For those who question the commitment

[Green Dozer]

[JesseMartin]

What if Coach Mac and Benford have another bad year in their respective upcoming seasons? Are we prepared to buy both, or either, out?

THIS. JJ may not have been a world-beater, but he brought the basketball program a long way from its old shell, much like RV helped change a lot in attitudes and facilities. But even though those two things carried us through the end of Dickey, all of Dodge, and the first couple of Mac's seasons, If things go south for both teams next year this is a bad spot to be in. I like the potential of Benford's new recruits and as always, we will see. Everybody has reasons why or why not to be optimistic about basketball next season, but Benford is still here so we will just have to find out how things roll in the winter months.

As to football, well, yes, football brings in more money than basketball and is also the more visible for most schools. But with Mac having the highest salary we've ever paid, if both teams fare poorly and it is "decision time" I really doubt that we would buy out both contracts' remaining years. So with all of our hopes as high as we can muster for basketball and football, if it turns out poorly and everyone is calling for change, I would wager that Benford would be gone with Mac getting another year, unless of course we win 2 or less in football.

See, for the most part the question has been "how bad of a season would one or the other have to have in order for the coach to be sent away," but I really think it's the combination. IF it is decided that we can squeeze in with buying out one contract, and IF Mac has a bad season and is fired, then IF Benford has what is to be perceived as an even worse season, then people will complain that we sent Mac and not Benford.

Of course, IF we get a reason to stop being pessimistic and both sports have decent-to-good seasons, this won't even be something to worry about.

The fact is that both of them are here for another year, let's hope for the best and table the decision whether or not to get mad again until they've each had what may be their "last chance" to show us their goodies

[CMJ]

It's time to re-quote Tasty's fantastic post earlier in this thread. It totally is the best thing I have read on this board about athletics...maybe ever.

Commitment is Western Kentucky. More on that at the end of this post. What we have right now is architecture.

I still defend Darrell Dickey. I think Coach Mac has done more than anyone should have reasonably expected so far, though I am a little concerned with our recruiting under him. I don't think (though I may be wrong) I called for Dodge to be fired until he was in his 3rd year. I criticized him pretty heavily up to that point, but I don't think I said RV ought to fire him.

I understood the Benford hire, I praised it at the time. When people started talking about "Sweet 16 or bust", I tried to point out that postseason success as a sole measure of achievement is foolish. When people knock our program for never beating ranked teams, I try to point out what that means, and why almost nobody from the mid major ranks ever beats ranked teams, particularly on the road.

I am not a person with unreasonable or outrageous expectations.

The best thing for North Texas, not just as a basketball program, but primarily as an institution of education and integrity, would be for Tony Benford's association with it to be terminated, as soon as possible, voluntarily or not.

Yesterday would have been better than today. Today would be better than tomorrow. Tomorrow is better than September, September would be better than January, January would be better than April. This year would be better than 2 years from now.

But that's not going to happen.

We aren't going to pay off roughly one and a half million dollars to get rid of the guy. We lost our shot at the brass ring last year. Next year, we'll struggle, because we have so many new players learning to mesh and play D-1 basketball, and doing it against CUSA competition instead of the Sun Belt. The year after that (assuming we aren't replacing another 6 or 7 guys then), maybe we'll push .500... And obviously, we can't fire the guy when the team is showing improvement. That gets us to year 4 out of 5 on the contract, and maybe midway through or at the end of that season, we might get a new coach.

That's just how it's going to be. Benford isn't going anywhere anytime soon. We're going to have to sit here for years and watch our basketball program lose any and all momentum we put together over the last decade. It's hard, hard, hard to build a program in any sport, but primarily so in the 2 main men's sports. Once upon a not-too-long ago, we were pretty decent at football. Now, less than a decade after our last bowl appearance, there are only 5 schools in D-1 football that haven't made a bowl since our last appearance. UNLV, Washington State, Tulane, Eastern Michigan, and New Mexico State. Everyone else that was full D-1 last year, including half a dozen teams that weren't D1 when we were bowling (or flat out didn't exist at all), has been in a bowl since our 2004 New Orleans Bowl appearance.

We made a godawful hire in football, and holding on to that guy for 4 years has allowed us to see 116 other schools make at least one bowl game since our last one.

It's going to happen in basketball, too.

Western Kentucky is committed to success. Not architecture, though success has allowed them to finance some nice architecture, too. That place doesn't accept being terrible at everything.

Western Kentucky won a national championship in 1-AA football back in 2002. Their Defensive Coordinator got promoted to Head Coach, then led them to a #8 and #11 ranking. He oversaw their transition to full D1 football. They signed him to a 6 year contract extension in January of 2009. 10 months later, they realized he wasn't the man who could lead them to FBS success, and they fired him. Less than a year after giving him a big extension, they got rid of him. And, looking at what they did under Taggart, it looks like they made the right call.

