mad dog
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GoMeanGreen.com
Posts posted by mad dog
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One of the neatest things in sports to me is how far above joe six-pack the average athlete is. Seeing them play against mere mortals gives you a whole new appreciation for the game.
The Ticket has a fine tradition of using pro and recently pro athletes as ringers in their charity sports events. I just love watching guys like Herschel Walker, 10 years after retiring, get the ball in his hands and break guys ankles with his cuts. Jason Witten, a guy not known for his speed, was beating a regular guy deep in a half-dozen steps WITH a 10 yard cushion. Forget guys like Rocket Ismail, who beat a 30 yard cushion from some dude in coverage at the end of the half. Even a guy like Andy Blount makes ordinary folk look like they're running in sand.
These guys are just so much better than the average guy it is silly. I'll never forget watching hitter after hitter flail around uselessly at Mike Bascik's fastball, and he was, by pro standards, a middle/lower middle of the road guy.
Just amazing how talented these dudes are.
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Agreed. Great haul so far. Throw in some more o-line beef and maybe another juco tackle and I think you've addressed pretty much every concern.
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I really really hope every fan who is interested gets a chance to meet the guy. I spent two minutes with Harry talking to him at the banquet, and you get a sense for the gravity of the man. And the crazy thing is, the whole staff exudes that. Gaines might be near the top, but I imagine any of them could probably sell ice to an eskimo.
If Dodge's staff was largely aloof, guys like Gaines personify the feeling of willing to sit down with any person, any time of any day, and just shoot the bull. Even if they really don't have time to do that, that's the feeling that they give you, and I imagine that has something to do with our recruiting success so far.
TLDR: Agreed, he's a great get for UNT.
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There was a great article posted by UNT's own Dr. Bob Bland, an acknowledged and leading expert on government revenue policy. I won't cut and paste the whole article, but here are two paragraphs that I forward to people on the "government people get paid too much" bandwagon. Not to say that there aren't some people in government being paid more than they are worth - there are. There will, by logic and statistics, always be some people paid too much and some paid too little for the work they produce, no matter what sector you are talking about.
As the recovery from the Great Recession of 2008-09 has languished, a tone of resentment has emerged at the compensation packages for those in the public sector. This resentment has been particularly pointed at the pension plans of some public employees, especially plans that seem overly generous given the stark economic realities state and local governments now face. In fact, in the past two years state and local governments have made significant reductions in their workforces. Those employees who remain faced furlough days or reductions in salary or benefits as state and local governments have struggled to balance their budgets. If we believe in the competitive market as the ultimate arbiter of a fair price and if we believe that the demand for and supply of labor operates in such a market, then the compensation packages of public employees reflect the market forces at work at any point in time. Contracts and other restrictive measures to market entry and exit may temporarily skew wages and salaries, but over the long term the market for labor adapts and wages reflect the market clearing price. Few would argue that the competitive labor market fails in setting wage and compensation rates for employees in the private sector, and few can make a credible claim the same market which supplies labor for the public sector also fails to set compensation rates in the long term.The blurring of the lines between public and private sectors has also blurred the distinction between the role of public service and that of private employment. If private employees are laid off during a recession, why should the same fate not befall public employees? If government is going to be run like business, then government payrolls need to shrink along with business as the economy shrinks and revenues decline. The fallacy is the assumption that government is just another producer of private goods and services. Whereas business production is driven by markets, government production is driven by political processes -- budgets, interest groups, political coalitions, crises. While governments produce services that may appear as though they arise out of a marketplace -- water, waste water, even education -- the decision to provide these services has little to do with market signals. In fact, demand for higher education is countercyclical. But few states are increasing funding to higher education to accommodate the uptick in demand. The choice and level of public services provided by governments emanate out of political processes rather than markets. A decision by a government to reduce service levels because of a reduction in revenues is a political decision and not a market decision.
For what I do right now, I would command a salary three times what I'm making right now, in the private sector. Yes, I have good benefits, but the total value of the package is still about half of whatever I'd be making in a typical corporate climate. The tradeoff there is that, when the economy sucks, I'll still have my government job. When the getting is good, there is no way even lavishly paid public managers can hold a candle to what executives of companies with similar financial profiles make. A heavily tenured Texas manager will make 200-300k in a large, well established city. A heavily tenured CEO of a similarly profiled private company commands a salary in the millions, excluding perks and benefits. So what we see is that, just as Dr. Bland said, the market has indeed settled out the relative cost-benefit of security in proportionally analogous organizations. If you remove the security aspect of government, you will either need to raise salaries to match the private sector or be comfortable with attracting a lower quality (and quantity) of employee.
At higher levels of staffing, ANY organization is prone to bloat, excess, and complacency. This is as true for the public and private sectors. Since there are no businesses with a $2.38 trillion revenue profile, you can't really compare any private sector company to the federal government. Even the state of Texas operates on a scale that dwarfs all but the most massive companies (Texas Revenue $73 billion, Microsoft $62.4).
