BlueRaiderPride

After being told that hardly anyone would attend this game even though Central Michigan was in it. By the way, there were about 3K of us, 20K CMU fans, and 31K wood be fans of CMU who were there to support and instate team. Question is, why did this game draw more than a more significant MAC title game that featured this same Central Michigan team and a closer Ohio University team. By the way, CMU is 5 hours from Detroit. There are several MAC Ohio schools that are closer including the Akron team that went to last year's game.

We looked like junk in every facet of this game. I'm sure you could tell just by watching. CMU would waste anyone in our league for sure. NIU as well. It should interest you to know that the 54,113 in attendance for the Motor City Bowl was more than DOUBLE the number of people in attendance for Central Michigan's game against Ohio University on that same field for the MAC title game.

Weird. That's how they showed them on the screen, just not in that order.

Yep! They were from the Mid-American Conference. I actually thought they did a pretty good job for the most part unlike the Pac-10 in the Oregon/Oklahoma game. The Sun Belt does have a bowl to officiate, but I'm not sure which one. Middle Tennessee will probably see refs from either the ACC or the Big 12 in the Motor City Bowl. Can't see them picking the SEC as the MAC might complain the officiating to be "REGIONALLY" biased.

It's the day after Christmas, man. MEMPHIS sent less fans to that game. Give us a break.

Don't know if you guys watched the game, but the announcers mentioned North Texas "Mean Green" during the game. One of 12 teams in 1-A football to not have an "S" to pluralize your nickname along with: 1. Alabama Crimson Tide 2. Nevada Wolfpack 3. NC State Wolfpack 4. Tulsa Golden Hurricane 5. Stanford Cardinal 6. Navy Midshipmen 7. Illinois Fighting Illini 8. Notre Dame Fighting Irish 9. Marshall Thundering Herd 10. Syracuse Orangemen 11. Tulane Green Wave The announcers had a contest of who got the most right. One guy got all of them but most of the others forgot North Texas so they got a little bit of extra mention.

I'm still pretty upset at UAB and Vanderbilt for backing out of their games with us. Had they kept their deals with us we never would've had trips to Oklahoma and South Carolina. Think about that. I think we could've beaten both of those teams and finished with a 9-3 record. No way they'd diss a 9-3 Sun Belt team with a win against a CUSA and $EC school in the same season, but they've done it before.

Message to you from the new Blue Raider Zone messageboard: http://mb16.scout.com/fmiddletennesseefrm5...topicID=2.topic

Not what we're hearing. Granted, this is messageboard fodder, but most of it is validated from outside sources. http://forums.delphiforums.com/mtraiders/m...es/?msg=44866.1

Okay, it does look like Western Kentucky is traveling to North Texas. That might be subject to change. Somehow, I can't see the league allowing an uneven amount of home and away games against Sun Belt teams. Sun Belt's taking a hand in WKU's schedule. Western has home games against Troy and one of our Florida schools.

Actually, I think the league is also trying to split trips to the Nashville area as well. I'm pretty sure North Texas is head to Western Kentucky. I'll try to find something.

Nope. Middle Tennessee returns to North Texas next season AND like the rest of the 'Belt schools, you'll be making one trip to Florida and one trip to Louisiana which means one of those games against FAU and FIU is going to be at home and one of those against Louisiana and ULM is going to be away. The league is trying to split the trips to Florida and Louisiana and work it out to where each school has an even slate of 4 home and 4 away in the new Sun Belt. You're going to go back to either Troy or Arkansas State and I believe you are also making a trip to Western Kentucky.

Well, I never thought MT hiring a high school coach had anything to do with it. Villareal is a very smart man. Not only did he know that he was getting a guy with a proven track record of success, he was also getting a guy he knew would draw a tremendous amount of press throughout the college football world. And voila! You're seeing stories in media outlets across the east coast, west coast, Hawaii, and Alaska. That's what a damn good athletic director does! He craves publicity! He couldn've hired someone else that would do similar job as Dodge, but I don't think it would have the draw of attention like Dodge brings you. I'm not suggesting that he looked at what Massaro did and tried to copy him. I just think that Massaro and Villareal are similar in their way of thinking.

They'll put an extension on the contest.

The premise is this. In comparing high school girl's basketball to college women's basketball and high school football to college football--the sport is the same. The level is different, but the game is pretty much played the same way. If you're pretty darn good at it at one level, then chances are you can be pretty darn good at any other level. The reason why we believe Dodge will be successful at UNT is his proven track record as a winner in the high school level. What was it? 77-1 record? USA Today National Coach of the Year one time. Three straight state titles? Now do you understand?

Nope! Just the team that can draw more fans for a women's basketball game than North Texas can for a football game.

I hope she comes with your traveling cheerleaders to Middle Tennessee next season. I'll have to congratulate her for winning this contest when she pulls it out, and I have no doubt she will. The name "Caris"--is it pronounced just as it looks? Or is the "s" silent like a French name making it pronounced like Carrie or something?

Day-after-Christmas bowl games located in the Great Lakes states are hard sells for southern schools especially in the lowly Sun Belt. It doesn't help that the media already is trashing our reputation as an opponent for Central Michigan not being decent enough. It's probably enough to scare most of our UTK alumni who'd rather take the trip to watch the Vols play in Florida.

Do they even have computers in North Dakota? Or electricity? Or people???

When they're all in mid-December in New Orleans? The Motor City Bowl is the coldest bowl game our Sun Belt schools have drawn since the league's inception. It is also the closest one to Christmas.

Heck, your girl is gettin' some love in New York and Connecticut! With her taking New York and Texas both, she wouldn't need California, Ohio, or Florida to win the election!

I think the reason why so many people like Caris' appearance is because she comes across as beautiful, yet normal. She's doesn't come across as the superficial runway model with fake breasts and eyelash implants. She's just normal. When it comes to dating a hot chick, to me there's a such thing as TOO perfect. There's alot of ladies on in the competition that look TOO perfect. But Caris is one that's just right. I see I'm not alone. Check out the map. She's getting support in states other than Texas including some of the Midwest states which kind of surprises me.

I wonder if a disgruntled UTK fan was behind shutting down your messageboard in order to keep people from having a direct link to the Athlon voting poll hoping that people on the Sun Belt's end would be too lazy to do a search on the link even if they didn't know it.

You know? All UTK would have to do to win this pretty much is to have every single fan that has a place inside that 107,000-seat Neyland Stadium to vote once. Unfortunately, about 100,000 of them don't even know what a computer is, nor have they ever attended a class at UTK to even care. As for the other 7,000--too busy enjoying band or the jock party down the street.

UTK fans need to vote in the same manner that most of us do. We type in the code, press vote, let the screen reload, click on Caris' name, wait for the screen to load with a new code, and then repeat the process. That's about the only fair way I know to do it. By the way, those codes you type in to vote ARE NOT CASE SENSITIVE! That means all those capital letters can be typed out as lower case letters and it's read the same. It beats holding the shift key or worrying about whether or not the Caps Lock is on. That's a waste of valuable seconds.