Dodge Era

[MeanGreenTexan]

Here is a short visual of those years.

This guy actually appears to get off to a pretty good start, so I would say he was a little more successful than Dodge.

[forevereagle]

This guy actually appears to get off to a pretty good start, so I would say he was a little more successful than Dodge.

I don't know, he is kind of shaky right at the beginning. And his first attempt at doing anything more than coasting was a failure, so I think it is pretty analogous.

[UNTLifer]

This entire thread should be in a Hall of Fame somewhere. I laughed when I watched these last night and again this morning.

(I did cry at the memories though.) So glad Coach Mac is here.

Edited October 23, 2013 by UNTLifer

[Cerebus]

Sweet gif/meme time

In that case, here is a little piece I have entitled, Les Années de Todge:

[mattmartin817]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7SZhVkigqZQ

[oldguystudent]

Weird broken link. Never mind.

Edited October 23, 2013 by oldguystudent

[MeanGreenTexan]

I don't know, he is kind of shaky right at the beginning. And his first attempt at doing anything more than coasting was a failure, so I think it is pretty analogous.

good call.

Here's another skateboarding analogy:

You can tell immediately he's an amateur, but you give him a chance. Seems like a nice enough guy. The company he keeps appear to be jr high/high school aged though, so you question his judgement of peers.

He kicks off a little bit with some nice news coverage and some nice recruits. You can tell he's learning on the fly, but maybe this thing will go. You keep watching and hope for the best because you have no other choice.

The giant palm gets in the way by closing practices which hides what would probably give us all a heads up of what we could expect during the season... No hitting in practice??

Then, when he goes to ride, he's exposed immediately (79-10) and runs backwards further than where he was when he started.

Insult to injury, the immovable object of truth (the old Pontiac GrandAm of life) smashes him in the face.

Enjoy:

[LongJim]

Todd Dodge don't work here no more.

[CMJ]

The baby is Dodge...the cat is college football.

[Stan R]

The baby is Dodge...the cat is college football.

damn that is funny. I'm out of +1s

[The Fake Lonnie Finch]

Well.....

• Todd Dodge is hired as the HC. There is some misgiving, because he has never been a college HC before, but many are convinced he is going to be a great recruiter and it will all work out.
• At his introductory press conference he states he is bringing in an all HS staff because "football is football" and it doesn't matter no one had any major college football level experience. This is the point where I begin to panic.
• We lost our first game to OU 79-10. A few more panic but most rationalize that it's OU, he doesn't have his recruits, a new system takes time, etc.
• We go 2-10 that year (2007) more people begin to panic. But it's early, surely it has to get better?
• We go 1-11 in 2008. The panic is real.
• We go 2-10 in 2009, the majority is in real panic, though a few are telling them that this will still work out, he just needs time, the hire was a good one, etc.
• We start off 1-6 in 2010, and Dodge is let go. Having learned from BlackJerseyGate, he is not allowed to finish the season.

What he said.

Although, pleased with seniors like Abbe, Orr, Thompson, Chancellor, etc. They really are forming the backbone.

I think maybe part of Dodge's problem was micromanaging things. I always point to the high school WR coach who confronted a DB on the sideline during a game because the DB came off the field and cussed. I mean, look...in the heat of battle, people might cuss.

Frankly, that level of micromanaging behavior was a pretty bad sign...especially when the on the field product was getting its ass kicked. To a certain degree, a player has to be able to show frustration. Better to have the kid cuss it out on the sideline instead of on the field to an official or opponent/get a personal foul from acting out frustration on the field.

Todd Dodge was a good man. But, the way you run a high school program and a college program is night and day different. You're not going to come from a lilly-white, wealthy suburban high school and tell a roster full of kids from less than lilly-white, wealthy suburban high schools that you can't let an f-word fly out of frustration during a game. It's like Todd and his original high school coaching staff were speaking a foreign language to the players.

Oddly enough, with McCarney, I have to kind of stand close to my kids during the coaches caravan things because Coach Dan will let fly with the "Hells" and "Damns" a la Barry Switzer, old school style. Gotta try to cover their ears if a Hell or Damn is eminent.

Edited October 23, 2013 by The Fake Lonnie Finch

[meangreendork]

good call.

Here's another skateboarding analogy:

You can tell immediately he's an amateur, but you give him a chance. Seems like a nice enough guy. The company he keeps appear to be jr high/high school aged though, so you question his judgement of peers.

He kicks off a little bit with some nice news coverage and some nice recruits. You can tell he's learning on the fly, but maybe this thing will go. You keep watching and hope for the best because you have no other choice.

