My talk with Coach Darrell Dickey

[flyonthewall]

My point was that he is still coaching here. I guess you didn't get the sarcasm.

[SilverEagle]

My point was that he is still coaching here.  I guess you didn't get the sarcasm.

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I did.

[PlummMeanGreen]

Plumm as I've said before I respect your posts and it is clear that you have some knowledge about the subject.  What do you propose we do to fix the current situation?  If you were in charge what steps would you take to correct things?

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If I were in charge what would I do? Suspend all athletic operations for 2 years, clean house and then re-start the athletic program and then maybe only then after our 5'th year as a brand new football program then just maybe we might be able to beat ol'd Coach Howie' Schellenberger and Florida Atlantic University! LOL!

Of course I'm being facetious with the above thoughts. There are 2 words in the 2'nd sentence, though, that should be considered and should have been done when Rick V first arrived in Denton. Once Rick V came to Denton and studied our situation as it was then he probably saw all he needed to see but was probably too nice a guy to pull the trigger on sub-par coaching and other NT athletic employee's performances and was probably even hamstrung by our NT powers that be even if he had wanted to make some immediate changes in key areas.

But at UNT we now have have the good ol' boy system well entrenched that seems to be most employee-friendly no matter what those employee's W/L production numbers are after any number of years of being on our payroll. Proof of our good ol' boy system North Texas style? Well............don't we keep giving contract extensions to those that no one else in NCAA D1-A are even vaguely interested in offering interviews. What more proof does one need?

Rick V has done some good things although most things we are building (if you think about this) we are building just so we can stay in the intercollegiate athletic business. Many of us just hope we are not building a bunch of 1-AA athletic venues just for the sake of saying we have all our venues in place, though. What we are building now at UNT all of us will be stuck with (good or bad) years after our present athletic staff are long gone.

In all fairness to Rick V, though, IMHO he has been hamstrung by our on-campus Napoleon of the North who is a most successful home-builder in the real world out here but he seems to not know jack shit about NCAA D1 athletics and the kind of personnel who could make our school successful beyond the SBC/Bottom 10 level.

But as many of you have also posted, I also believe RV wanted to do make a most strategic coaching change 6 years ago after a loss in Monroe, LA, because he obviously had an intuition even as far as back as then. Lucky for for all parties concerned that we were a member of the fledgling and newly formed Sun Belt Conference consisting of many schools just out of a NCAA D1-AA classification. One might also admit that we sure had a bunch of footballs bounce our way almost every time during most of the early years of SBC football.

Yet early on, many of us felt RV knew we needed a new head football coach who would be offensively innovative (which would sell tickets even to the casuals or borderline fans of which we still have 15,000 empty seats each game after 4 bowl games) and I really felt RV also believed UNT would need a head football coach who would be a public relations dynamo as well as one would be upbeat and positive on and off the radio airwaves. I also feel AD Villarreal knew that he did not have that in the person of Darrell Dickey and DD has proved that on radio broadcasts time and time again.

At least RV came to Denton, shot for the moon with his own dreams for UNT and FWIW, we haven't always had those characteristics coming from the office of the AD in Mean Green Country.

Edited April 3, 2006 by PlummMeanGreen