mad dog

Pretty good name for a band, no?

Hang on... I think we might be burying the lead. I want to hear more about Chinese Bandits in the bayou.

Emmitt - Pretty good post. There's a lot of positivity about this team right now; I was so thrilled about this win that nothing could dampen my spirits the rest of the weekend. DT missed a few wide open throws, and still pats the ball way too much for my liking, but you can't argue with the end result. If he can increase the speed of his reads a tick and get a "take off or throw away" clock in his head, he could do some really special things this season. I agree with you the most on points 2 and 3. The last time we had this kind of thunderous physicality on defense, Craig Jones and Jonas Buckles were roaming the secondary, and Booger and Cody Spencer were holding down the middle. And the best part of all was that it was CONTROLLED physicality. How many times have I turned to you these past few years after a dumb late hit out of bounds and just shrug like "is this really happening again?" What made the early 00s defenses great were that they played hard AND disciplined. The one area where I'll respectfully disagree is that I still believe this is a .500 football team. We have days of putting it all together, but we're just not consistent enough yet. Make no mistake, this is as close to truly good football since the waning days of DD. But, against this level of competition, I think we still may have another season before it gels. That said, I think we're on the right track. All of those redshirts McCarney was able to stockpile last year are really coming home to roost. When our guys take the field, they at least now have a fighting chance of being physically prepared for success. As long as he keeps bringing home the beef in recruiting, and can get a few pieces here or there at the skill positions, I guarantee you won't see many more crowds like we saw on Saturday. We live in front-runner land, and our stands have plenty of room for each and every one of them.

Pretty exciting win, IMO. Maybe as complete a game as I've seen UNT play in years, and it feels like the overall size and speed of the squad is just a tick higher than it has been. I would love to think there's a correlation between that and the crazy number of redshirts McCarney hung on his young guys last year. I'm excited, but it is important to remember that this was one game against a below average program that did not prepare adequately for the heat. One bad game doesn't make a season bad, but one great game doesn't make the season great. They've shown that they're capable of taking advantage of opportunities - perhaps better than they have since the early days of the SBC. Now the question is if they can do that consistently against a higher tier of competition. And we'll all have a better idea of that this weekend. Great time to be green.

Fwiw, I ran into one of Scotty's old coaches in late May who said with 100% certainty that "Scotty's coming home". Not saying that means he's UNT bound, but he'll definitely be in the area.

Probably Tulsa, but I don't think I'll ever forget 77-20 in Houston.

ZOMG! WOO HOO!!! DO YOU BELIEVE IN THE MEAN GREEN???? HOLY COW!!!11!1 #INSERTOTHERSPORTSCLICHEHERE

I was there at the very end of the day and ended up with #18 Walter Priestley, #34 Ja'Mel Branch, #95 Evan Cardwell and #77 Nick Zuniga. How's that for an early-aughts throwback collection?

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Also... I believe I heard :ninjaface: our fight song will be in the game this year, as well.

If you came here looking for the number 42, my hat is off to you. Well played, fellow sci-fi dork. Well played indeed. However, the ultimate answer in this case is a little different. When it comes to Recruitment, Conference Realignment, Conference Record, Program Progress, Career Ladder Climbing, Political Participation, Marriage, Learning to Salsa, Lunch Decision Making, Pottery, or Resurfacing Your Kitchen Counter, the ultimate guideline is pretty easy: nothing worth doing happens overnight. “There’s no such thing as a free lunch…” This post has been promoted to an article

A highly placed source ( ) tells me that the new stadium and our fight song will be included in NCAA 13. No word on unis, though. I would be surprised, however, if we had both of those updates, but the old Dodgey uniforms. Still great news, though, any way you cut it.

BA 04/MPA 07 Currently work in the field of City Management for the Town of Addison.

Thanks Emmitt. Was looking at the wrong line of the play by play.

Travis - FAU'S Travis Jones muffed a punt, which NT recovered on the FAU 4. Derek Thompson snuck in a TD four plays later. Brad Graham picked off a pass in the third quarter. Five plays later, Lance Dunbar scored on a 2 yard run. Royce Hill pick six. D'Leon McCord pick six. 4/4

I think it is meant to be ironic, like calling the huge gym beefcake "tiny." Hey, we went to school together - did I ever strike you as a "mad dog?" Harry used it offhandedly once, and I laughed out loud. Then I came up with the whole "20-20" blog idea, and the idea of an "MD" writing for it made me chuckle again. Just think of it as a series of really bad dad jokes.

All the discussion is great. Since I did not attend unt at the time, I am relying on second and third hand information. The hippy haven / counterculture portion was not something mentioned by anyone on the board, but was almost universally mentioned by other alums as well as the more tenured university staff. From a neutral perspective, this looks a lot like subgroup bias, and so I defaulted to the broader opinion. My approach was to present the truth, or at least the closest thing to the truth that I can come to. Remember that the point of doing all of this is for the benefit of newer fans, so the intent is certainly not to be UNDULY negative. I appreciate all the constructive feedback. Go mean green!!!

