SUMG

The thing about Dickey that I don't get: The more the guy has to work with.....the less he produces (in recruiting). That aforementioned great 2000 recruiting class (the one with the 6-7 State 100s in it) came: 1) before he had RV as the AD. 2) way before any Athletic Center. 3) We were in a league where the bowl was in Boise. 4) We'd had no success yet (of any kind) in the Dickey era. We were coming off 3-8 and 2-9 seasons. So we definitely weren't coming off seasons of bowl appearances. 5) In 2000......had we ever been on national TV? I don't think so. We'd been on regional TV....but not national TV. So even though he has that brand spankin' new Athletic Center, that we absolutely had to have.....expect this year's class to be as "so-so" as his last 4. Oh, it will be touted as the "greatest class ever"......but trust me it won't be.

This could change, as you know.....but from what I've read, the SMU game is the 2nd game of the season. (Sept. 9th? or so). But, like I said....that could change. (see: 2005)

Oh wow, the Cheerleader coach quit. Gee, what are we gonna do? Of course, it's a well known fact that the UNT Cheerleader Coach job is a "pressure cooker", what with trying to live up to that national championship of several years ago. Anyway, thanks for totally ruining my day. Now, I've had to rearrange my "Things that I'm worried about" list: Here's the current list: 1) UNT is without a cheerleader coach 2) Terrorism 3) The War in Iraq 4) Droughts and wildfires in Texas 5) Bird flu 6) That restraining order that keeps me out of Chuck E. Cheese

Dickey had one great recruiting class....the 2000 class. That's the one which had 5-6 legit State 100s in it (Booger, Cody Spencer, Buckles, Taylor Casey, etc.). The rest of his classes have been average to mediocre. We lived off of that one great class....and made it to the four bowls. Now, the last 4 average to mediocre classes....are coming home to roost....as evidenced by this year's 2-9 season. We have four UNT players in the pros right now. In 4 years, Matt Simon recruited two of those (Brad Kassell; Brian Waters). In 8 years, Dickey recruited the other two (Cody Spencer, Adrian Awasome). 39-55 after 8 years. And it ain't gonna get any better any time soon.

125th Street Gang, Feel free to private message me. But in the private message, please give your name, the year that you graduated, and those three websites that you've touted. Otherwise, if you're going to keep playing this coy game, it gets us nowhere. I want to believe you're legit. I really do. But, the onus is on you, to prove that you're legit.....not us. You're the one begging and pleading for money. Finally.....since you're being so secretive about things....one wonders: Are you Herb Larkins????????????

And these three other websites.....what is the reason why you can't give those addresses? Just curious.

First of all....I sent some money. (A heckuva lot more than $5, too). But I really resent you coming on here, and berating the UNT fans on this board for not sending enough. Hey Herb Larkins was even before my time. I had never heard of the guy or his story until you posted it on here. I told you, that if you really wanted to have more legitimacy, you should: 1) Give your own name and the year you graduated. 2) Give out the names of these other websites, where total strangers are coming through like gangbusters. You did neither. Hey, I'm not afraid to give my name. It's John McDowell, class of '79. A lot of the folks on here know me. When you made your first post on here about Herb, it was your 12th post total, as I recall. So, it's not like 125th Street Gang was a board regular. I'm sorry about Mr. Larkin's fate. And if North Texas did very little for him, that's not right. But, I've got to say.....your daily bitching about this board's response and North Texas, is making me wish I hadn't sent anything. John McDowell class of '79

(from MeanGreenSports.com): PRAIRIE VIEW, Tex. (12/22/05) – The North Texas women’s basketball team had four players score in double figures to cruise past Prairie View A&M (1-8) 84-52 at the Williams Nicks Building. North Texas (9-2) has now won two straight and eight of their past nine games to match the best start in school history at 9-2. The 32-point win is the largest road victory by North Texas since 1994. “I was really pleased with the way that we played tonight,” said North Texas head coach Tina Slinker. “Natalie (Mireles) was great tonight and we just kept the momentum going on the offensive end”. Senior Mian Williams led the way with 14 points and senior guard Natalie Mireles scored a career-high 13 points. North Texas led by 18 points at the break, 40-22, and pulled away from the Panthers early in the second half and never looked back. The Mean Green went on a 24-6 run to begin the second half and led by 36 points at 64-28 with 13 minutes to play. Prairie View A&M was held to just 25 percent shooting while the Mean Green shot 45 percent from the field. “This is a great way for us to go into the break and get some rest before we play our final non-conference game and get ready for conference”. North Texas returns to action on Dec. 31 with their final non-conference game of the season against Northwestern State at the Super Pit.

