Leaderboard

Honestly that whole fiasco was just a microcosm of the day to day dysfunction in the AD at the time and lack of UNT administrative control and oversight of the program. If we wanted to fire Coach Dickey at the time (& there was definitely a case to be made that separation was in everyone’s best interest), just make the move and don’t expect him to coach out the rest of the season. Not sure what the powers that be (AD, Presidents office, BOR) expected. DD and RV out and out hated each other during the bowl years. It was no secret. Nothing good was going to come from dealing with the situation the way we did. It was so North Texas at the time. Very #OldDenton

I have always been impressed with Mason's interviews in the past. I am seeing something different in this interview. He has always been confident but now he seems more relaxed and shows his personality in the interviews which I think is great. I think he has reached a higher level and I bet it shows on the field this year. He is right UNT will have a target on its back for sure. We won a lot of close games last year and the teams will remember that. I am confident in this team because we have leaders on the team like Mason. Great job raising your son Mr. Fine and I am glad you all are part of the Mean Green Family.

Complete bullshit.

Could you stomach 25 straight conference wins? Four straight bowl games? Some of the best players to play at UNT? He had nothing to work with and still competed. Not sure why some people shit on the only competitive period at UNT in the last twenty years.

DD was not a good recruiter other than one magic class, that was the basis for most of his success. DD was his own worst enemy, opponents easily quoted some of his statements about the state of NT's program to win recruiting battles. I find it hard to agree with the frequent assessment that DD suffered because of lack of resources. Yes that is definitely true for most coaches at NT in the oc schedule against P5 and upper level G5's. However that ignores the fact that most of DD's success was against Belt opponents who had similar or lower football budgets. However, I agree that many fans don't give DD enough credit for his Belt consecutive wins streak. As far as comparing resources now and 12 years ago, it is meaningless. The true comparison is between the status of the program compared to it's peers at the different dates. NT has made massive improvements compared to their past, but much more modest gains against current peer programs.

Got me PUMPED for the big game in SEC country fast forward to 6 minute mark if you don’t want to listen to the whole thing.

I work with a guy who used to ref Sun Belt games (now refs AAC games). I made a comment to him last week about DD and RV not getting along. His reaction was classic. His eyes widened and his mouth dropped then he said “Boy is that ever an understatement.”

I was never a DD fan when he was here, however the winning streak was great. NT didn't come close to doing it in the Southland or anywhere else. Few other programs have matched it in their history. It was a great accomplishment for DD and primarily due to that one great class that included Kennedy, Hall, Jones, Spencer, Casey, Gardner and many other of the best players has ever had. No it is not easy for any team to get 26 straight wins in any league. Give credit were credit is due.

Speaking of “revisionist history” I like how, in your comparison between Dickey and Littrell, you conveniently forget: - The 70+ million dollar stadium - The game day electricity that doesn’t require bringing in a generator every Saturday - The conference with 3 other Texas teams - The pro- athletics president and BOR - The competent athletic director - The MASSIVELY increased budget for assistants Nice job comparing apples to lawn furniture. I’m always amused by those that piss all over 4 consecutive conference titles...since nobody did it prior, or since.

Revisionist history. He would’ve been fired in 2001 if he hadn’t lucked into the SunBelt with the dregs of the big west and some upstarts. Look at the OOC record. Look at the record against bowl-eligible teams. He made a career out of beating sorry teams and when FAU and Troy caught up, Dickey was toast. I get that New Orleans was fun. I get that we had 7 sacks against the Longhorns in 2002 but let’s not put him up on some pedestal like he didn’t have a career coaching record where he won less than 40% of his games. Littrell is leaps and bounds better than Dickey ever was. Littrell has only coached 2 seasons and inherited a complete dumpster fire. He is still the only coach besides Hayden Fry in the last 50 years to have an overall winning record for his North Texas tenure.

He definitely is the best I've experienced Had a funny run in with him at a Denton Chamber of Commerce function. I have talked to the Prez on a number of occasions but this one time, I was standing in the bar area (DUH) he was making his way through the room meeting and greeting people and then he came up to me and said "Hi Jeff" and I was completely blown away. I thought to myself, a man of his caliber and knowing so many people, he remembered my name. I was blown away! After our conversation ended, he continued working the room and then I looked down and realized that I had a name tag on....................

You do know that his recent offensive philosophy is night-and-day difference to what it was when he was at UNT, right?

http://footballscoop.com/news/15-important-assistant-coaching-hires-2018-season-no-1-darrell-dickey-texas/

I mainly blame our dysfunctional and incompetent administration for the athletic department mess that we've been in for so long. Only an incompetent administration would have allowed the dysfunctional "DD vs RV" situation to go on for as long as it did. Early on in the relationship one of them needed to be fired and the other one needed an immediate "come to Jesus" meeting. But no one took any action until the situation was intolerable. Having said all that. How many of those four bowl games did we win? Which is why our "record" winning streak only made us king of the dipshits, in the eyes of the casual fan and fence setting students/alumni. Corkey Nelson beat New Mexico, TCU, RICE, and Texas Tech, with fewer ships and much less money, Corkey never once said (like DD did) "at the end of the Texas game tomorrow I hope that when our president looks up at the scoreboard, he remembers how much we are getting paid to play the game", Instead of "victory's in store what ere' the score our team will ever fight, fight, fight, fight". Dickey seemed to believe (when it came to Texas) "our team will ever quit!, quit,! Quit,! Quit!.

couldn't happen to 2 better teams!