In summary, government jobs exist outside of the market, but are still affected by market pressures through hiring and retention to drive salaries to a competitive cost point. All we're seeing right now is the benefit of stability; when times get good, they are far more lucrative over on the other side.
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I have a feeling most of the negativity is because this was mistakenly posted on the football forum. If there was even a chance that Coach Mac could pull in a 5 star OT, it'd be front page news. So you roll the dice on his being eligible - just to be in a position to gamble on a player of that caliber is really really exciting. At least to me.
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Ok. I think NOW is the appropriate time to issue the line.
Good things are happening at North Texas!!!
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Christmas in January.
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Do they have a flag?
Damn that's dash cunning of them.
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A little. Still freakin' awesome, though. Had myself a Double-Double, Animal Style this weekend. It made me teh happy.
That's a positive note to end on, methinks.
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“It’s not meant as a threat,” he said. “It’s just meant to tell you that you could run us off, you really can. But someone else could come in and never have a town hall meeting and never rezone it and this is what they could build.”
HELLO??? DENIA??? They can build this with or without your permission. You can bet that the next guys won't even ask for your input.
Negotiation is simply an abstract form of trade. And you should realize when you have no bargaining position. Really, though, should any of us be surprised at this?
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I wish I could even wish for Jerry Jone money. I'm barely scraping by on iPhone money, atm.
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Oh yeah? Well I'll use a word that don't mean nu'in. Like Looptid.
I always felt like that was a give-up rhyme.
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I heard Commissioner Benson offered Whataburger a spot in the WAC, but was turned down.
lawl
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I never lived on Campus, always in an apartment off-campus, but in Denton. Eating at restaurants in town, working and spending in that town. The school is tax exempt, but the 35,000 students and thousands of faculty are not. I don't think it's as burdonsome as you portray.
But the truth is, just like in every situation, start with the end in mind. Involve all affected parties and move the process forward anticipating all the needs for your prpject. Anything less is mis-management. Period. And Corinth/HV/Flower Mound built a new bridge and road thru solid neighborhoods in 3-5 yrs...Environmental Impact Studies, public forums and the like.
We're talking about widening existing roads and making needed improvements to a decades old on/off ramp. One new 4 lane road. This is all manageable and should have been in the works, if not started on or even close to completed, by now.
Satellite development, which is what you're referencing, is almost never worth the cost it takes to attract it. Tax Abatements seldom work as intended for this very reason - it is usually a losing propostion unless you can get office tower-level density.
Let's take your 35,000 and round it up to 40,000 for argument's sake. Let's assume that all the students are employed and are making the Denton average per capita income ($19,365), rounded up to $20,000 for simplicity. Let's assume that they are somehow able to convert 25% of that to discretionary income (after tax, rent or mortgage, insurance, medical, property maintenance, child support, inflation, raw foods, and sundries). Finally, let's assume that they spend every penny of that discretionary income within the city limits of Denton on taxable items. This gives us a pool of $200 million in taxable spending. The City's take of that is 2%, which means a total revenue impact of $4 million.
Operationally, let's just look at public safety. This would mean that no student, professor, or employee uses any service other than the bare essentials (police/court and fire). Denton's per capita public safety spending is approximately $360 ($43 million/119,454). So the net public safety cost of serving a population of 40,000 is $14 million.
Revenues - $4 million. Expenditures (just the very very basics) - $14 million.
Realize the realities are much, much different. There's no way you're even close to that kind of revenue number, and no way the cost of service is as low as $14 million. The 40,000 you mention comprose fully one third of Denton's total population. To have the infrastructure and organization contribute nothing in the way of taxes is ALWAYS a losing proposition. The benefit to the Denton community is the prestige of being home to one of the best universities in the Country, not anything financial.
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I share the residents concerns. The problem is not with the residents or the university or even with all the proposed new development, the problem is with a city that continues to be inattentive and refuses to address the issue other than by proposing to someday place an obsolete band-aid on this.
Not saying your plan wouldn't be effective. It sounds great. The problem is money - who is going to fund it?
To give you an idea of what you're looking at, a similar project at my City was bid out and awarded at 4.3 million. And this project involves adding two lanes, not building a new road entirely. This says nothing about the cost of staff time, which is sure to be a nightmare considering TxDOT would be involved with on-ramp change. There's no way Denton could absorb that kind of a hit to their operating funds, so you're looking at an issuance of debt or drawing down of fund balance. And those steps are usually performed within the context of a broader bond election or community emergencies, respectively.