The Mean Green women are now 9-2, with one game left before conference play begins (a home game on 12/31 against Northwestern State of La. )

125th Street Gang: I sent some money yesterday. But, if you want to help your cause, and give it more legitimacy: 1) Give your actual name and the year you graduated from North Texas. and 2) if there's some other sports website where others are responding to the cause......give that website's address on here. You know the one, where you said over 200 people have responded. If you posted that site's address on here, then UNT fans could go and check it out. Like I said.....I took you on your word. (and sent some money to Herb). I'm just letting you know what I'm hearing from others who haven't sent money.

Bell also has a connection to UNT. He was Matt Simon's DB coach, during the '94 season. He came to us from Louisville, and brought transfer Anthony Bridges with him.

CMJ.....A & M is starting to turn the corner. This is their second year under a great young coach (Gillespie). They won 21 last year, and had two wins in the NIT (over DePaul and Clemson). Plus, they've turned their arena into a fairly tough place to play. As I recall...I think they beat Texas there last year, and almost beat Kansas. No, they're not Duke yet.....but they're getting there. (And I think they'd beat UNC-Wilmington). Oh and one more thing: Their stud player (Joseph Jones)....the guy who had something like 35 pts and 13 boards last night....he is actually from a town (Normangee) which is one classification lower than where our big freshman Howerton is from (Howe). Normangee is 1A and Howe is 2A. So, you can find a diamond in those lower classes sometimes. Also, A & M wanted to sign Howerton......as well.

Euless Eagle, Based on all of your previous posts....why would YOU point out that 43 Division 1-AA schools are ahead of us? I could have sworn that every post that you've ever made on the matter....that everything is just "peachy keen" with Dickey being our head coach. Or are things finally sinking in?

Shouldn't they know by now, if any conference is not going to be able to fulfill its' commitment to a certain bowl? The reason I ask: In that listing, there are 3-4 bowls, where the matchup is a projection based on a certain league (SEC, Big 12) not having enough teams to fulfill their alotment. Shouldn't all those games be finalized, by now??

He was the OC at Virginia. If I were KSU.....I would have called a "proven" commodity: Steve Kragthorpe.

That was in '99, E-bone. That was during the last year of Spike Dykes tenure at TTech. You didn't have to get into a shootout to beat TTech back then... Also, losing to us and Dickey....lead to that being Dykes last year (whether he wanted it to be, or not).

In both preseason b-ball mags which I have....Arizona State is picked to finish 10th in the PAC 10 conference.

Good post, Jim.

ESPN Game Plan carries SBC games, Jim. (Their website may not claim us, but they do carry our games). Today, for example, Troy-ULM is on Game Plan. I go to Channel 600 on DirecTV......there they give a listing of all their televised sporting events...including the times of all of their Game Plan games.

Same as last year, except substitute Troy for NMSU. West: UNO, UNT, ULL, S Bama, Troy, and Denver East: UALR, ASU, MTSU, WKU, FIU FAU will be added to the league in 2006-2007, as a 6th team in the East Division. When that happens, I hope they do a geographical switch, moving SBama and Troy to the East, and putting UALR and ASU in our division.

Street and Smith's college basketball mag is out. They pick us 4th in the West. As mentioned in the title, they do pick Arkansas transfer, Kendrick Davis, as the pre-season "Newcomer of the Year" for the SBC. Athlon's mag is also out. They pick us 5th in the West. Needless to say, Denver and Yemi Nicholson will be very tough to beat in the West.

so maybe.......what? I'm not clear on what you're trying to say...can you clarify?