In basketball, Western Kentucky hasn't gone more than 5 years between NCAA Tournament appearances since the 1950's. And, back then, some schools preferred the NIT over the NCAAs. If you count NIT appearances, the last time WKU went more than 5 years without an appearance was during the Great Depression.

Western had a coach who, in his first year, led them to an NCAA tournament win. Almost the Sweet 16, if not for a Gonzaga buzzer beater. Ken McDonald won 21 games the next year. The year after that, his team went .500. And that .500 season was so unacceptable to that school, McDonald had to take a $100,000 pay cut to keep his job. Then, they fired him halfway through the next season anyway.

McDonald won them an NCAA tournament game. Almost two. Never finished a season under .500. And he didn't even get to finish the 4th year on his contract.

That place refuses to be awful at sports.

Here, we have a tiny fan base and limited resources. Even though WKU is smaller and in a small Kentucky town, they don't have to worry about either. Since before World War 2, no student who attended 5 years at WKU has gone without a team to celebrate.

Here, we have sock puppets from the athletic department scolding fans for being pissed off that we're terrible at both of the major men's sports. There, they don't have the excuse of apathy and a small donor base. Because for over 80 years, every Hilltopper who put in a full 4 years had something to cheer for. And in the periods where they didn't get it while on campus, it happened the year before or the year after.

There are no dark decades or generations of limited to zero fan base growth like what's happened at North Texas in the same period of time. WKU doesn't have to wait and hope for a Boone Pickens gift. They have 80 years worth of consistent commitment and sports success. We have 4 bowls in a half century, and most of our fans crap on whatever that success was worth. We have 3 NCAA appearances in our entire school history. WKU has 4 NCAA tournament wins (not appearances, but WINS) since our 2007 appearance.

That's a place that has given their students and alums a reason to give a damn about sports. With very short and very minor exceptions, we haven't done that here. To sit in the equivalent of my two seats at Diddle Arena, I'd have to pay $1500 per year. Meanwhile, at the Super Pit, we couldn't give away tickets in our row.

If Tony Benford were coaching Western Kentucky, he'd be at risk of getting fired midway through the upcoming basketball season. When they screw up a hire (Kilcullen, McDonald) they don't spend the next 4 years justifying the decision process. That's how they've run that program for generations, and that's why they don't sit around wondering how the can tap their market or interest their 100k+ alums within a 30 minute drive of campus like we so often do.

We can't be terrible at everything anymore. We were decent at football, then we were pretty damn good at basketball. If football doesn't make it to a bowl this year, it's going to keep getting uglier and uglier. It's been 15 years since we sucked at everything, all at once. And it looks like we may be in for another year of it.

When people are complaining, at least they're engaged. I spent most of basketball season not posting. I've pretty much stopped doing any maintenance on the basketball recruiting forum, because based on how we're handling players and scholarships, that forum may as well be Grindr for guys who can dunk.

Benford is here. He's not leaving any time soon. And I understand that. I don't expect him to go anywhere until late 2015 or early 2016, at the soonest. Unless we get ourselves in some sort of trouble, and wind up with an out to fire him for cause.

We're stuck. We're f---ed. And it's probably going to take so long to change course, that we'll have a football-style reclamation project for our next coach to walk in and try to fix.

I'm 32 years old. And it looks like it's going to take a miracle, sooner or later, for me to see us in the NCAA Tournament again before I turn 40. Whenever it happens, (if it happens?) I just hope we haven't gone on sanctions in the meantime.

[JesseMartin]

I see where you're going with the part in bold. If Mac had already had a big "breakthrough" season, that probably would have already happened. But I think if they're considering buying out a contract, the fear is that if they fire Benford, and then Mac has a worse football season than last year's B-ball season was, they would have to keep him on even if fans freaked the hell out if they could only buy out one. Just my theory of course.

[KRAM1]

Sometimes it is really good that the inmates are not running the asylum. Inmates often do and say very interesting things armed with little to no factual information and data, but lots and lots of third and fourth hand info. You know, "I heard it from a very reliable source who, of course, heard it first from another very reliable source". Usually someone who heard it from someone else who really wasn't there. Reminds one of the old telling stories around a campfire and how the real story gets changed a bit each time it is told.

Got a perfect example of it just this week. But, that's for another time and place.

This upcoming season in football, men's basketball and women's basketball will tell us all a great deal. Last season is OVER...time to move on and see what the future holds. We'll all start to know in sixteen weeks as UNT kicks off the 2013/14 football season against Idaho AT HOME in beautiful Apogee Stadium. Well, those of us who show up for the game anyway...and I am guessing there will be a whole lot of "us" who show up! New seasons, new adventure await. Be there, be part of the Great Mean Green Nation!