He was interesting. Talking to his team he created a bunker mentality and referred to the people (fans, etc...) outside the team as MF'ers. When Stebo, where is he now, put together the flag football games he would come out and was super nice. I think his relationship with RV was toxic since RV wanted to fire him after the 0-5 start and loss to ULM but the board vetoed that. He then led us to the upset of MUTS and the start of the bowl run, winning streak, etc...creating a situation where RV couldn't let him go. When things started to go south, DD went scorched earth ending with the blackout game. I didn't like how DD and RV handled it, but it is in our past and every day I become more and more thankful for our president, BOR, Baker, his staff and Littrell and our current coaching staff.

Sometimes the truth hurts! I enjoyed the days of winning conference championships just like everyone else but let’s be honest Dickey was not that great of a coach at that point in time. He quickly got passed over by SBC start ups in both coaching and recruiting. It appears his time under Fuente and Mike Norvell has opened up his offensive philosophy and allowed him to move on from his “Buick” offensive days (let’s be honest the entire crowd new which running play was coming). He’s a much better coordinator and overall coach now!

1974. It was Hayden Fry's worst record year of his tenure here. San Diego State came here ranked 16th in the country and left with a 14-0 whipping.

Well. If FAU goes undefeated until coming to Denton, including beating OU, then UNT will get to host a ranked team. When is the last time that happened?

We are competitive right now, in a better conference. If I put Idaho, NMSU, South Alabama, Georgia State and a couple other scrub teams in a conference with us then I 100% believe we could knock off 26 straight wins. From October 13, 2001 to September 10, 2005, Dickey’s teams won 26 consecutive conference games. The streak was bookended by wins over the MUTS. The week before the streak started we lost to 2-9 conference mate ULM. The game that ended the streak was a loss to 4-7 Troy. The combined record for the 26 teams run through was 99-203. If you exclude the 26 losses from NT, their combined record was 99-177. Of those 26 wins, just three came against 6-win teams. Additionally, we lost to future conference mates Troy at the end of ‘01 and FAU at the start of ‘04 which would’ve shrunken the streak to 13 games if they had been in our conference at the time.

Great job by Mason. Also, the interviewer did a better job than many more known reporters.

All of his tenure was mostly before my time. And I am just amused/astonished at how strong and divergent opinions on his tenure are. I don't think that is true for any other UNT coach, good or bad.

Lane Kiffin is a great get for the FAU and the conference. It is obvious he inherited some great athletes from Charlie Partridge. I didn't know about Coach Partridge so I looked him up. It appears he was one of the better recruiters of the state of Florida. Was he fired too soon? 3 years of losing records but his recruiting efforts were about to pay off. Did FAU bail on him because Kiffin was available? Would Partridge and his staff get the most out of the 2017 team as Kiffin did? Obviously Kiffin and his staff did get the most out of them. They were and still are loaded with talent. I hated getting stomped by FAU but they are a fun team to watch. They are a legit top 35-50 program in the country and could be ranked higher at the end of the season. This is good for the conference and we need more teams like this in the conference. I will root for FAU (And all CUSA teams out of conference games) every game except ours. It will make beating them that much better. I don't know if they can beat Oklahoma but I am confident they will give them one heck of a game to open the season. The line has already moved from 24 to 21. FAU might be a good bet to cover. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charlie_Partridge

Yes and pee walls too, I know, I experienced them. I guess Matt Simon didn’t have the same hardships as poor Dickey. Matt Simon would’ve owned the Sun Belt even more strongly than Dickey did because he fared much better in the Big West than Dickey did. Maybe the reason nobody else has won that many consecutive conference titles is because there is supposed to be some semblance of parity amongst the schools. If your program is really that good, new teams coming into the conference (and the worst ones leaving) shouldn’t relegate you to cellar dweller. I’m sure if the Southland became an FBS conference and we got dropped into it Littrell would win 4 straight conference titlea too but it won’t ever happen because 7 team football conferences won’t ever happen again. Yes Littrell has more tools at his disposal than Dickey but I’ve never heard Littrell y’all abojt how hard it is to recruit to NT or how he has the hardest job in America because he works here everyday either. Littrell showed he could win in spite of RV. That stadium, Dickey couldn’t get it done, Todd Dodge (and a certain board poster) got the student vote that made the stadium possible. Dickey wanted to complain and hope for the next job(that never came because he couldn’t beat anyone with a winning record). He mailed it in on recruiting after Jamario thinking he’d be gone and left us with the lowest scoring offense in all of college football for 2 years straight. What did he do the week after extending his conference game winning streak to 26 games? He came back to Fouts and got beat like a drum by Tulsa 50-2. You have your opinion Emmitt and I have mine. In your mind we owe 4 conference championships to Darrell Dickey and in my mind we owe it to Boise leaving the Big West and the conference giving up football. We will just disagree on this one. I would say thank you to Coach Dickey for his time here during the 4 championship seasons but the other 5 seasons around those four were just dreadful. I wouldn’t hire him to be the head coach of a high school team unless it was an established program dropped into a district with nothing to compete against but brand new high schools.

