Leaderboard

Former UNT softball player:

Looks over 80% full to me 😎 (La Tech game in 2018)

Shows the utter stupidity of the court system getting involved in the management of athletics. The NCAA is afraid of challenging the decision because it will spawn something worse. The biggest problem IMO is that it is going to severely limit the dollars going to the athletic department for things like infrastructure, ships, etc. Now most schools are going to lose tons of donated money because their big supporters are having to directly buy players. The main argument for the new NIL is that it puts out in the open what has went on since college football was established. That is true for a lot of programs, but does that make it right? The logical extension of this is that lower tier schools, G5's and perennial losers in the P5, will become even less competitive and the fans will become less interested. In time there will be the SEC and probably one other conference to be determined that will be major college football. I think those schools will also become less important as their fan base dwindles preferring the NFL to watch pro players. At least the NFL have rules that foster competition.

SMU has had one since the 80's.

I very much appreciate the zeal of folks like RV and Don Lovelace and their willingness to sacrifice to help our program. At the same time, this whole thing makes me sick. The whole reason for NIL was supposedly so athletes could utilize the fair market value of their names, images, and likenesses. But within 30 seconds, it has clearly become about throwing money at athletes as incentive to play at a particular school regardless of the actual market value of their names, images and likenesses.

I attended a gender reveal party outside of the small town of Magazine, Arkansas last night. I was wearing one of my North Texas shirts. A young man asked me if and when I had attended NT. I told him I graduated in 62, 64, and 68. He said he was a 2009 graduate. About thirty people were there. What were the odds.

Join Harry as he visits with the Executive Director of the newly formed North Texas NIL Collective "Light the Tower" Rick Villarreal. audio link: https://traffic.libsyn.com/gomeangreen/ringr_180539_182839.mono.mp3

did u almost raise your hand for a fair catch ??????

Man this was a great post. Escapulates the underlying truth that flavors every comment I make on GMG. Older folks in this space are understandably appreciative of just having Mean Green Sports on the extreme edge of the local sports media radar. But that bare minimum comes from actually putting in effort and investing resources. I WANTED Seth to get hired away. Not because I thought he was a bad coach, or just a little better than mediocre. I knew if he were going to be a truly Great coach Here it would have manifested itself in a Conference title and/or a Bowl Game win against a team with a brand that matters. But he got a raise and extension like he was going to be great. And I don’t closely follow the more prominent G5 programs but it seems to me they don’t hand out raises and extensions out pacing the rest of their conference for anything but the best seasons. Hell Seth with the benefit of a better brand name Football program behind him might have great results. But after the first 3 years with a generational G5 QB talent it was hard for me to understand why almost everyone understood that we only had a good coach here. Moreover if that good coach had a huge injury on his roster, transfer portal loss, or important coach defection that he would not be able triumph over those challenges. The fact that is got 2 raises and extensions without a single bowl win or conference championship is ridiculous. He has ended EVERY season ineligible for a bowl game or losing a bowl game that is uncompetitive for most of the second half or more of the entire game. We want AND need a program bigger than just one good coach. You hand out multiple extensions and raises to coaches that transform your program positively. Seth hasn’t done that so letting him go at the end of 2021 should have been relatively cheap. But we chose to over pay and over commit to someone who only demonstrated he could only get above mediocrity when everything was virtually perfect. And I hate that. Crunch the numbers and you will find that in no one complete season nor at any point in his career has Seth been at or above a 0.700 win rate. I just can not square that with the proportionally high salary he has with multiple raises. What the heck is the goal here?

As much as I have been critical of RV’s tenure as AD, this involvement is good news. He was always working harder behind the scenes than what the on field success showed. The culture he inherited was terrible. Growing up around Denton I never knew the Mean Green ever played the big boys, actually it would have be more believable to me that they played community colleges than they played Ole Miss, SMU, TCU, or Houston. He and a few key donors and UNT leadership changed that culture. At least people now know we play the big programs in the country albeit infrequently. I don’t like NIL but it isn’t rolling back until the salaries of everyone earning a living from college football has their salaries rolled back. NIL came too late for some of the best players post 2000 to have a real tangible impact on revenue at UNT. My hope is that maybe some of those guys get a little something from this collective also. Would this even be possible today without Mason Fine, Jalen Guyton, Jeff Wilson, Brandon Kennedy, Lance Dunbar, Cody Spencer, Patrick Cobbs, Scott Hall, Derick Thompson and a few others that were the leaders of a few our winning teams over the past 25 years? I am not sure it would. I think we need to do a better job collectively embracing those guys after they leave UNT (especially the graduates). I will be proud of whatever small way I can be apart of that effort. And I look forward to the opportunity to donate a some money to collective as meager as I can afford after my MGSF donations. Thank you RV & Company.

