Warming Up To The Wac?

[NT80]

yes until August 2011....then it ends..

No, the NCAA council must vote to end it; that has not happened yet. Speculation is the moritorium will end sometime in the near future, but with heavy stipulations on moveup requirements.

[TodgeRodge]

Moving UNT to the WAC doesn't give UNT any of the advantages you list here.

Seems to me you would think what UNT needs to do is move the campus to San Antonio.

I am not saying that UNT needs to go WACy, but I am responding to some that think there is no chance UTSA does until years down the road and I am saying that if UTSA and Tx State go WACy there is no reason they could not have results equal to or better than what results UNT has at any point in the next 3-5 years

not saying they will, but not understanding where everyone gets the idea they are miles ahead of TxState or even UTSA

Boise, TCU, USF, UH could all have have a horrible spell in the next 5 years as well.....but so could UNT

pretending this is the end of the WAC.....pretending that TxState or UTSA just has no chance of success or that the WAC and the Sunbelt could not be viewed as equals or with the WAC better in 5 years is a 50/50 proposition to me and I don't see the point in acting smug towards another program when the real issue is why is the mean green program in the shape it is in

No, the NCAA council must vote to end it; that has not happened yet. Speculation is the moritorium will end sometime in the near future, but with heavy stipulations on moveup requirements.

and again you think the NCAA has no earthly idea what any of these dates and requirements will be or if they did they would not communicate them to programs and conferences that are making public plans and making major public announcements because that is a way to run a governing body (and yes I know the NCAA is poorly run, but not this poorly and more in the line of player clearance and treatment)

2014 is the plan for UTSA...WAC needs someone two years before that....UTSA has all the things in place to go a year D1-AA, provisional, full D1-A staring in 2011 and being full D1-A in 2013

Edited September 23, 2010 by TodgeRodge

[Green Mean]

I have been a student at a few schools that play D1-A ball including UNT....and I have worked for another university.....so there are several I could "claim" (really can't you cheer for who you want in a free country )

I am not trying to say that UNT needs to accept the situation they are in, but they need to be realistic about the situation they are in

there is a lot of instability at the top of the university......you have a number of non-academics with other ideas about what higher education in general means and how higher education dollars should be spent that make a lot of important decisions for the university and right now athletics in Denton is not really all that important to them other than to keep what is in placed funded about like it is

it is really as bad now as ever and under a new administration it really might not get much better and that means that athletics might be treated about like they are now....the student fee will help.....it might even get raised over time....but the private dollars will probably be difficult to come by other than direct sponsorships and those are a hard sell and some of those are spoken for with half a stadium's cost needed

I don't think that a new administration at the presidents level (and I know above that) is being looked at that is going to make a university wide focus and long term plan for athletics like USF, Boise, TCU, SMU (if it holds), and some others have made...and like I see UTSA making (which in no way means they will have any success)......and it is because of well above the AD and football fans gaining a voice for what goes on above the AD means taking off the football fan hat and putting on an educated about my place of higher education hat and making an educated coordinated call for change

I believe too many feel the lack of a coordinated plan and a clearer long term vision for athletics is because of athletics, but IMO it is because higher than athletics has either never had the desire or never had the time to get a university sanctioned plan in place for the long term.....and the places that I see not doing that are the places that have "a year here and a year there" or "three or four years and futility for a time"

building a new stadium is great, but it is really not a plan to incorporate athletics fully into the identity of the university which is what I have seen the non-AG programs that have really made something do and do well...and that starts well above athletics

Again there are battles that I am sure the administration has but I am willing to bet that you go to just about any administration from any school and you will have strong voices that don't care or oppose anything good for athletics. That is just a reality. 10 years ago UNT athletics was worse than a dump...but today look at how many upgrades it has done? I bet 10 years ago you would have came on this board and say oh well the AC, new fields, FB stadium etc isn't possible because this administration is this and that. Look man its not all perfect and may never be but if UNT has made this much progress in the last 10 years in the athletics department and throughout the rest of the school then your theories/points aren't holding much water. If the administration didn't have any priorities in athletics then I can guarantee you that this new stadium wouldn't be going up. The school isn't going to waste 80 million bucks on something they don't feel is necessary.

[TodgeRodge]

Again there are battles that I am sure the administration has but I am willing to bet that you go to just about any administration from any school and you will have strong voices that don't care or oppose anything good for athletics. That is just a reality. 10 years ago UNT athletics was worse than a dump...but today look at how many upgrades it has done? I bet 10 years ago you would have came on this board and say oh well the AC, new fields, FB stadium etc isn't possible because this administration is this and that. Look man its not all perfect and may never be but if UNT has made this much progress in the last 10 years in the athletics department and throughout the rest of the school then your theories/points aren't holding much water. If the administration didn't have any priorities in athletics then I can guarantee you that this new stadium wouldn't be going up. The school isn't going to waste 80 million bucks on something they don't feel is necessary.

no 10 years ago (when the economy and development in Denton was red hot) I said the golf course needed to be sold off or leased out for a razor ranch type development, the athletics all needed to be where they are currently, UNT needed to use some of the proceeds from that sale or lease to build a really large parking garage that would be shared by students, the Super Pit, and a new football stadium (all centered around a purpose built tailgating area and that parking garage and using some eminent domain to take a decent sized bite out of crappy cement city (at least one one block to the north and even with at least half the area that UNT currently owns for facilities)

