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Well, that is pretty much the question of the day. I am very pleased for UTSA...great job. San Antonio is a pretty large metroplex without any other D-1 program and it has many businesses that have shown a willingness to support this program and buy tickets which certainly helps. They seem to have hired a professional sales staff to help as well...at what cost? Who knows? But, the results are rather impressive and I am happy for them...will help the conference. But, what UTSA does or doesn't do does not help (or hurt) UNT. The UNT fan base, local community and business owners need to look in the mirror for the answer to that one. Even here on GMG.Com (and other fan sites) we have "fans" who do not purchase season tickets even though they live in the DFW area, and who make up any number of excuses as to why not....I got an example of the love for UNT recently that I'll share here as it is just another example of the attitude of many of those who claim to "bleed green". We have a program...recently expanded...through the UNT Alumni Association that we call the Alumni Ambassadors. It's a group of Alumni Association members and previous board members who want to stay (or become) involved with the work of the Alumni Association. We seek new members on an on-going basis (if you are interested...send me a PM for more details). Well, we hear from an alum who lives out of state (we have Ambassadors in several states) and who wants to volunteer because she (and I quote here) "Bleeds Green"! Great...perfect candidate...or so I thought. Well, the basic requirement to Ambassador membership is the one at least be a member of the UNT Alumni Association ($40 annulaly or $500 lifetime). This lady is not an Alumni Association member and would not join in order to be an Ambassador...all the while she and her husband donate to FOUR other universities! Said she couldn't afford the $40...really? And you currently donate to FOUR other universities, are employed full-time as his the husband and "Bleed Green"! Really? I run into this attitude constantly in my volunteer efforts for UNT's Alumni Association, Mean Green Club, my department and with the other various projects I help with (GMG.Com football and basketball games, etc.) on a regular basis. UNT grads and fans love to find what's wrong with UNT (and they are real happy to constantly tell the world what's wrong with UNT...as if that does any good at all) and use that as their personal excuse or grudge (man, can some UNT "fans" hold grudges...wow!) for not donating, not buying season tickets, not joining the Alumni Association, not joining the Mean green Club etc., etc. It's the "what's in it for me" attitude and "someone else should do it" attitude that seems so prevailing with UNT folks. I read...on various websites...complaint after complaint about everything from the quality of staffers, the football/basketball schedules, the times events are scheduled, the time games are scheduled, what is or is not scheduled and where, the fact that coaches ask the faithful to do more in trying to get fans to "buy in", and on and on to ad nauseum. If we...as UNT fans...want things to change for the better it's time to start being part of the solution rather than part of the problem. Think about it...has all the complaining and finger pointing done any good...other than to make one and those of a like mind feel secure in their bitterness....or would being positive and helping folks see the greatness that is the Mean green, and why they SHOULD support the program rather than why they should not bring about more positive results? It's up to each one of us to answer that question for ourselves...part of the solution or part of the problem...your choice. I've made mine some time ago.

Took this photo earlier today. As many of you know, Little Guys Movers provides the equipment truck for road games and the paint scheme for this year is pretty cool! Thanks Little Guys!

And if it goes the other way: "WHAT?!?! I pay all of this money to be at a privileged level in the Mean Green Club, but any schmuck can just walk right up and watch practice? Where are the perks for my contribution?" It's a lose-lose. You can't please everyone every time.

I see you were at QuickTrip.

Glad he found a new coaching job. I hope he has much success, starting in 2013.

you moved to corpus??? yuk...i grew up, graduated from the bluff...glad i left it for denton!!!

Alsup's burritos & corndogs puts all those other "in"convenieince stores to shame.

As long as they don't take away the freedoms you care about huh?

Interesting logic. "I don't want to join that club because it will give me access to something others don't have access to". I don't know if it was intended to come across that way. I also hear complaints that there aren't enough MGC member only events. I guess you can't please everyone.

1. We didn't ignore the Sun Belt. Look on the cover beneath Tony Mitchell's feet and elsewhere. 2. Which approach would stir more interest for North Texas fans? 3. Given a similar situation would UALR highlight the SBC and soft-pedal their new conference? I think not. 4. Why do you care?

I am so excited that UTSA is in our conference. I received my Bachelors at UTSA on the way to my PhD at UNT. Of course, I only cheer for the green. Why I am so excited is that I moved to Corpus last summer so I'll get to watch the Mean Green when we play in San Antonio! Sweet!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Goes to show that this was a good addition. I'm glad to be in the same conference of these games. Our first game at the Alamodome will be a blast. I hope be beat the snot out of them.

Don't forget that Mac has to recruit OL's for June Jones too since they are either too lazy or ineffective to do it themselves.