👍👍 Wardly hits one out of the park. I once told RV he had the toughest AD job in the entire NCAA. Why? Among several reasons is—-just look at us? We can hardly be pleased about anything. I mean think about it? This forum over the year has members (me included) who will argue over just about anything. Start with: •••don’t like our shade of green•••disjointed “NT” logos or do we we emphasize “UNT”•••don’t need to replace Fouts Field because we never fill it•••which “Eagle” logo do we use on our helmets•••marching band doesn’t inspire a college football fan base•••& I know I’ve left out a dozen more BUT———-I still observe when the Green Brigade strikes up “Glory to the Green” we’re all standing & some of us are actually singing our alma mater. Gives me goose bumps thinking about all our friends we’ve known thru the decades who are no longer with us. Let’s enjoy our time. GMG! ”Glory to the Green” (2 versions) Version 2

Agreed! Rick is the perfect person for this position and will do a great job. UNT athletics may have walked away from him but he didn't walk away from UNT. Also, count the number of UNT Presidents he worked under his tenure, one of which hired coach Mac, another hired the female women's basketball coach who was also fired. He wasn't perfect, but with the exception of our new indoor practice facility all the "bricks and sticks" happened on his watch. Before Rick's arrival the only new construction dedicated exclusively to athletics was a 3000+ sq. ft. Athletic Department Building for Hayden Fry in the 70's that is still standing in the parking lot adjacent to the Super Pit.

And neither are our team today, nor have they been for 30-ish years. They are lazy commentators.

Did the guys in Illinois steal your ticket?

Hey. I’m checking out a new spot tonight (7/30/22) to potentially host Mean Green Football watching parties. Decided to make a flash gathering event out of it. Feel free to join us tonight at McKinney ChopShop Sports Garage at 121 Hub in McKinney. We’ll get there around 7:30pm. If you wear Mean Green gear (or ask politely), I’ll have UNT Alumni Collin County decals for anyone that wants one. The place looks pretty cool. https://facebook.com/events/s/unt-alumni-flash-gathering-ton/810046863499326/

You know someone says something outlandish when coffee and I are in agreement

I don’t see anybody else starting up a Mean Green collective. Are you starting one? If not, why not be grateful that someone is?

actually......its 17.........lol.iykyk

Don’t be an ass. Despite getting fired RV has stayed engaged and been a donor. That’s more than I can say for 90% of alumni and many on this board.

Game changer. Really pleased to see RV is the executive director on this.

Yes, retention of former players is always a good thing. I don't think many realize they still have fans. As for NIL, I hate it. It's become just a bounty for P5 programs to raid G5 programs. I fear all our star players when juniors or seniors will be "offered" by bigger programs regardless of what they are earning at NT.

Over the summer someone pondered the thought of where we are perceived amongst G5 teams. So I looked into a bunch of G5 W-L records for a post but never got around to it. Then in another thread someone talked about the possible perception of it being a miracle that Littrell has won so much here. I dug up those W-L records to see if that perception is right. In doing this I didn't want to compare us to all of the G5s, just test the idea that it's hard to win here based on other similar G5s, not past success. By doing that I didn't even compare us to successful or more prominent G5s, just similar ones. So no Boise, SDSU or any AAC teams. No ULL or App State. Even left off FAU. So the comparison isn't skewed by teams that are perceived to be bigger than us or have had more obvious recent success. Here are the records since Littrell's first year (2016)- North Texas 37-38 Utah State 39-32 Western Kentucky 43-35 Arkansas State 37-37 Central Michigan 35-36 Eastern Michigan 34-36 Western Michigan 45-26 Northern Illinois 35-36 Ohio 38-30 Georgia State 33-39 Toledo 44-27 Nevada 38-33 Marshall 42-32 MTSU 37-37 Out of all these schools these are the only coaches in the top three in salary of their conference (based on 2021)- Seth- 1.9 mil Toledo coach- 1.2 mil Central Michigan- 840k Western Michigan- 800k MTSU- 900k Arkansas State- 825k (As a comparison, Napier at ULL was making 2.1 mil in 2021, their W-L during this time was 52-24) None of the schools have big advantages over us. Some have more historical success than us but I have a hard time believing that amount of success overrides facilities, recruiting area, location, coaching salaries and those factors. Does Toledo have a more winning perception that North Texas? Sure, but does Eastern Michigan. Western Kentucky? MTSU? With all these factors is it really a miracle to win at North Texas? Or are we so beat up by the past that we think it is? It can't be hard to have the SL amount of success at every G5 because a lot of teams are doing just as well or better than us with worse stadiums, worse locations, lower budgets and coaches that cost a lot less. The point of this isn't that SL should be doing better (although he should), the point is we are not poor ol little North Texas anymore dipping our toes into FBS football. We should be having more success because other schools with a lot less going for them than us are doing better.