This good natured sports debate has gone on a little too long. I think I'm probably well overdue for some good old-fashioned reductio ad absurdum and straw man fallacy, with perhaps some ad hominem "Communist" thrown in for good measure. So... you're a communist. That said, I've heard over and over about his plus/minus. We can debate the value all day about whether or not it is a useful stat or not, but far more knowledgeable people that you or I have butted heads on it with no resolution. So let's just assume for a moment that it is a valid stat But, since it is awarded to all players on the ice regardless of whether they had anything to do with the play, that it is more a measure of a team than an individual. That is, a player on a bad team is going to have a lower plus/minus than a player on a good team. A bad goalie, playing against inferior competition, or a meltdown by someone on your own team 60 feet away can all distort what, exactly this is. If you can go with me on that, then it is worth nothing that Pittsburg's +/- is 18 points higher than ours as a team. If we were to normalize for this variance, you're going to show a very different picture of the guy. If we are using +/- as the ultimate arbiter of a player's on-ice worth, a young Sergei Zubov had 31 points in about half a season's worth of games in 92-93. His p/m was -1, the exact same as Matt Niskanen is on the year. Anyway, this is essentially trying to lend some sort of objective analysis to something that, frankly, is really tough to measure. Like offensive line play, it really must be witnessed to draw any meaningful conclusions. I haven't seen the guy play a lot, but those who have were far more frustrated by his turnovers and lack of defense than they were encouraged by his eye-popping offensive stats. Goligoski might well end up being the next Zubov. I hope he is. But, based on everything I read about him, he's great on the power play and terrible defensively. From a production standpoint, we was a little worse than Neal, and, last I checked, goals counted the same regardless of who is scoring them. I would not have done the deal for Neal, and only time will tell if I'm right.

I agree with a lot of what Quoner said. I understood and agreed with the Turco and Modano decisions - it was just time for them to go. And, to be honest, among your three bright young talents (Benn, Erickson, and Neal), Neal was probably the most expendable. I'd have dealt just about anyone else but those three, but if you could get a top shelf blueliner for him, I could part with James Neal. The problem is that we didn't. Goligoski is a one-trick pony - he is great on the power play. He has struggled (per the Penguins fansite, who watch him a heck of a lot more than we do) with all aspects in the defensive end, gives the puck away alot (and doesn't offset that at all with takeaways) and, at his size, cannot be counted on as a physical contributor. He isn't a big panic guy like Nisky, but the fact remains that he is a borderline #4/#5 defenseman. On our squad, maybe he's good enough to play on the second line. Point for point, though, you're ending up with a net loss between he and Neal. So offensively and defensively you're losing something in the deal. I also agree with the fact that you always want to deal from a position of strength to a position of weakness. However, considering we currently have Stephane Robidas and Trevor Daley as guys who are at home in either end of the ice, and a young guy in Philip Larsen who looks like he may develop that skill set, I'm not sure if that's what we really did. Where we are weakest is in defensive minded defenders who can keep the slot clear, take good angles, and not allow high-percentage shots on goal. Just watch the kind of goals we give up, and you'll be shocked how many of them can be attributed to defensive breakdowns. Niskanen was a throw in, and I'm not even close to arguing that we could have gotten anything substantial back for him. In fact, as Bob Sturm said on the radio yesterday, including him in the deal probably hurt it to some degree. I'm alright with that. I just think, at the end of the day, we got fleeced by a guy who is regarded as one of the shark-iest managers in the business. Again, that is why (in addition to stable ownership) Pittsburgh is a cup contender now and we're a middling squad with way more questions than answers. You do not get better by trading your young stars for anything but the best talent. That is what was so disappointing for me.

Just embarassing. If you're going to trade away one of your bright young talents, you MUST get more than this. Apparently the GM thinks that what Dallas REALLY needs is an undersized, unproven, turnover prone "offensive" d-man who is a liability in our own zone. Go ahead, google "Alex Goliogowski turnovers" and read any of the first ten results. Even his homers admit he is a turnover fueled defensive breakdown waiting to happen. Neal is more than a top flight prospect, he is a total package power forward who still hasn't reached his ceiling, and is worth more offensively than any blueliner. Newie just made this team worse at both ends of the ice, and mortgaged his team's future to do so. This is why the Pens are playing for the cup and we're a long shot to make the playoffs.