The giant palm gets in the way by closing practices which hides what would probably give us all a heads up of what we could expect during the season... No hitting in practice??

Then, when he goes to ride, he's exposed immediately (79-10) and runs backwards further than where he was when he started.

Insult to injury, the immovable object of truth (the old Pontiac GrandAm of life) smashes him in the face.

Enjoy:

I love how it's totally clear that his lower body is not at all capable of controlling anything the weight of his upper body forces on it.

[The Fake Lonnie Finch]

Perfect!

[Green Mean]

That Dodge era was a nightmare.

[Harry]

OK - so while I admit that some of the comments and videos were funny I also get this sick feeling sort of like the guy Lucille was hitting on in the song "Fine time to leave me Lucille.." by Kenny Rodgers. It's just distasteful to me to continue to pound this guy in the ground.

Dodge was an absolute abysmal hire and likely set our program back for a decade but it happens. As someone accurately pointed out, we were WOEFULLY underfunded and Dodge was a hot commodity at the time. It was a marriage of convenience. Todd Graham at Tulsa had proven that a high school coach could have success at the college level and I believe he had hired another high school coach named Gus Mahlzan as his OC... I just remember thinking at the time - because of our lack of funding and commitment to winning - that Dodge would potentially have more upside than hiring a no-name coordinator from a D-I program. We had already tried that with Dickey and while he had tremendous success --- it just ended so badly and left such a bad taste that there was a desire for change. Dodge promised a wide open and exciting offense. The spread had given teams lower down the food chain a fighting chance to compete. Rice was sniffing around about Dodge as a coordinator and Cowboy Coach Bill Parcells was singing his praises. His QB camp was attracting some of the best talent in the country.

Back to my original point - as bad as the Todd Dodge hire was, you have to hand it to the man he handled the situation with class and dignity. He never said a bad thing about North Texas and still to this day does not. I really admire that in a person. Sometimes in life things don't work out. Things didn't work out for Dodge or us. So instead of bashing the Dodge hire and his incompetence let's leave it alone. Given the way he handled the situation it's the least we can do.

I still think everyone involved with the hire should be held accountable for it. RV has stated very clearly that it was a bad hire on his part. No one is trying to escape blame. Heck I even admit freely that I was behind the hire and I know many others on here were as well. We all make mistakes and hopefully we learn from them. I think had we not encountered the situation with Dodge we may not have upped the anty and brought in Chuck Neinas and hired Mac. In the end result, I wish Todd Dodge, Riley and his entire family nothing but the best in the future. GMG

[untjim1995]

The thing with Todd Dodge that made a lot of us, especially me, to believe he was a great hire was because he had great name recognition in the state with HS coaches (which Dickey really burned in the DFW area) and that he was just not going to cost very much (like $275k per year). I figured that we would improve greatly, just because our offense might actually throw the ball more than once a quarter in the first half of games, unlike his predecessor. Dickey had just worn out his welcome with the constant complaining about UNT funding and support, while also just giving the fans absolutely boring football to follow. Plus, I figured that recruiting would pick up because of Dodge's connections and name recognition--and it actually did in Dodge's first couple of full recruiting periods. The problem was that the kids he recruited from the snooty suburban schools in the state never fit in at UNT at all. They played in a dump (Fouts) that was worse than their practice fields at their high schools. To me, that was where we really knew that this thing had nothing to build forward with. You can change coaches to get better, but losing recruits before they even get a chance to develop was a killer to the program's future.

What amazed me about Dodge was that he was stubborn enough to have HS assistants in charge of the entire team in his first year. To his credit, he did replace the worst coach I have ever seen at UNT in Ron Mendoza with Gary DeLoach, who had seen great success as a DC at UNT previously. He also hired Mike Canales to run the offense after his third year, so I think he could see that his high school coaching tricks just weren't gonna work here, but again, by the time it was fully realized, it was too late.