Well, this is what I get for leaving the topic alone for a day... As far as employment, I would. Look, as far as employment prospects go, St. Mary's is doing something better than everyone else - making lawyers. That's what law schools do. If people are going for other reasons, great, but it's the job of law schools to make lawyers, not academics or businessmen. Now, it seems like you're equating Big Law jobs with being "good" jobs. If you're interested in spending your career becoming the legal equivalent of a Vice-President of Office Supplies, that's probably true. But if we're talking paying off debts, we know that its a lot harder to pay them off without a job than it is with one. You're also pretty clearly in the pre-1L daze of being happy that you ended up at UH. That's great - family went there, and aside from building a library underground in a hurricane-prone swamp, it's a great place. But don't kid yourself - unless you have personal connections in this market, there's really very little distance between the top and bottom schools. The legal profession is one where its up to you to take advantage of what you're given, not rest on your laurels because you went to the second-best law school south of I-10. Now, is there an over-saturation of lawyers? Not unless you mean that it's hard to find the mythical 160k job anymore. Sure, pay is down and jobs are down, but that's a risk you take in any line of work - just ask travel agents. The fact that kids are paying hundreds of thousands thinking that they can make it back, well - you'll learn this in the first week - caveat emptor. Law school is not about being guaranteed a job. It's about being given an opportunity to enter an exclusive club. Some people get in and just sit there, some become Supreme Court justices, It's up to you to determine which one you'll be. Could not have said it better myself, and heck, I tried. I'll play you're game (while reminding you of my arguments about what a good job is, supra, and also reminding you that there are second-year solos making 100k and second year BigLaw lawyers making 10k). In fact, there's a point I should stress - being in a firm of 250 lawyers is absolutely no guarantee that you're making more than small firm or solo per billable hour. But OK, i'll bite and play on your turf - let's look at lawschooltransparency.com's employment scores: Baylor 68.8% Texas 68.1% St. Mary's 66.7% Southern Methodist 61.4% Texas Tech 60.5% South Texas 59.2% Houston 58% Texas Wesleyan 39.5% Texas Southern 35% So although the order changes a bit, the groupings remain the same as the ABA's study: the three discernible "groups" of schools - 1) BU, UT and StMU, 2) SMU, TTU, SoTX, UH 3) TWU and TSU. In sum, your own sources deny your argument. Now as far as GL2Greatness is concerned, any good argument needs to be broken down a bit... For everyone's reference, you're referring to this line in the Authorization Bill (SB956): "This Act takes effect only if a specific appropriation for the implementation of the Act is provided in a general appropriations act..." Actually, the "fund or die provision" in SB 956, Section 6 was satisfied by a 5 million dollar appropriation in 2009 (the LBB's Supplemental to SB1). Now that it's satisfied, the funding is no longer voted on by the legislature separately, but becomes part of the omnibus system requests presented in the higher education funding bill. Thus, UNTDLS is entitled to "formula funding" under the Education Code 61.003 and will simply be allotted a share of the standard funding amount UNTS gets - a situation which the enrolled bill itself notes. If you want to look it up, it's Section 105.502©(1-2). So the THECB couldn't block this and the other systems won't get involved, you say? Well, that's exactly what happened last time. from The Eagle: "A&M’s last effort to offer a law degree came in the 1990s, when it entered into a partnership with the South Texas College of Law in Houston. ...The Higher Education Coordinating Board blocked that plan, saying it was concerned that the state would eventually end up having to fund the school. But A&M officials also perceived that politics were involved in the decision. Ray Bowen, who was A&M president at the time, said supporters of the University of Houston Law Center opposed the idea." It will happen again. Like UNT, A&M will have to get through an authorization bill and a funding bill in two sessions in order to fund it, unless A&M intends this to be a private law school. They won't under the current budgetary regime. Good thing UNT already did. But most lawyers aren't employed by BigLaw - most are small firm. Those firms very much care whether they hire someone who knows the system and the people in Dallas County over Tarrant Count. Don't think that such trivial regionalisms matter? Go walk into a Tarrant County court with a "I love Democratic judges" shirt from the Dallas Democratic Party. The legal market is bad, but I defy you to find one person who thinks that the situation is nearly as bad in Texas as elsewhere in the nation. Plus, law is unusual in that if you didn't go to one of the "T10" schools, location matters just as much as reputation. Any firm in Texas would have to be crazy to hire a Notre Dame grad over, say, a Houston grad. UNT's medical school will start issuing MDs in the next two years. OK, a lot of "fleeting" misunderstandings in one area, but I'll give it a go. 1) People in 1994 said the same thing - "the profession is crowded and will never get better." Ten years later, we had the strongest market in the history of the profession. Law, like all economies, goes in cycles. Even now, applications to law schools are massively down (well below replacement for a growing country), and baby-boomer lawyers continue to get older. There's you're future "not enough lawyers" headline in the WSJ taking shape now. In fact, the situation in 1994 was much worse than it is now. 2) Legal software has cost some jobs, but they're on the lower end of the scale, and not nearly as disruptive as earlier technologies were. You think electronic discovery has led to lost jobs? Does anyone remember when the copier came out? Or when telephonic hearings limited the need for local counsel? 3) If you're outsourcing legal work, you better check with Ethics. In most cases, letting someone in Punjab (who is not a member of your firm) have access to confidential information and allowing them to draft pleadings is begging for a malpractice campaign. Plus, Indian offshoring cannibalizes work being done by computers now anyway. In short, all that man in Punjab is doing is replacing a HotDocs or Westlaw subscription - not a living, breathing attorney at a desk. 4) THECB then went on to note that adding those extra seats would cause more problems in the long term than it's worth. First, the schools probably don't want to add those seats. Second, more seats means lower quality, usually. Better to have 10 200-student schools than 1 2000 student school. Finally, Texas is in a unique position. Almost none of the new schools send people to Texas to practice, and even if they did these attorneys have to spend years catching up on Texas law, re-taking the bar and then hoping to find a job in a market that vastly prefers local kids. Also, Texans are best served legally by other Texans educated in Texas. Ask a New Mexican about Oil & Gas law, or an Oklahoman about the TCPA, and you can spot the difference immediately. Texas has not opened a new law school since Texas Wesleyan did 20-some-odd years ago, and in that time, Texas has added nearly 10 million people to its population. It's time to get back on track. Good luck, and don't worry. Have you heard about the legal "depression" of the early 90's? No? That's because it was followed by a much bigger boom. Same thing happened in the 60's, 50's, 30's... and it will happen again. Now's the exact time to open a new school. Why? Think markets, and think Apogee. You don't buy high and sell low. Same with any other "investment". The best time to build something is when it's cheap and nobody sees a need for it, because by the time the market rolls around again, you'll be up and running with something which cost a fraction of what it would have cost during the "good years". Now as far as expanding the present schools - that's a non-starter for the reasons I listed above, but two quick points: 1) who says the schools want to expand? At a certain point, the infrastructure required exceeds the available capacity. 2) Larger classes = lower achievement. Just ask our friends at Thomas Cooley. Whew. So in sum, UNT just has to keep its head down and keep going. Our problems in the past came from running away whenever things seemed to be getting difficult. Now's the time to stand up and be counted. Now's the time to Believe in the Mean Green. Or Blue Jaguars.

