games didn't have much to do with the coach. For the last several years, we have had schedules that I thought Dickey's teams could have won, so I don't think Seth had much to do with that. Seth lucked out with Fine. 

[Jonnyeagle]

1 minute ago, KingDL1 said:

I think scheduling more winnable games didn't have much to do with the coach. For the last several years, we have had schedules that I thought Dickey's teams could have won, so I don't think Seth had much to do with that. Seth lucked out with Fine. 

Agree with this.  Fine was a big win for Seth.

[MeanGreenTexan]

11 minutes ago, KingDL1 said:

I think scheduling more winnable games didn't have much to do with the coach. For the last several years, we have had schedules that I thought Dickey's teams could have won, so I don't think Seth had much to do with that. Seth lucked out with Fine. 

What's the difference between 2014 (the year after NT's "greatest" season) VS 2017 (the year Littrell's squad won C-USA West)?   The schedule is virtually the same... except that we won 9 games under Littrell.  So the expectations changed to expecting to win them.
Yes, Fine is great, but Littrell didn't "luck" into him.   He was friends with Fine's HS coach.   
Who knows what the Dickey teams would have done with the 2017 schedule?  We did lose 3 out of 4 bowl games to C-USA teams under Dickey, so I truly don't know.

[KingDL1]

2 hours ago, MeanGreenTexan said:

What's the difference between 2014 (the year after NT's "greatest" season) VS 2017 (the year Littrell's squad won C-USA West)?   The schedule is virtually the same... except that we won 9 games under Littrell.  So the expectations changed to expecting to win them.
Yes, Fine is great, but Littrell didn't "luck" into him.   He was friends with Fine's HS coach.   
Who knows what the Dickey teams would have done with the 2017 schedule?  We did lose 3 out of 4 bowl games to C-USA teams under Dickey, so I truly don't know.

I am saying, in general, that Dickey also went undefeated for a long time in Conference play. Won how many Conference titles? And Dickey did win a bowl game. I did not have my expectations changed at all by Seth, and I thought for the money, he needed to win twice as much as Dickey. 

Seth did luck into Fine, and it was super dumb luck. Seth wasn't trying to recruit Fine. 

What is really bad is I was never a Dickey fan. 

[MeanGreenTexan]

20 minutes ago, KingDL1 said:

I am saying, in general, that Dickey also went undefeated for a long time in Conference play. Won how many Conference titles? And Dickey did win a bowl game. I did not have my expectations changed at all by Seth, and I thought for the money, he needed to win twice as much as Dickey. 

Seth did luck into Fine, and it was super dumb luck. Seth wasn't trying to recruit Fine. 

What is really bad is I was never a Dickey fan. 

So is it more about the $ boosters were paying Littrell?    He made 4-fold what Dickey made, so he should be winning 4-fold as well?    If so, that's not really his fault.  He took what was offered, which was the going rate at the time.   Then, his agent drove Baker & Smatresk like a rental car.  That's not Littrell's fault either.