The worst part of Dodge's tenure that reared its ugly head, though, in my opinion, wasn't the baseless racist complaints in his first year or the rampant drug use by the players that was outed to the public in his second year. It was that after 3 years as a head coach at UNT, and having 2 years left on his contract, Dodge had won 5 games out of 36 games he coached--and was allowed to return for a 4th season, for one reason and one reason only: we wouldn't buyout two years of a $275k contract, that only paying out one extra year as a buyout of $275k was acceptable. To go that cheap was just incredible to me. You told the entire UNT family (alumni, students, faculty, administration, Denton, etc...) that we were only willing to get out of a colossal failure of a hire (winning 13% of your games certain qualifes as EPIC Failure) by paying for one year of a buyout, not two. If you wonder why McCarney has looked like a breath of fresh air here in Denton, a big reason is because of the ineptitude of the previous UNT coaches, but especially his immediate predecessor, Todd Dodge. But if you want to know why it has taken this long to get us back on a path that, at the very least, appears to be a positive one is because the lines on this team were the thinnest and least developed that a FBS team has ever produced, especially defensively. Dodge recruited lots of highly rated skill players, but couldn't get any traction at all with llinemen, which is always the foundation of any team. McCarney's specialty has been in rebuilding programs from the lines up. Slowly, but surely, we have seen solid progress here, which is why we have finally accomplished something amazing here in Denton--winning back-to-back games for the first time in 9 years (sarasm alert on this last part!!). In 2005 and 2006, Darrell Dickey won 5 games total, losing all the momentum that his previous 4 years of winning in the brand new SBC had brought to Denton. Then, Todd Dodge won 6 games in 3.5 years of coaching. McCarney won 6 games by the 2nd game of his 2nd season here. That should tell you all you need to know.

All of this is why a few of us cannot believe that RV survived as the AD, much less got an extension earlier this year, in light of spectacular failures in football with Dodge, womens hoops with Shanice Stephens, and in mens hoops with Benford, who appears to be in the same "way-in-over-his-head" look that Dodge had. If Benford fails tremendously, as he did in his first year here, RV will be responsible for hiring the worst three coaches of all-time in the three major revenue sports in the history of the university. It really is amazing...

[UNT90]

We had such a shoe string budget that limited our search to a successful Texas High School football coach or college assistants. The great Darrell Dickey had never been a head coach (prior to and after UNT). We also played in the worst stadium in America in the weakest conference in America. The only difference between Darrell Dickey and Todd Dodge is that Dickey coached the first few years of a start up league while Dodge coached when it was much better.

The current coaching staff continues to benefiting with a much greater commitment to football. (Head coach's salary is almost double that of Dodge & Dickey combined, playing in a brand new stadium that most folks never thought would happen and in a better conference. The new staff is also benefitting from many of Dodge's last recruiting class.

Dodge continues to take too much flack in my opinion based on the cards he was dealt. Reverse roles and it would be interesting to see a higher powered offense in Apogee; than what we get now. Not saying he would have us undefeated like his Carroll teams but I think we would have a similar record or better.

Calling BS here. LAMO is in a far worse place, and has been since they first came to the Belt. Troy, also. Basically just about every belt team. They did far more with less than Dodge did at UNT.

Also calling BS on the "Dodge is all we could get" line. There were 120 FBS head coaching jobs in America at the time of the Dodge hire. Anyone involved in college football who didn't have one would kill to get one, even at little ole UNT. See the Harbaugh interview for proof pudding.

Dodge dealt himself his own cards from a stacked deck, choosing to arrogantly bring his ENTIRE high school coaching staff and choosing to basically ignore the opposite side of the football. Lets not forget, he had 9 returning starters from a defense ranked around 70th the year before, and instantly turned it inot the worst defense in college football. By far. The worst.

Todd Dodge is the only one to blame (with an assist to the person who made the hire, Ricochet Rick) for being totally unprepared to head a college program. I wish him all the luck in the world as a high school coach, which is where he belongs, but I couldn't disagree with Cooley or Harry more. We need to remember this for exactly what it was. A disaster of a hire that set this program back more than a decade. We need to remember it to make sure that something like it never happens again.

After all, the guy who hired him just got a brand spanking new 10 (??) year contract and basically hired his equivalent in basketball, so, yes, there is every chance the mistake could be repeated again.

[Harry]

The worst part of Dodge's tenure that reared its ugly head, though, in my opinion, wasn't the baseless racist complaints in his first year or the rampant drug use by the players that was outed to the public in his second year. It was that after 3 years as a head coach at UNT, and having 2 years left on his contract, Dodge had won 5 games out of 36 games he coached--and was allowed to return for a 4th season, for one reason and one reason only: we wouldn't buyout two years of a $275k contract, that only paying out one extra year as a buyout of $275k was acceptable.

You are absolutely right and the word I heard was that Bataille and the BOR said that the money saved in that 4th year would help secure a more competitive package for the next hire. So basically you have your leadership saying that to fund a qualified coach required us putting up with another year when it was clear that things were not going to change. So basically even if we had fired Dodge after year three we wouldn't be able to attract a qualified coach because we didn't want to spend the money. I also think the stadium and costs associated with it played a role. That's not RV's fault. But that is the environment we have come from and thank goodness we seem to have moved away from it. I still get worried. I remember how difficult it was for Dickey when his assistants were woefully underpaid and the good ones would get snapped up by another program without any semblance of a fight from us to keep them. I remember being shocked that we had won 4 consecutive conference championships and yet our coaching compensation was on the lower half of the Sun Belt?? A coach like Mac is not going to even consider taking this job without assurances that his assistants salary pool is north of 1 million. The good news is it was addressed however, we can't allow complacency to set in again and RV and staff must be good stewards of the additional budget dollars. I just don't think people realize how dramatic the changes have been here over the last 4-5 years. The problem is it still takes time to break away from the stigma of being a Division I program in name only.