SUNBELT

OK, let me lend a little clarity to what I posted. I was right about the $1,000 (Bronze Eagle) donation entitling you to attend practices. What I didn't remember was that it entitles you to attend closed practices. I think that we can assume that some (maybe many) of the practices will be open.

Benefits should be something like better parking etc. Something basic like viewing practice should not be tied to donations. Access to coaching staff after practices would be different. And it would satisfy some big doners desire to feel "exclusive"...........geez..

What about this little gem I found one day:

I wish so hard there was an allsups in Denton. I would eat 2 beef and beans everyday.

Most bowls are money losers for the schools. Even the big bowls are money losers if the fans don't buy tickets and hotel rooms through the school. One of the good things about CUSA having so many bowls is if you're bowl eligible, you go. That's not the case for all non-AQs. Going to a bowl, any bowl, helps in 2 different ways: 1) You get to say to a recruit that you went to a bowl 2) You get an extra month's practice. Although it's not a guarantee, those 2 things can really help to maintain the status of being a winning team.

Circle K>Everybody else... R.I.P. Circle K...

The CUSA bowl alignment is pretty unimpressive in terms of payouts. The only bowls that pay above minimum are Ticket City and Liberty. The Liberty Bowl will likely go away but Memphis is not necessarily the reason as they have no guarantee as does Hawaii, BYU, Navy, and Army (if they are eligible). There is no bowl game between CUSA and its "partner" the MWC. I would guess that one of the WAC bowls will be added for that...perhaps the New Mexico Bowl. The WAC also has/had the Humanitarian, the Poinsettia and the Hawaii bowls, any of which could be discontinued. There were 32 bowls last year and that's too many. IMO bowls should be for teams with winning records only unless a breakeven team is needed to fill an odd number. If I understand it correctly, the playoffs will reduce bowl teams by four so non-playoff bowl locations should reduce the number of bowls by two anyway. I would expect that many bowls will renegotiate when conference realignment cradles.