Seriously?

The m’fr was before my time but the black jersey situation happened in 2006. Our athletic director thought it would be a good idea to fire a coach midway through the season and allow him to coach out the remaining games. What could go wrong, righ? Well for the last home game the players came out and warmed up in their regular dark green jerseys and pants. When it came time for kickoff, they all came back out in what looked like junior high jerseys bought at academy. The jerseys we just plain black with white numbers. They didn’t indicate the conference or school name anywhere. That and the 7-O.T. game were all I could stomach of Darrell Dickey. Somewhere exists a picture of Darrell Dickey in his all black “coaching funeral attire” garb. Thanks to @rcade for still having the photo available. http://workbench.cadenhead.org/news/3069/fired-north-texas-coach-black-mood

Yeah- that kind of ends the argument. But the kids amazing.

Not very successfully at first because he needed time to recruit players that could win in Div I? Remember UNT's last winning season before hiring Dickey had been 5 years before. No scheme wins without players. Since then Dickey has shown he can be successful running very different offenses. That's the mark of a good offensive coach.

Most of you could care less about CUSA (I don’t blame you), but I’m a nerd and this conference fascinates me this season. I touched on how good the East is above and the top teams in the West are not too far behind. I could see any of the top 3 winning this division. UAB, fresh off it’s death sentence by Alabama/Bear Bryant’s ghost (look it up), will build off their magical season in 2018. The Blazers return the 10th most production in the country, I am just a bit concerned with their secondary. QB Mason Fine returns for North Texas and may score 75 points a game. Skip Holtz’s (shout out to Lou, the greathest college football analysth off all thime) Louisiana Tech will look to top both North Texas and UAB (play them in back to back weeks, tough!) to return to the CUSA championship game. Holtz has spent a lot of time at LT and a good season will help his resume to potentially get a shot at a better G5/low-teir P5 school. Southern Mississippi will have to find a QB if they want to threaten anybody. UTSA, a favorite of mine in 2017, is going under an overhaul, returning the 4th least production in the country. Frank Wilson, a name that was thrown around at a few P5 schools looking for coaches, has recruited incredibly well for the Roadrunners, so he will have the talent. I love the hire of Mike Bloomgren, the former Stanford DC, by Rice. He has first hand experience in dealing with a school with high admission standards and recruiting. His rebuild of Rice will take a few years, but I am excited to see if he can make Rice the Stanford of CUSA. As I mentioned above, UTEP is going to be god awful. Full link: https://bars.tl/P0QoXilvIO

DD seems to have conquered his personal demons and became an excellent assistant coach. I do think that he ruined his own career at NT and he should have been fired.

100% accurate statement. He's vital to the running game and a nice and proven security blanket that has the proven potential of always popping one down the seams from time to time. He is also one of my favorite on the team. I always root for this guy to touch the ball. When he does, good things happen.

Nice to see a lineman make a preseason watchlist.

I don't think we let him go too soon. I think we let him go at the perfect time. I am not sure he would have ever grown and got better being where he was. I think it took all these things to better him. And, I am still not certain he would be good at the head position.

If you ask any media outlet, Kiffin is the only HC in CUSA. The rest of us are all coached on a rotating schedule of what players dad is available that week and can also bring the orange slices.

Happy for him and, honestly, I find it refreshing that his offensive philosophies are still held in such high esteem.

I hate Lane Kiffin... Tom Herman is a close second.

Theoretically a lot of things work that just don't in reality.

Soros' last two checks came back, so nah...I'm gonna work on stealing some Medicare benefits for the parents of anchor babies instead this weekend. You really see no logical disconnect between posting a political column and then making a stetemenr like you did?

Don't you have a protest to attend?

I have a pretty good sized portable generator from my time in Louisiana... May be willing trade usage for me invading your tailgate and drinking your cheap beer.

Do you think he has 09/12/2020 circled on his calendar, with a note ("MFers") below? Question, no info. 🙂

Dickey was almost like Moore in that he learned to adapt to his talent, but Dickey hit it with 2 classes here to win in the Sunbelt. I doubt he will call the Aggie boosters mfer"s and after the success was trying to get out of here. The black jerseys was bush, but I wish him well.

More games: Having won all the games, Russia then also made it to the quarterfinals

Be honest, the bolded portion wasn't really a typo...

0:45 seconds in, our own @aztecskin appears in the background.

Is it just me or is SL looking and talking more comfortably in interviews?

So in that regard, the ticket office, I see nothing has changed. Lovely. This is honestly a reason that I rarely do road games, and when I do, I don't bother buying them from the UNT ticket office. Not gonna drive nine hours to be turned away at the gate.

DO NOT go to "Pigtails", their adult entertainment bar...it gets too rowdy for UNT fans after a game.