untjim1995

I've said this exact thing for years. Those NFL-lite and NBA-lite schools need to separate completely. Move on to their New Minor League setup. And let the rest of us compete against peers in a structure that makes sense, from a cost standpoint. I would love to have UNT in a league that has the current AAC, MWC, CUSA, MAC, and SBC schools, as well as the former power programs that get left behind, like Washington State and Oregon State have already experienced.

That makes sense. And now the legislatures and state Supreme Courts will have the Power school's backs if anyone fights this in state.

Anyone could see this coming as you looked at the landscape the Supreme Court allowed with NIL and the NCAA allowed with the portal.

The fact is that they will let the market decide this. We will see the eventual breakaway and the NCAA schools will probably look like the current G5s and FCS. Whether it’s scholarship only, w-2 employees, or 1099s as consultants, college football and basketball will look so completely different from 25 years ago. If the market allows us to be in one of those levels, then that’s what it will be. It gives cover to the university’s leadership to avoid having to face another self-demoting decision.

Our location and affordability is awesome for first gen students…and a lot of our student body are working to pay their way thru UNT. Add in a metro area that is now the 4th largest media market in the country, due to all of the folks who have moved here and it’s pretty easy to see.

Exactly how are they suppose to “clean up”? With our massive NIL? With our incredible following? Because of our incredible success? You get talented players by offering them money, playing time, visibility, and success. We have very little money, lots of playing time, visibility is what it is here, and almost zero success in 45 years that anyone beyond the diehards know about.

Because G5 players aren't leaving because they are buried on the depth chart and can get playing time at some P4, they are leaving because they can play at this level and the P4 schools know they can buy them away easily. Y'all will use your money, just like y'all always do, to buy players away from G5s now that you're in the ACC. Before, you could take advantage of Power kids transferring to you for playing time and money against G5s. Now, you'll switch this up and raid Denton, San Antonio, Ruston, Tulsa, etc... That's just not worth my time or money. I got better things to do. If others feel differently, that's awesome. But that's 180 degrees away from the college sports I enjoyed as a young man and adult.

Memphis just got FedEx to pony up $25 million for the next 5 years for NIL for football, hoops, and other women's sports. That's not counting their money they give for sponsorship of their athletic department. We have nothing like this. Maybe some G5s do, but most don't.

Absolutely--all of this. My son is going off to college in the fall. Both of his parents are UNT grads, but he wanted nothing to do with coming here, because he wanted to go somewhere that had good academics AND that athletics mattered, just like his best friends and cousins all felt. So, he's heading to one of those P4s and we are very excited for him. I just think if we hadn't given up after the SWC pipe dream was burst, it would've been different here...a lot different, too. Again, I think UH was who we could've been just like. In the mid-to-late 70s, our programs were very similar. Both were successful as independents. UH got into the SWC because they only had little ol' Rice to compete with in their market. And they were hugely successful immediately, in both major sports. That got a lot of Houston Energy Money to be invested in their program. We could've emulated that in some fashion, but instead, Hayden Fry leaves and we eventually gave up. That was just too much to overcome, particularly in the timeframe you mention above. UCF moved up to FBS right around the time we made our way back up in 1995. But they didn't have alumni and students that watched their school blow off sports for 12 years like we did. They went about building up a program in a manner that made sense and today, they are in the Big 12. No reason at all that we couldn't have been something like this today if we had made athletics a priority. Instead, we decided that I-A was a way to make more money by whoring out the program and playing at a toilet for decades. Those decisions still have ramifications that killed any chance of us being anything close to what we wanted to be. And the portal bit has killed college sports for me. I literally watched about 3 games of college football last year. And college basketball, which is my first love, is also losing its appeal, too. The NIL, while I'm not a fan of it, I understand why its there. The portal, though, is just too much for me to accept. It's just not worth my time or money to invest in it when the players are using that system to move up from Denton as soon as they can. I don't blame them, either. But college sports was built on familiarity and the players being "ours". That's just no longer a viewpoint that I feel anymore when any player that produces in any fashion just can leave at any time they choose.