Hope that wasn’t in Chicago.

.....AND I would suggest that (historically) those schools have administrators who made better decisions about athletics than our administrators. The best decision our administration ever made (coach wise) was when JItter Nolan hired Hayden Fry. Fry was a master of recruitment. But one of the first things he recognized was that he had to do something about the "perception" that the general public had about NT before he could optimally recruit. Hence the new shade of green, new logo, and emphasizing "Mean Green" over "Eagles". When Hayden Fry left, the administrative old guard took back over, and the rest has pretty much been North Texas Perception Hell.

Hmmm, interesting points. The first thing I thought of when I saw this story, (because this NIL has my school's name on it) was, who's minding the books?

our tickets would be higher 940. make it harder to sell out😏

Yes. I've made a police report.

We were called NTSU for 27-ish years. It has been 34 years since the name change. Think about that: we are furthered removed from it than the lifespan of the NTSU name. It is wild to think how it still perpetuates among major media mouths. One of things I pay attention to is the age of the person in error: are they even old enough to remember it? If not, where di they get that information? If they are old enough to have known about it, why didn't they do some basic research?

To Americana for Autism. Americana for Autism is in their second year and is now in the 2022 'ship game. Gives us hope for next year. Their first year they faired just as well as Bleed Green, winning 2 games as a 5 seed before falling in the S16 to the Golden Eagles. EDIT: Also of interest: Aftershocks have never won a TBT game outside of Koch Arena. The entirety of their success is in Wichita.

Exactly, Littrell has said time and again that Aune is the guy until someone takes the job from him. Somebody took it from him in fall camp in both ‘20 and ‘21. We’ll see how ‘22 unfolds.

Foolishness because now it is an important thing to have a low digit for some players. It is actually used in recruiting, come here and you can have number 3 or such nonsense.

Well I guess we don't have to worry about Dickey coming back to replace Littrell....

Same RV that also cultivated some of these donors…. Love that he is staying involved. We need as many good people as possible to compete

Great stuff. Glad to have RV back in the fold.

Need to fly a banner thanking RV!

For sure. I work tomorrow and I'm already planning an inconspicuous exit strategy that involves not going in a day after a mega millions drawing. An anonymous donor would be funding a couple UNT facilities though.

Pretty incredible, and hat tip to RV for staying so supportive. Can you imagine getting this type of money in college, on top of the scholarship?

LaTech stands out in my mind as the most well attended game.

Sheeeeeiiitttt if I won it you'd never hear from me again. No really, I'd tell maybe 2 relatives and then hide the rest of my life.

Also, I'll be purchasing this forum (as long as Harry discloses how many bot accounts are on here) and getting rid of the option to lock topics. Call me Alan Musk.

It seems to me that we had several very close to selling out in the past few years. The Army game comes to mind as well as UTEP and UTSA. I am sure there are others. Win and they will come even under Littrell.

Had not thought of this and I think it's important.

Any #17 Grant Gunnell sightings in practice?

Dallas ain't my most desired location and in the next few years I'll be going Northwest, but your need to shit on it at every opportunity is quite tiresome. We get it, no one cares.

Ha! I knew SMU and TCU had them (Thanks, @Brett Vito article), I just didn’t know if the UAB’s, UTSA’s, and LaTech’s of the world also had collectives. Excited to give our student athletes a chance to earn some greens while helping us win! GMG!

Figures. They fold their programs and drop down a division almost a full decade after us and they’re already back in the national conversation while we’re still struggling to win anything of note but the Sun Belt. When are our oligarchs going to step up and demand Putin-level results?

You already know Biden will bend the knee and Pelosi will make a fool of herself mumbling along and throwing Taiwan on under the bus.