Bowl realignment will follow conference realignment. While bowls like the Armed Forces and Liberty may want to go with the hometown team there is opportunity for the Belk bowl in Charolette and another bowl in San Antonio. I would like to see the CUSA champ vs. the MWC champ in the faux Cotton bowl and get out of the HI bowl. CUSA West vs Big 12 in the new San Antonio bowl (the former potato bowl) CUSA East vs Big East in the Belk or Beefy bowl And let the remaining tie-ins rotate their preference for available CUSA teams.

People who think this way will never join. You join the Mean Green Club to support Mean Green athletics. Anything you get as a benefit is just that, an added benefit. Do you want to be a major athletic program or not? Major donors at major athletic programs get benefits minor donors don't. That is the way major athletic programs work. Or, we could keep doing things the way we have for the past 20 years. That seems to have worked out well...

You would be correct sir. Best cold drinks in town.

Nah, it's Pres. Obama making his oil buddies rich.

Good pickup for coach Marlin. Hopefully coach Benford can run him out of local HS coaches offices, because I highly doubt he plans on going anywhere. There will probably be an uptick in incoming talent at ULL, and we all know coach Marlin is quality. Watch for ULL to dominate the SBC for years to come (starting in 2013-14)... until they get called elsewhere.

I don't have a problem with it really.

I could see the TicketCity bowl becoming the destination for the CUSA champ at some point. CUSA is headquartered in Dallas and is heavily involved in the bowl. Liberty has wanted out of CUSA even with the current line up. Notice no CUSA champ in there for 2011 for the first time in CUSA's existence which was caused by the new agreement. With Memphis out, I see it becoming a Big East bowl. CUSA has always had the best non-AQ Conference bowl tie ins. On top of CUSA bowl changes, I'm also curious what happens to the WAC, MWC, and even Sun Belt bowls with all of the realignment.

Just a reminder that North Texas recruits will appear in the up-coming coach's association all-star game. In basketball, we can see Clarke Overlander play forward for the North on July 30 and in football watch Duston Watson and Dylan McDorman play DT for the North on July 31.

And all this time I thought GWB was just trying to make his oil buddies rich.

See you at Apogee!

Interesting but UTSA opens with South Alabama. It will be worth watching that result to compare between a common opponent when we have South Alabama later in the year.

I ordered mine.

Does show that UNT is recruiting and offering some high quality kids...i think this is what we all, as Mean green fans, want to see. Will UNT win 'em all against schools like Florida State...nope...not right now anyway, but you have to offer and you have to recruit this type of kid IF you want to get some to sign with the Mean green. Good job Coach mac and Company...keep the efforts up. UNT had to start recruiting these kids and they have...will win some, lose many, but UNT is "in the game"....nice!

meh, just hope the team stays very focused and wins... blogs and articles and all the other crap is just noise...

How many of us have purchases season tickets for this upcoming season ?

Boohoo. I guess there's not much to be upset about at UALR for them to feel jilted by something so insignificant.

How many season tickets did North Texas sold last year?

Reading a blog outta Arkansas carries so much weight...

Dick move

August 6th. I don't recall the practices being open.

in the fall

George Washington vs a Bengal Tiger....during a hurricane. Can't get more bad ass than that. Happy 236th USA!

Greatest courtroom lawyer this great land has ever known. I'm saddened I never had the opportunity to pay him $20,000 to sit at my defense table and whisper legal advice in my ear. Twice.

Everyone that moved advanced or they wouldn't have paid the fee. In a sense there were only two losers...New Mexico State and Idaho. Even if the conference was weakened I don't see anyone taking much of a cut in TV revenue. If you didn't advance; there's an old adage that says you can't lose what you didn't have. The airlines even win as each conference becomes more widespread. Is this a great country, or what?

Now that the grammar is cleared up, can someone help me with the math? 125,000 X 3 = 375,000 actual < 450,000 estimated

Law Schools are just like 4 year universities. They give you the tools, but it's up to the individual to hone those and succeed in their chosen profession. There are bad lawyers that attended Harvard Law and their are good lawyers that attended schools like Weslyan. Weslyan has a 4 year, go at night program that attracts students with life experience. People who already have a job, but are looking to change professions or simply better their personal situation. These types are often much better prepared for the work place straight out of law school than the 24 or 25 year old who has basically done nothing but attend school their entire life. As far as the Dallas DA is concerned, if you look at both the Dallas and Tarrant County DA's offices, you will find a big percentage of the prosecutors with Weslyan law degrees. And they often beat the crap out of your UT law grads in court.