You'll see that you will enjoy your time and money a lot more. I quit about 2 years ago, when it became apparent that G5s were just minor leagues for the P5s. I knew it was coming, as I posted about this exact situation for years before on here. And there will be many others that are much higher up the foodchain than us who will see this happen to. I see the breakaway having 30-50 schools for their own athletics. Really, if the top 24 schools wanted to form their own setup, they could easily. Texas, A&M, OU, LSU, etc...they all have the eyeballs and the media and the legislative support from their states. I loved getting 6+ hours back on Saturdays in the fall. I loved using those funds towards family trips and better entertainment opportunities for all of us. like concerts and golf. To be honest, the time was better to get back than the money. More time with family and friends on the weekend, as well as more time for stuff with church and the community was the best surprise of all. I don't even blame players for getting theirs, either. More money and more exposure in the P5s that these guys grew up rooting for and dreaming of playing for all adds up to an easy decision for these guys. Basically, the players are catching up to what the coaches got to do without any qualms for years. Again, if we hadn't quit on the program back in the early 80's with the ridiculous drop down to i-aa when the SWC was one of the kings of the NCAA, it just nuked the program. You lost generations of fans and alumni from the past and the future, most of whom just picked up another school to root for or just become pro fans only, all while completely dropping the program's status with TX HS coaches and parents, maybe things would be different today, I'd like to guess at a minimum, we could have been a UH type program, maybe higher because of our location. Had we had any vision, the old Big Eight would have been the perfect conference to go all in to join instead of the SWC. We could have given that entire league a DFW presence, instead of just OU. And getting to play OU, Nebraska, Colorado, OSU, KU, KSU, Missouri, and ISU as conference mates in both football and hoops would have jumped us over ALL of the SWC privates. UH and Tech would've been peers instead of being steps above us as SWC members. But we didn't...we just gave up.

Steve Sloan dies at 79: Ex-Ole Miss coach won two national titles as player under 'Bear' Bryant at Alabama - CBSSports.com Not sure why our alma mater wasn't listed, but he was the AD for my first few years here in Denton while I was a student. Even got to do an interview with him for a communications class when I was a sophomore. He admitted to me that day in his office that the administration just didn't support sports enough to compete with the schools in the SWC back then and that it was really frustrating.

That year, we played KU, who ended up ranked tenth, we played at OU, who was ranked 10th when we played them, we played at LSU who was ranked at one time that season, at Alabama, who finished ranked 21st. Louisville, who was an independent and went 7-4,and Nevada, who won the Big West in 1995. Missouri wasn't good, but we played them to open the season before they got beat up by the best conference in CFB that year, the Big Eight, which had 4 teams in the top ten, and Nebraska won the national title by about 100 over a great Florida team. We beat a bad Oregon State team at home, which led to them firing their coach and building up into a legit program just a few years later, as their fans openly said that was their low point of their football program's existence. We beat Idaho State, a 1-aa school, late in the season in our final home game, and we lost two terrible games, at home vs UAB, who was 1-aa at the time, and at UNLV, who only won 2 games all year. That exact schedule today would be a dream for an independent program, but it was a nightmare for our program. And even though we joined the Big West the next season, our OOC games were brutal for most of the next two decades, basically.

Yeah, the last 50 years of welfare and our education system has really created an awesome situation for children...lets not change that

Be very careful. Crazy ass fans will call this crapping on the program...

Thank you...

I guess I am wondering why Tech and UH get 2/3 of the funds and we have to split our 1/3 with Texas State…

Any reasoning for how the distributions get calculated? It seems weird for a school with the 3rd largest enrollment to get the least amount in distributions...

Man, is this the truth. Some crazy ones want to keep their heads in the ground like an ostrich.

Sure you did, pal…you deserve this place so much. Such a loser

Telling the truth isn’t shitting on the program. No matter how hard that is for your sweet little heart to read.

When the SWC fell apart, TCU was really a bad program. But the City leaders in FW, knowing that TCU was central to their city, came up with a plan for making them the Hometown Team. TCU used their best asset at the time, money, to buy away Franchione from New Mexico and bring him to FW. And it worked. He got them turned around and when he left for Alabama, his Defensive Coordinator was ready to move up. And Gary Patterson did just that. And the next thing you know, FW goes crazy for them, that leads to a Rose Bowl win and top 5 finish, then getting into the Big 12, which led to another top 5 finish, and then making a hire in Sonny Dykes to pump life into the program and he immediately leads them to a national championship game. What Fort Worth has done for TCU is what Denton has not done or will ever do for UNT. Dentin’s citizenry either ignores or openly loathes our program’s existence. We have yet to ever have one sellout at our stadium—that seats a little over 30k. It is what it is.

If you’re a G5 program, you’d be really smart to look at a great regional FCS program to poach their coach and get their players to transfer. As was mentioned earlier, getting upperclassmen that are used to a coach’s system and moving them up against G5s that aren’t really good, you’ll do fine. Texas State is showing just that. We just didn’t look at that when we hired Morris. Doesn’t mean he will fail, but it makes his efforts to recruit and develop HUGE!!

If you go to this game, I feel bad for you…on many levels, actually

It all depends on your perspective. Our leadership is great at what the community and UNT Family overwhelmingly ask them to do, which is offer a great value for educating a ton of people and making sure the artistic vibe of Denton is celebrated greatly. It’s absolutely irrefutable that we have been a major success at both of these. When I went to school from 1991-1995, our enrollment was around 26k. Our music program was bringing home Grammy’s. Football was quarter-assed. We have now grown to 47K in enrollment, still have the music and arts promoted greatly, and our football program now is about half-ass compared to most other Texas FBS programs. Some things are just set in stone. It’s what the university wants. They don’t care if football wins or not—they just want it be there for the 10k people that support this place with dollars and season tickets.