I would have said they need a university backed website with specific time lines and goals for these improvements

instead what UNT got was ever changing plans, several stadium designs, starts and stops on when it would happen, a confusing message from all involved, that resulted in at least one lost student fee vote, and a lot of hurt feelings and bruised egos on when that would happen if at all in the future......and then there was instability in the administration, UNT became dallas centric, there was another change in administration, UNT actually had better success on the actual field of play than they had in decades, and UNT was in no position at all to take much advantage of that and get those facilities built or to move into CUSA over UTEP

and here we are 10 years later, with a new stadium finally......and no real idea what it is going to cost, what amount of money is available to staff it or promote it, a decent idea of what it MIGHT get for sponsorship (with a goal I would call aggressive, but you can't fault aggression for RV when he is finally given the reigns to state a goal), still more dallas centricness, yet another change in administration, some 250K report that will probably tell many what they already know, make many get their hopes up, when there is no clear indication that the next administration (who ever they may be) will be open or friendly to the recommendations of that report or that UNT will have or find a way to fund those recommendations

because UNT has an 80 to 90 million endowment, a dallas community college to fund, a half empty UCD to fill that the immediate past administration butted heads with their bosses over and threatened to pull out of, a law school that was suppose to come with a new remodeled building all paid for by the city of dallas that has now turned into UNT (the university in Denton because that is the ONLY real source of revenue for the UNT system) remodeling part of the UCD on their own, to open a HIGHLY UNNEEDED law school at a time when lawyers are just flat struggling, and that will end up being tacked on to the community college

when I even tried to say any of that in the past I was given the and the ban hammer

because no one sees the value in ditching a large part of cement city (and chipping away at it more and more over time), everyone pretended that a big filed across the interstate was so cool (instead of the money it would have brought in to help fund facilities with a long term lease or even a sale back when Denton property had value), keeping all the athletics facilities clustered right on the edge of campus, that I-35 would still not have a clear plan for expansion, that dallas would become the focus on UNT, that UNT dallas would be a failure and a huge money pit (actually I think several others on here and elsewhere saw that and they were ignored), that dallas would actually already be pulling professional programs and other things away from Denton and more specifically an unneeded professional program that came with a bag of broken funding promises from dallas instead of solidifying Denton as some flagship leader of some cool system and turned out to be a professional program for a profession that is flat in the dumps and needs to stop training so many in their profession

so that is what I tried to say 10 years ago

and now we have watched what Boise is doing with a clear UNIVERSITY SUPPORTED FOCUS FROM THE TOP DOWN, USF has done, what UTSA is moving towards with accelerated speed, what TxState is gaining momentum on with their clear university sanctioned plan, while UNT still has a lot of questions that need to be answered even though they have a nice and impressive piece of what looks to be a piecemeal approach to what needs to be a clearly focused LONG TERM EASILY TO GAUGE THE SUCCESS OF PLAN for athletics and an administration change and a lot of wonders about if or when UNT will be able to move to some conference that everyone would be much happier playing in and supporting their membership in

see how this works

[oldguystudent]

a half empty UCD to fill that the immediate past administration butted heads with their bosses over and threatened to pull out of

Not at all football related, but since you mentioned it, I had to take a class at UCD and another at Wakeland High School in Frisco last spring. I was and am befuddled as to why I've signed up to go to school in Denton, but there are required classes that I'm forced to take in completely different locations. Then I get surveys from some university research team asking me why I don't feel connected to the Denton campus. The system-wide administration in this place is a true enigma to me.

[wardly]

of the 6 remaining wac schools, 4 are former members of the belt, and with the possible exception of hawaii, bottom feeders in 1a football.[latech may be a step above, but san jose is certainly a big step down]. i just don't see what we gain in the wac. latech is a 3 hr drive, and new mexico st. is 600 miles from denton. historically we do not have a natural rival. while we look at smu as one, they don't consider us to be their equal. to me , the only thing texas state and utsa bring to the table is an opportunity to develope long term intrastate rivals. otherwise, we are stuck in the belt, as cusa doesn't need another school in dfw market and neither does mt. west. we need to get out football program back to winning first and worry about conference alignment second.we have had 3 winning seasons in the past 10 years,and 5 in the last 20.to illustrate what a sorry program we have become, corky nelson had 5 winning seasons in 9 seasons during the 80's, including 3 of his last 4 and got fired. go figure.

[SteaminWillieBeamin]

and here we are 10 years later

...

when I even tried to say any of that in the past I was given the and the ban hammer

10 years ago, UNT was not in good football shape. That is just flat wrong. They weren't in any position to handle expansion.

You didn't get banned because you spoke the "truth."

Above is a great reason you got banned. You throw out highly charged opinions based on lies or very loose "facts." You constantly belly ache about the same topic, regardless of what the thread is about -- and you troll people into arguments about that same damn topic.

For some peace and quiet, the admins showed you the door.

Here you are, a year or so later, stil harping on the same exact topic and dragging people into your net.

[NT80]

10 years ago, UNT was not in good football shape. That is just flat wrong. They weren't in any position to handle expansion.

You didn't get banned because you spoke the "truth."

Above is a great reason you got banned. You throw out highly charged opinions based on lies or very loose "facts." You constantly belly ache about the same topic, regardless of what the thread is about -- and you troll people into arguments about that same damn topic.

For some peace and quiet, the admins showed you the door.

Here you are, a year or so later, stil harping on the same exact topic and dragging people into your net.

This!