Best of luck to you. If I might make one suggestion... Running on a platform of achieving a certain ad valorem tax rate for its own sake may be a great way to get elected. However, most local governments the caliber of Denton are managed by first selecting a service level and then setting a rate which, in conjunction with your other revenue streams, balances the equation. If you are elected, and come in with both guns blazing on freezing or lowering the tax rate, you may find it difficult to interface with elected officials and city staff. However, if you couch everything in terms of expected service levels, you may find that lowering or freezing rates are the byproduct of those discussions. In the three cities I've worked for, I have seen councilmember after councilmember come in with a full head of steam, hellbent on slashing everything to the bone. But I have only seen one of those people stick with that idea for more than a couple of months into the budget process. This is not because they get brainwashed by a conniving City Manager of pressured into passing bloated budgets. Rather, they come to see that local governments (especially those in our region) do a pretty good job of keeping costs low, relative to the desired service level in the community. If you are looking to achieve a reduced level of service, you can do a lot of things which will save you money: you can close rec centers and libraries, defer park and street maintenance, outsource office jobs, cut police and fire staffing and equipment levels, consolidate core functions, reduce employees compensation packages, or a combination of all of the above. What you, as an elected official, are responsible for is gauging the community's receptiveness to the consequences of those actions. It may be that you figure no one really cares about some of these items, and you can reduce or eliminate those costs. In my experience, whenever ANYTHING is proposed for deletion, you'll hear about it from a vocal group within the community. Ironically, many of those same people will be the same ones who elected you to office on the promise of lower taxes. Everyone wants everything on the table, but they do not want to pay for any of it. But the burden of those choices is on the council - they make the million dollar decisions as the true voice of the governed. Every city manager I've ever met operates under that idea. They will do whatever a majority of the council wants them to do - that's how they keep their job - unless it is unethical. On rare occasions, I have heard of managers taking a stand on other grounds, but those were almost always decisions that would have truly disastrous consequences for the community (emptying fund balances to build a pool, or something along those lines). And even then, it is more of a pre-emptive action because when it goes wrong (and it usually will if the Manager is comfortable taking a stand on it), they know they're going to get thrown under the bus and fired anyway. Better to leave with your professional integrity than because you went along with something that you knew was not in the best interests of the City. In closing, it is great to see people interested in civic involvement. I know you to be a man of integrity with a reputation for getting things done. I am just hopeful that, if elected, you can make as smooth a transition in as possible. Good luck!

Ticket quotas are expressly illegal. A peace officer may not be evaluated on a number or type of traffic citations, nor can they be required to issue a number or type of traffic citations within a certain period. Violating that is grounds for a removal of office or dismissal from their job. Having worked for local governments for years, I can tell you that we are far too busy to be concerned with the cloak and dagger - that stuff sounds great in papers, but it is usually nothing more than a sales driver. Personally, I find people in general much too tired, stupid, or busy to perpetrate grand schemes of conspiracy. While there are certainly police chiefs (especially in smaller backwoods Texas towns) who may violate that regularly and get away with it, let me assure you that chiefs in the larger cities (particularly here in D/FW) are held to a much higher standard. Officers in the Metrocrest area (Carrollton, Addison, Farmers Branch, and Coppell) are particularly concerned with image and how they are viewed. Councils at three of the four cities have expressed concern within the last three years that an image of a "speed trap city" is something they'd rather avoid. Speed traps decrease speeding over time, but they also reduce traffic. Lower traffic counts kill business, and their tax payments are of far more gravity to area local governments than traffic fines. Citations issued by motorcycle officers, as with the ones you observed, are usually just enough to cover the cost of hiring them. So, in the case you mentioned, it is more a a zero-sum game in terms of revenue. The main thrust of having these officers out, as another poster expressed, is to reduce speed based on the reservations of either the council, the community, or both. If you would agree that those who use services ought to be liable for paying for them, then I'm sure you'd also find the McKinney accident fee to be good policy. Otherwise, the cost of paying for emergency and accident-related services are borne by the those who live in the city on behalf of those who do not. In other words, if I am a McKinney citizen, my property tax and any sales tax I generate from shopping locally go towards paying the salary and program costs of accident-related services; I have in essence "paid my dues." If I live in Arlington, but get in an accident in McKinney, then I am getting the same service without paying for it. That is all the fee is intended to be - making sure those who use a service actually pay for it.

Pains me to say it, but a big difference is how engaged the off-campus population is. If most of UNT's off-campus population drives in from Plano or lives in Denton but never steps foot on campus except for classes and graduation, then the perception of UNT as a commuter school will continue to persist. Say what you will, but a far greater number of UT's off-campus folks are actively engaged in the UT culture. The simplest way to change that is to have a rallying point that a large proportion of the student body can come together and build school spirit. As we have all said on numerous occasions, the most direct method of doing that is to promote and achieve athletic success.

All three D/FW area schools now have top notch head coaches. All three have proven they can take a mediocre squad and build a winner against AQ conference teams. TCU has had the advantage of a coach who has been in one place long enough to have his fingerprints on everything. June Jones isn't too far behind him, and has already turned a bottom of the barrel CUSA program into a conference championship contender. We have everything in place - if Dan McCarney is the kind of coach we think he is, the ingredients are there for us to join TCU and SMU in D/FW collegiate success. Now I wouldn't expect to see us in the Rose Bowl beating Big 10 championships anytime soon. But there's no reason that we couldn't have the Big East, C-USA, and Sun Belt champions right here in the metroplex for the near future.