It's pretty easy to put the blame on the City, because they have the capability and the organizational imperative to improve the land it governs. However, you're looking at one project, and there are literally hundreds, each of them with stakeholders who will fall on their sword to see it through. Add to that the effect of the economy (despite $3 million+ reduction of cost in the General Fund alone) and you get an even smaller pool to draw from. Denton is entering a major wave of needed maintenance projects, and repairing what you have will almost always take priority over buying something new.
And the dirty truth that no one at Denton would ever publicly admit, but is certainly there: universities are already municipal freeloaders. A city will never recoup the cost of UNT's tax-exempt status, and yet bears the cost of providing services both directly to the university and indirectly to the student population. So it may not be the most accurate thing to say Denton is doing nothing for the university - they may not be comfortable parting with additional monies to an entity which isn't paying for what it has already received.
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I had been meaning to post this for a while, but it kept slipping my mind. As I start to wind things down for Christmas, I'm finally getting around to it.
Before the Rice game, Emmitt and I made our way over to the Stadium to check it out, and were marveling at how much bigger the stadium looks in person than from aerial shots or even from the webcam (guessing it has something to do with depth perception). Anyway, at one point we stopped talking for a moment, and were more than a little shocked to observe a noticeable echo coming from our conversation. It was quiet, so we weren't shouting or anything, but could definitely hear a little reverb from our voices.
On the long list of drawbacks to Fouts was that it was so shallow and so open that most of the sound just escaped. I can't imagine how loud the thing will be with 20-30k people yelling for a third down stop.
Might we finally discover some true home field advantage?
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I love this guy. A true professional with class. I am glad he did it all with one Jersey.
Jere Lehtinen officially announces retirement
Definitely. Not a whole lot like him.
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I think this thing will all sort itself out with new ownership, whenever the creditors get their heads out of their asses and realize that they're devaluing their own investment by letting it sit.
To me, this team is two top blueliners away from being a legitimate cup contender. When every defenseman is playing their best game, your top pair is probably Grossman (lately) and Robidas. Those are two solid players, but no one will ever confuse them with a shutdown group. Asking them to be anything more than a second line role is frankly optimistic to unrealistic. Grossman and Fistric (24 and 25, respectively) still have room to grow into 1st liners, but they aren't there yet. Robi is a hell of a player, but he's never been the guy who could go toe-to-toe with the other team's top line.
We have an embarassing amount of cap space, enough to go and grab a marquee guy and then probably one more. Then, you go Grossman/Fistric and Robidas for 2nd and then Grossman/Fistric and Daley for your third. Trade Nisky and have Woywitka and Skrastins be your plug-in scratches.
Having a responsible, technically and positionally sound top blue line group allows your forwards to release earlier, relaxes your goalie, and offsets your opponent's best line.
It may not be the panacea, but that's the direction you need to go.
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Would be a great hire. I have a feeling most on this board have no idea how much Kenny Evans loves this program. Put it like this: there were at least two starters on the team last year who aren't at North Texas but for a gentle nudge from Evans years after the UNT paychecks stopped coming.
He might not be seen running down the sidelines like Chico, or be a fan of the boisterous bearhugs like Mac, but the enthusiasm is there. With as much as Mac values loyalty, I'd think you would at least give him a look. He is a great recruiter, and a hard worker with the ability to build relationships.
Just take a look, coach. All I'm asking.
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DMac + Chico = Season Tickets for me. Now... how to pitch this to the wife...
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I don't know why, but I flew by this station on the way home from work just long enough to hear Cocaine Greggo proclaim that Mike Canales was the luckiest man in college football because he didn't get the UNT job. Cocaine Greggo continued on to say that UNT threw good money after bad in building the new stadium and that the head coaching job at UNT was the worst job in the nation. Then he said that no coach could ever win at UNT. When his sidekick reminded him that UNT had won 3 conference championships earlier this decade (yes, I know, but the poor sap was defending us), it was clear that cocaine Greggo had never heard about our conference championships, or that the cocaine induced haze of the mid 2000 had erased it from his memory.
It was pretty humorous, because it was clear he had no idea what he was talking about. Unfortunately, thats because I have a knowledge base on what is going on with UNT Football. Those out there who don't (all three of them that listen to this station) have now been giiven an ignorant opinion of our football program.
That theory cannot be proven.
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I agree C-USA would be best.
However, if they're on the phone right now, it'd take about three tenths of a second to say yes.
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Just curious... anyone know what those blue materials over on the lower portion of the pressbox side are? I'm not an engineer, but I understand we have a few people on the board who are.
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I don't think there's any question that Mark Stoops has the technical skill for the job. He knows football and he probably has a good idea about how big time programs operate. It may just be me, but I place a pretty high premium on guys who have had success coaching at the mid-major level.
At the AQ level, schools have access to resources and amenities which we, at North Texas, can't touch right now. If a coach cannot prove he knows how to do more with less, then I wonder how well they'd do here. Just my 2 cents.
Nt Football
in Mean Green Football
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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.