SBC or OOC

[pollock]

I'd say winning the Sun Belt is more important, but you have to seal the deal and win the bowl too. And we've failed to do that 3 out of 4 times.

But you do have to squeak out some OOC games, or you make the conference look bad. Like we've done.

[gksmith]

Schools get more recognition if winning the Belt.

The SBC shares the bowl money so the pay out would be about the same winning the conference or not.

We would get some recognition by OOC upsets, but not as likely to happen and recognition for that week only.

You get a trophy for winning the conference...nothing for winning OOC.

[mad dog]

In terms of the hardcore fan base, I'd say OOC would be more important, because we already have the 4 championships and The Streak in our back pocket. Even if we have a few off years, we have more or less mastered that level of competition. Where we, as dedicated followers, need to see progress is against what we know to be a slightly higher level of competition.

But to be frank, the hardcore fan base is not nearly as important to the growth of the program as the casual fan base. You get all the people like us who are true fanatics together in one area, we number what? 1,000? 2,000? Something on that order, anyway. Unless a significant portion of those people are fabulously wealthy, it can't take the place of a larger, albeit more shallowly involved, fanbase.

It is the casual fan and the tens of thousands of interested, but casual alumni, that we need to respond in order to take our program to the next level. Now, how exactly we do that is up to debate, and I support any and all measures the AD uses to get there.

Perhaps the most shockingly surprising thing I've heard from a casual fan (and I'm sure most of you have heard something like this when explaining our program to a friend or fellow alum) was from my buddy, a current student only passingly familiar with college football. We were talking about the schedule, and the only teams on the schedule he was familiar with were Texas and SMU. He had never heard of Tulsa, Akron, Louisiana Tech, or any of our Sun Belt foes except MTSU, and that was only because I had already explained the rivalry to him.

To the hardcore fan base, we see clearly that Tulsa is a far better team than SMU, and we know that beating Tulsa would say far more in terms of showing where we are talent- and coaching-wise. We know that beating a Conference USA opponent, even staying competative helps our chances to play in that conference someday.

From a casual perspective, beating SMU seems to be far bigger than any win on our schedule will be from here on out because it is a name team, and a beating a name opponent makes news, even if they are not very good. A lot of this potential fan base couldn't begin to tell you the difference between Conference USA and the Sun Belt. I have been asked if Tulsa is a conference opponent, and I got lots of blank looks when I mention Akron.

Just a thought I had...

[chrisfisher]

From a current student's perspective: I actively try to recurrent fans in my doctoral program at UNT and UNTHSC. You'd be surprised at how many people think the Sunbelt, and hence us, are D1AA. My brother is at UNTHSC and an Aggie fan. He thought I didn't know what hell I was talking about and had to verify at ESPN that we were D1A. Moreover, when I try to rally other UNT students, same stuff: we are D1AA... when I point out we are D1A, the next question is always, "Who else is in the Sunbelt?" After I list the teams they always say, "Middle Tennessee who? Florida what?" They could give a rats ass that we consistently (excluding 2005) beat up on Sun Belt teams. For them, they see 56-7 losses against UT or even 27-3 losses against "unknown" Tulsa. Every game counts, but in my view, if we want to rally the students (and community), we cannot keep getting our buts kicked around in OOC games. We don't even have to win - just be competitive against known teams. Bottom Line: No one cares that we win in the Sun Belt (except some of the UNT sports junkies, like myself, in this forum).

Edited September 20, 2006 by chrisfisher

[shaft]

This is very chicken and the egg.

You need Conference wins to get to bowl games & your conference needs OOC wins to make your bowl matter. So far the SBC is off to a pretty good start this year to adding value to our conference.

[chrisfisher]

I was thinking more about my post above. I may be off a bit. My experiences in my doctoral program may not (and probably aren't) representative of the entire UNT student body, especially the younger folks. I should have considered that before saying students don't care about SBC wins....perhaps the SBC victories are appreciated more than I know.

Also, I made an error in my original post and said D2A when I meant D1AA...sorry. i edited the original post too.

Edited September 20, 2006 by chrisfisher