[Harry]

Also calling BS on the "Dodge is all we could get" line. There were 120 FBS head coaching jobs in America at the time of the Dodge hire. Anyone involved in college football who didn't have one would kill to get one, even at little ole UNT. See the Harbaugh interview for proof pudding.

Of course we would have loved to have Harbaugh -- we just couldn't afford him. Any yes money matters it absolutely matters when hiring coaches and anyone with ability and experience.

I don't think Dodge is all we could get but I do think that there were financial reasons that made Dodge more attractive at the time.

[Christopher Walker]

Back to my original point - as bad as the Todd Dodge hire was, you have to hand it to the man he handled the situation with class and dignity. He never said a bad thing about North Texas and still to this day does not. I really admire that in a person. Sometimes in life things don't work out. Things didn't work out for Dodge or us. So instead of bashing the Dodge hire and his incompetence let's leave it alone. Given the way he handled the situation it's the least we can do.

This may be bad form, but I will roll this one out:

What remained of our program when Mac got here.

But man, have we come a ways.

[CMJ]

If Benford fails tremendously, as he did in his first year here, RV will be responsible for hiring the worst three coaches of all-time in the three major revenue sports in the history of the university. It really is amazing...

I don't know...Trilli would give Benford a run for his money.

[UNT90]

Of course we would have loved to have Harbaugh -- we just couldn't afford him. Any yes money matters it absolutely matters when hiring coaches and anyone with ability and experience.

I don't think Dodge is all we could get but I do think that there were financial reasons that made Dodge more attractive at the time.

Don't misunderstand me, Dodge was actually what got me re-involved with UNT sports, but, in hindsight, there were much better candidates out there. It was a gamble, and a terrible hire, and something we should always remember in order not to repeat.

[MeanGreenTexan]

OK - so while I admit that some of the comments and videos were funny I also get this sick feeling sort of like the guy Lucille was hitting on in the song "Fine time to leave me Lucille.." by Kenny Rodgers. It's just distasteful to me to continue to pound this guy in the ground.

Dodge was an absolute abysmal hire and likely set our program back for a decade but it happens. As someone accurately pointed out, we were WOEFULLY underfunded and Dodge was a hot commodity at the time. It was a marriage of convenience. Todd Graham at Tulsa had proven that a high school coach could have success at the college level and I believe he had hired another high school coach named Gus Mahlzan as his OC... I just remember thinking at the time - because of our lack of funding and commitment to winning - that Dodge would potentially have more upside than hiring a no-name coordinator from a D-I program. We had already tried that with Dickey and while he had tremendous success --- it just ended so badly and left such a bad taste that there was a desire for change. Dodge promised a wide open and exciting offense. The spread had given teams lower down the food chain a fighting chance to compete. Rice was sniffing around about Dodge as a coordinator and Cowboy Coach Bill Parcells was singing his praises. His QB camp was attracting some of the best talent in the country.

Back to my original point - as bad as the Todd Dodge hire was, you have to hand it to the man he handled the situation with class and dignity. He never said a bad thing about North Texas and still to this day does not. I really admire that in a person. Sometimes in life things don't work out. Things didn't work out for Dodge or us. So instead of bashing the Dodge hire and his incompetence let's leave it alone. Given the way he handled the situation it's the least we can do.

I still think everyone involved with the hire should be held accountable for it. RV has stated very clearly that it was a bad hire on his part. No one is trying to escape blame. Heck I even admit freely that I was behind the hire and I know many others on here were as well. We all make mistakes and hopefully we learn from them. I think had we not encountered the situation with Dodge we may not have upped the anty and brought in Chuck Neinas and hired Mac. In the end result, I wish Todd Dodge, Riley and his entire family nothing but the best in the future. GMG

Right.

I hope he decides to take another crack at college coaching one day. BUT, he needs to start as a QB's or WR's coach and move up. Learn from an experienced HC/OC for several years. I really think he would have been a fine coach if he didn't jump in, head first, into a raging fire. Looking at what he did offensively while at UNT is pretty impressive. One look at the record books will prove that. Seems like a good guy as well. You're certainly right Harry, the way he handled himself during his time here and when he was let go was classy all the way.

