This board is so funny sometimes....

September 27, 2005

There are some exceptions, but overall we are losing the recruiting battle. Facilities has its part in that, and the conference has a part in that. A new stadium is extremely expensive, and any conference changes are a long way off. We hopefully will have Coach Dickey around for a while still. We have to appreciate what he has done. Beyond that, he's got more time in at NT than any of us former students (well, OK, maybe not ALL of us). That said, we should be looking at a plan to VERY SIGNIFICANTLY increase salaries for the entire coaching staff. This is something that could be brought about with a serious fund-raising campaign. It is much more attainable than a new stadium. When I saw what Tommy West was making over here at Memphis I nearly fell over. It points out how far down we are even against *relatively* modest comparison.

By increasing in a substantial way the compensation available for the coaching staff we could ultimately expect to get someone who would be recognized by recruits and potential fans as 'the real deal' and who could stay within a light year of the other team regardless of the personnel out there. These repeated huge losses are what keeps us nationally recognized as 'not the real deal'. People only want to come out in force for the real deal. That means staying with other teams individually, even if there are some losing seasons.

We have to have a plan in place for development. The transition itself is not immediate. Waiting for fans to show up is putting the cart before the horse. There has to be substantial investment. There has to be a coordinated fund-raising effort to garner the funds for investment.

The school will not decide to do this on its own. We must first convince the school that it is the right thing to do. I am asking you all to let the school hear you, to tell the administration, anyone you can reach out to there, that they need to turn on some serious fund-raising efforts, for this purpose.

Finally, I will say something about the BIG donors. They are for the most part a mythological creature. Our school's main strength is in numbers of alumni, not the money they individually make. It takes a different type of effort to mine this way, a 'wide but not deep' approach. That means getting a plaintive message out on a mass scale. That is the type of effort that the school needs to undertake. None of us personally has the information or money to reach out to all the alumni, but the school does. They should think of it as 'seed capital'.

PlummMeanGreen · September 27, 2005

You folks that keep talking about the young qb, I think that (unfortunately) we are once again being apologistic Mean Green fans. Let's say that this is a "fluke" year and those other great teams are behind us that were full of experience. Let's look at the past 3 years OOC record one more time where everyone can be on board. NOT COUNTING THIS YEAR....we have a 3-14 record against OOC opponents (4-13 if you count Troy because I believe that when we played them 2 years ago they were not in our conference) We lost to teams such as the mighty somethings of FAU, Baylor, Air Force, TCU and South Florida just to name a few. Where was our "youth and inexperience" problems then? We have an excuse year after year. Why is it so wrong to demand more? Maybe we should also stop the "North Texas fans suck" bandwagon and think of this.... Did anybody notice that the movie industry was down this summer? Nobody was going to the movies. Why? The movies sucked. Think about it.
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The football team has annual W/L records to serve as its baromenter for success or lack thereof , but we Mean Green alums/fans only have to look at our annual football game attendance figures which are turned into the NCAA office to see what we have been doing. I think we would all admit there is room for improvement. And why don't we adopt the concept of supporting the Mean Green no matter who they play OR no matter the W/L record? It seems the most successful Texas D1-A schools have done such.

Honest-to-goodness, though, weren't we all impressed with the enormous NT student turnout for our home season opener and not worrying how many of them come back for the Troy U game? Not sure I've ever seen a larger NT student turnout. I am hoping that our new generation of NT students and future NT alums are cut out of a different mold compared to what I've mostly seen for 30 plus years in Denton. Yet I am not sure I've ever seen our NT students fill out as much of the east stadium as they did for the Tulsa U game; hellsbells some of them even had to sit in the endzones.

The last 5 years of NT's record-breaking freshmen classes have not been around all us jaded old nestors for all that to rub off on them and I hope they start a whole new spirit of loyal fan support at our alma mater. When you have about 6,000 new NT frosh' and transfers each year (as we have the last 5 years in a row), a football program can build a pretty good broad base of new fans and gol' darned quick, too. This is one of the silver linings around the last 2 week's dark clouds and irony of ironies, it also involves our youngest students on campus.

GMG!

Edited September 27, 2005 by PlummMeanGreen

Got5onIt · September 27, 2005

Don't compare us to OU, compare us to programs more on our level who seem to still find ways to compete each year on offense.
Everyone loses players.
Rick
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Ding, Ding, Ding!!!

We have a winner.

What prize would you like, sir, for that answer?

September 27, 2005

And why don't we adopt the concept of supporting the Mean Green no matter who they play OR no matter the W/L record?
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You are preaching to the choir, Plumm. And it is a small choir. The one thing this little choir can do is a sing a song together to the administration to do what only they can do to spur something big. Yes there are things we can do, but for there to be a 'critical mass', some steps must be taken that only the school can take.