2013 Coaches Hot Seat

[UNTLifer]

Those coaches on the "hot seat" must not have open practices.

[UNT90]

Not a chance. Not only does the contract extension require way too much of a buyout, but I have a feeling that they purposely did it before hiring a new President. It sends the message that they like the way things are going with him in place, and that that will be an area where they won't let the new President make a change. I could be reading it wrong but it seems pretty obvious to me.

Which sends the message to alumni that losing is just fine with UNT.

No need to get involved, nothing has changed here.

Just move along.

And I agree with you, the extension happened to prevent any attempted change by the new president (if that were even a possibility).

[GoMeanGreen1999]

If he goes 3-9 or worse, he better not be.

There is NO way we are going to remove Mac after year 3. We could finish 2-10 or 3-9 and Mac will be here year 4.

[Legend500]

RV has a permanent pass from me for two easy reasons - as questionable as his hires have been, his development has been spotless. UNT was dead, dead, dead in investing in sports before him, and now we have Apogee/MGV and a comfortable donor base for sports which will allow us to add another sport in the very near future. UNT wasn't a healthy program before he came here, and he's succeeded in raising Lazarus from the dead. Good enough for me.

[UNT90]

RV has a permanent pass from me for two easy reasons - as questionable as his hires have been, his development has been spotless. UNT was dead, dead, dead in investing in sports before him, and now we have Apogee/MGV and a comfortable donor base for sports which will allow us to add another sport in the very near future. UNT wasn't a healthy program before he came here, and he's succeeded in raising Lazarus from the dead. Good enough for me.

And this is a huge problem. People are fine with losing, as long as we lose in the proper facilities. There is no pressure to produce a winner, because winning just doesn't matter here.

RV, with A LOT of help, has gotten us even with our peers, facilities wise.

It doesn't matter if we don't win, and the donor base will only tolerate losing for so long (I can only hope).

[Stan R]

And this is a huge problem. People are fine with losing, as long as we lose in the proper facilities. There is no pressure to produce a winner, because winning just doesn't matter here.

RV, with A LOT of help, has gotten us even with our peers, facilities wise.

It doesn't matter if we don't win, and the donor base will only tolerate losing for so long (I can only hope).

I'm torn on this because I agree with most of what you are saying but I think you attack some of "us" unfairly. Nobody is ok with losing. I guess you are directing your anger towards - ?? wealthy alums who have the capacity to make a change with their fortunes? I really don't see who you direct all of this angst at. Should people like Eddie K. be directing his monies in an all out campaign to unseat Mr. RV? Is that how you would have done things? I'm just trying to understand what your grand plan is. You obviously are not a fabulously wealthy alum or else you would have put this into action right?

You tire me. I've been unhappy with results for some time in the same way that I'm unhappy with our current White House administration. What can I do that I have not already done? I'm not going to stop coming to games as some sort of protest, that ain't happening. What should I do sir to make you happy?

[KingDL1]

NO ONE should ever get a permanent pass. And RV gets a lot of credit for things that were already happening at UNT before he was hired.

[UNT90]

I'm torn on this because I agree with most of what you are saying but I think you attack some of "us" unfairly. Nobody is ok with losing. I guess you are directing your anger towards - ?? wealthy alums who have the capacity to make a change with their fortunes? I really don't see who you direct all of this angst at. Should people like Eddie K. be directing his monies in an all out campaign to unseat Mr. RV? Is that how you would have done things? I'm just trying to understand what your grand plan is. You obviously are not a fabulously wealthy alum or else you would have put this into action right?

You tire me. I've been unhappy with results for some time in the same way that I'm unhappy with our current White House administration. What can I do that I have not already done? I'm not going to stop coming to games as some sort of protest, that ain't happening. What should I do sir to make you happy?

You are right. I am not a wealthy alum. Just a hard working Joe nobody who spends too much on a masonistic sports interest. My commitment to club seats was just that. A big financial commitment, not just something to have whenever I feel like taking in a game.

What do I expect you to do? Use your influence to let people above RV know that we cannot continue losing without consequences for EVERYONE inside the athletic program. Question our inability to bring a truly marque opponent to Apogee. Question why we are set up to have numerous 5 game home seasons in the immediate future. Ask what Apogee has truly changed about the way this program has been ran. Ask why we didn't make a coaching change in basketball.

Most importantly, ask for goals for each and every program and consequences if those goals are not met.

Basically, ask that RV be held accountable and not given an extension when we have not been successful in the big 3 sports.

Oh, and form your opinions based on results and not on the access afforded you and the friendships formed because of your value as a donor.

*by "your", I do not mean you individually, but all donors at your level (assuming you are a big ass donor).

[GoMeanGreen1999]

RV has a permanent pass from me for two easy reasons - as questionable as his hires have been, his development has been spotless. UNT was dead, dead, dead in investing in sports before him, and now we have Apogee/MGV and a comfortable donor base for sports which will allow us to add another sport in the very near future. UNT wasn't a healthy program before he came here, and he's succeeded in raising Lazarus from the dead. Good enough for me.

I agree to a point. RV has done a lot of nice things here. The facilities upgrades have been very nice. I think there are people that can take programs to certain levels just as there are coaches and CEO's who can do the same, but to then take you to the next level you need a different person. That is not necessarily a knock on the previous person either. Everyone has strengths and weaknesses. So far, I have not seen the hires on the same level as the upgrades in facilities.

[UNT90]

There is NO way we are going to remove Mac after year 3. We could finish 2-10 or 3-9 and Mac will be here year 4.

And we could finish 8-20 and 6-22, but Benford will still get that 4th year.