Going up to Pitt with Graham was another mistake. That guy is a goober. I always wondered why Gary Pinkel didn't pick him up as his QB's coach. Maybe Dodge was just so beaten by the college game that he didn't want to...

[oldguystudent]

My biggest issue with Todd in retrospect is that I believe there are still those who would rather he be here than Mac. In 2.5 years, Mac has won 13 games vs 6 games in 3.5 for Dodge (3 of those 6 against FCS/transitional WKU). And the games we've lost haven't been either A) complete and utter embarrassments of incomprehensible ineptitude or B ) displays of some of the worst clock management/decision making maneuvers in the history of humanity. But there are still those who would rather Dodge still be here. That stubborn, arrogant presence he and his coaching staff emitted along with those who would still rather he be here, keep me a nice, simmering bitter on the whole experience.

Edited October 23, 2013 by oldguystudent

[Mo Green]

The thing with Todd Dodge that made a lot of us, especially me, to believe he was a great hire was because he had great name recognition in the state with HS coaches (which Dickey really burned in the DFW area) and that he was just not going to cost very much (like $275k per year). I figured that we would improve greatly, just because our offense might actually throw the ball more than once a quarter in the first half of games, unlike his predecessor. Dickey had just worn out his welcome with the constant complaining about UNT funding and support, while also just giving the fans absolutely boring football to follow. Plus, I figured that recruiting would pick up because of Dodge's connections and name recognition--and it actually did in Dodge's first couple of full recruiting periods. The problem was that the kids he recruited from the snooty suburban schools in the state never fit in at UNT at all. They played in a dump (Fouts) that was worse than their practice fields at their high schools. To me, that was where we really knew that this thing had nothing to build forward with. You can change coaches to get better, but losing recruits before they even get a chance to develop was a killer to the program's future.

What amazed me about Dodge was that he was stubborn enough to have HS assistants in charge of the entire team in his first year. To his credit, he did replace the worst coach I have ever seen at UNT in Ron Mendoza with Gary DeLoach, who had seen great success as a DC at UNT previously. He also hired Mike Canales to run the offense after his third year, so I think he could see that his high school coaching tricks just weren't gonna work here, but again, by the time it was fully realized, it was too late.

The worst part of Dodge's tenure that reared its ugly head, though, in my opinion, wasn't the baseless racist complaints in his first year or the rampant drug use by the players that was outed to the public in his second year. It was that after 3 years as a head coach at UNT, and having 2 years left on his contract, Dodge had won 5 games out of 36 games he coached--and was allowed to return for a 4th season, for one reason and one reason only: we wouldn't buyout two years of a $275k contract, that only paying out one extra year as a buyout of $275k was acceptable. To go that cheap was just incredible to me. You told the entire UNT family (alumni, students, faculty, administration, Denton, etc...) that we were only willing to get out of a colossal failure of a hire (winning 13% of your games certain qualifes as EPIC Failure) by paying for one year of a buyout, not two. If you wonder why McCarney has looked like a breath of fresh air here in Denton, a big reason is because of the ineptitude of the previous UNT coaches, but especially his immediate predecessor, Todd Dodge. But if you want to know why it has taken this long to get us back on a path that, at the very least, appears to be a positive one is because the lines on this team were the thinnest and least developed that a FBS team has ever produced, especially defensively. Dodge recruited lots of highly rated skill players, but couldn't get any traction at all with llinemen, which is always the foundation of any team. McCarney's specialty has been in rebuilding programs from the lines up. Slowly, but surely, we have seen solid progress here, which is why we have finally accomplished something amazing here in Denton--winning back-to-back games for the first time in 9 years (sarasm alert on this last part!!). In 2005 and 2006, Darrell Dickey won 5 games total, losing all the momentum that his previous 4 years of winning in the brand new SBC had brought to Denton. Then, Todd Dodge won 6 games in 3.5 years of coaching. McCarney won 6 games by the 2nd game of his 2nd season here. That should tell you all you need to know.

All of this is why a few of us cannot believe that RV survived as the AD, much less got an extension earlier this year, in light of spectacular failures in football with Dodge, womens hoops with Shanice Stephens, and in mens hoops with Benford, who appears to be in the same "way-in-over-his-head" look that Dodge had. If Benford fails tremendously, as he did in his first year here, RV will be responsible for hiring the worst three coaches of all-time in the three major revenue sports in the history of the university. It really is amazing...

To Todd's credit he knew he was in for troubles so he requested to keep 3ish defensive coaches around. The AD refused this request. So... with no mentoring he brought up those asst coaches from HS & then we played OU and... The responsibility for the era is the _________( you fill in the blank)