[GoMeanGreen1999]

And we could finish 8-20 and 6-22, but Benford will still get that 4th year.

Completely agree. I think there is no way RV would remove Mac until the end of year 4 and I doubt that Benford would be removed before the end of his fourth, because if you keep him after last season after what he did with that talent, you sure won't remove him after next season. The Benford deal is really sad, because we had so much momentum going forward. Reality on whether or not we know how to hire coaches here was sealed when we hired Benford and Mac. Mac came here 29 games under .500 and maybe even more so with Benford because RV lays the criteria out for that position, then junks it and hires Benford.

Edited August 6, 2013 by GoMeanGreen1999

[UNT90]

Completely agree. I think there is no way RV would remove Mac until the end of year 4 and I doubt that Benford would be removed before the end of his fourth, because if you keep him after last season after what he did with that talent, you sure won't remove him after next season. The Benford deal is really sad, because we had so much momentum going forward. Reality on whether or not we know how to hire coaches here was sealed when we hired Benford and Mac. Mac came here 29 games under .500 and maybe even more so with Benford because RV lays the criteria out for that position, then junks it and hires Benford.

This is what has really shredded my confidence in the AD. Not the hiring of Benford, but the refusal to admit a mistake and do what needs to be done to correct said mistake.

Instead, the approach appears to be to cross their collective fingers and hope against all the evidence laid before them last year that Benford rights the ship.

We will all see how that works out this year.

[GoMeanGreen1999]

This is what has really shredded my confidence in the AD. Not the hiring of Benford, but the refusal to admit a mistake and do what needs to be done to correct said mistake.

Instead, the approach appears to be to cross their collective fingers and hope against all the evidence laid before them last year that Benford rights the ship.

We will all see how that works out this year.

So my belief is that we had virtually no option to fire Benford because we have already had to buy out Dodge and Stephens, so if we then after one season bought out 4 years of a coach we just hired, that would be 3 out of the last 4 major hires and that looks terrible. We don't have the money to hire a coach and turn right around and buy out their contract, so we are for all practical purposes stuck.

[ColoradoEagle]

RV isn't going anywhere. If he's still here in 10 years, we will still be attempting to find the right coaches for most sports, promotions will still be basically non-existent and the ones we do have will be the same poor quality, we'll still be "generating name recognition" with North Texas on the helmets while no one wants to carry our logo'd apparel because no one sees the logo, and schools like UTSA and Western Kentucky will have long since passed us by.

RV is a decent enough guy, but that shouldn't ensure job security. At almost every other FBS school, he would have been fired five years ago. At this point, I still support North Texas because it's my school and I try to have faith that the coaches will succeed somehow like Johnny Jones did.

It's depressing to go to a website like Lids.com and see Texas State, a school supposedly a rung below us on the food chain, have over twice the selection of hats available. This one example wraps everything up into one. Losing, bad marketing, and poor communication (at one point we had 2-3 pages of options and Hatworld, at the time, had half the store filled up with our stuff).

I know I'll get negs for this, it's just really frustrating to see RV get a contract extension when almost everything he's accomplished was handed to him on a silver platter.

[ColoradoEagle]

So my belief is that we had virtually no option to fire Benford because we have already had to buy out Dodge and Stephens, so if we then after one season bought out 4 years of a coach we just hired, that would be 3 out of the last 4 major hires and that looks terrible. We don't have the money to hire a coach and turn right around and buy out their contract, so we are for all practical purposes stuck.

Can't remember where I read it, but supposedly our media take went from $40k in the Sun Belt annually to $800k in CUSA annually. Seems like money isn't the problem.

[UNT90]

And we have been told on this very site by people who should know that money isn't the problem.

I think the problem is 2 fold. First, there is not wanting to admit a mistake and going to pretty outrageous means not to (the rumors out of the ADs office about players last year were sorry as hell).

Second, maybe RV doesn't get that extension if he does fire Benfird and basically admit he made just about the worst hire possible. How in the world would the BOR be able to justify the extension? Of course, I don't know how in the hell they can justify it now.

Does anyone not think RV would be gone in a second if a better AD job came along? It hasn't.

There is a reason for that.

[Green Dozer]

You are right. I am not a wealthy alum. Just a hard working Joe nobody who spends too much on a masonistic sports interest. My commitment to club seats was just that. A big financial commitment, not just something to have whenever I feel like taking in a game.

What do I expect you to do? Use your influence to let people above RV know that we cannot continue losing without consequences for EVERYONE inside the athletic program. Question our inability to bring a truly marque opponent to Apogee. Question why we are set up to have numerous 5 game home seasons in the immediate future. Ask what Apogee has truly changed about the way this program has been ran. Ask why we didn't make a coaching change in basketball.

Most importantly, ask for goals for each and every program and consequences if those goals are not met.

Basically, ask that RV be held accountable and not given an extension when we have not been successful in the big 3 sports.

Oh, and form your opinions based on results and not on the access afforded you and the friendships formed because of your value as a donor.

*by "your", I do not mean you individually, but all donors at your level (assuming you are a big ass donor).

Not trying to be a smart ass 90, but have you done any of this yourself? Have you made a call, sent a letter, or sent an e-mail with your concerns?

Edited August 6, 2013 by Green Dozer

[UNT90]

Not trying to be a smart ass 90, but have you done any of this yourself? Have you made a call, sent a letter, or sent an e-mail with your concerns?

The reality is that I'm not a big dollar donor, so I don't have any real power in this situation. That is just the way of the world, as it should be.

I'm just hoping a few that do have the power are asking these questions.