(I think it's pretty obvious that our league won't have a bowl game in NO this year. Here's the story from AP: The governor of Louisiana says everyone needs to leave New Orleans due to flooding from Hurricane Katrina. "We've sent buses in. We will be either loading them by boat, helicopter, anything that is necessary," Gov. Kathleen Blanco said. Army engineers trying to plug New Orleans' breached levees struggled to move giant sandbags and concrete barriers into place, and the governor said Wednesday the situation was growing more desperate and there was no choice but to abandon the flooded city. "The challenge is an engineering nightmare," Gov. Kathleen Blanco said on ABC's "Good Morning America." As the waters continued to rise in New Orleans, the Pentagon began mounting one of the biggest search-and-rescue operations in U.S. history, sending four Navy ships to the Gulf Coast with drinking water and other emergency supplies, along with the hospital ship USNS Comfort, search helicopters and eight swift-water rescue teams. Red Cross workers from across the country converged on the devastated region. The Army Corps of Engineers said it planned to use heavy-duty Chinook helicopters to drop 3,000-pound sandbags Wednesday into the 500-foot gap in the failed floodwall. But the agency said it was having trouble getting the sandbags and dozens of 15-foot highway barriers to the site because the city's waterways were blocked by loose barges, boats and large debris. Officials said they were also looking at a more audacious plan: finding a barge to plug the 500-foot hole. The death toll from Hurricane Katrina reached at least 110 in Mississippi alone, while Louisiana put aside the counting of the dead to concentrate on rescuing the living, many of whom were still trapped on rooftops and in attics. The Red Cross reported it had about 40,000 people in 200 shelters across the area in one of the biggest urban disasters the nation has ever seen. A full day after the Big Easy thought it had escaped Katrina's full fury, two levees broke and spilled water into the streets Tuesday, swamping an estimated 80 percent of the bowl-shaped, below-sea-level city, inundating miles and miles of homes and rendering much of New Orleans uninhabitable for weeks or months. "We are looking at 12 to 16 weeks before people can come in," Mayor Ray Nagin said on ABC's "Good Morning America, "and the other issue that's concerning me is we have dead bodies in the water. At some point in time the dead bodies are going to start to create a serious disease issue." Blanco said she wanted the Superdome _ which had become a shelter of last resort for about 20,000 people _ evacuated within two days, along with other gathering points for storm refugees. The situation inside the dank and sweltering Superdome was becoming desperate: The water was rising, the air conditioning was out, toilets were broken, and tempers were rising. At the same time, sections of Interstate 10, the only major freeway leading into New Orleans from the east, lay shattered, dozens of huge slabs of concrete floating in the floodwaters. I-10 is the only route for commercial trucking across southern Louisiana. The sweltering city of 480,000 people _ an estimated 80 percent of whom obeyed orders to evacuate as Katrina closed in over the weekend _ also had no drinkable water, the electricity could be out for weeks, and looters were ransacking stores around town. "The logistical problems are impossible and we have to evacuate people in shelters," the governor said. "It's becoming untenable. There's no power. It's getting more difficult to get food and water supplies in, just basic essentials." She gave no details on exactly where the refugees would be taken. But in Houston, Rusty Cornelius, a county emergency official, said at least 25,000 of them would travel in a bus convoy to Houston starting Wednesday and would be sheltered at the 40-year-old Astrodome, which is no longer used for professional sporting events. The Federal Emergency Management Agency was considering putting people on cruise ships, in tent cities, mobile home parks, and so-called floating dormitories _ boats the agency uses to house its own employees. Once the levees are fixed, Maj. Gen. Don Riley of the Army Corps of Engineers said, it could take close to a month to get the water out of the city. If the water rises a few feet higher, it could also wipe out the water system for the whole city, said New Orleans' homeland security chief, Terry Ebbert. A helicopter view of the devastation over Louisiana and Mississippi revealed people standing on black rooftops, baking in the sunshine while waiting for rescue boats. "I can only imagine that this is what Hiroshima looked like 60 years ago," said Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour after touring the destruction by air Tuesday. All day long, rescuers in boats and helicopters plucked bedraggled flood refugees from rooftops and attics. Louisiana Lt. Gov. Mitch Landrieu said 3,000 people have been rescued by boat and air, some placed shivering and wet into helicopter baskets. They were brought by the truckload into shelters, some in wheelchairs and some carrying babies, with stories of survival and of those who didn't make it. "Oh my God, it was hell," said Kioka Williams, who had to hack through the ceiling of the beauty shop where she worked as floodwaters rose in New Orleans' low-lying Ninth Ward. "We were screaming, hollering, flashing lights. It was complete chaos." Looting broke out in some New Orleans neighborhoods, prompting authorities to send more than 70 additional officers and an armed personnel carrier into the city. One police officer was shot in the head by a looter but was expected to recover, authorities said. A giant new Wal-Mart in New Orleans was looted, and the entire gun collection was taken, The Times-Picayune newspaper reported. "There are gangs of armed men in the city moving around the city," said Ebbert, the city's homeland security chief. Also, looters tried to break into Children's Hospital, the governor's office said. On New Orleans' Canal Street, dozens of looters ripped open the steel gates on clothing and jewelry stores and grabbed merchandise. In Biloxi, Miss., people picked through casino slot machines for coins and ransacked other businesses. In some cases, the looting took place in full view of police and National Guardsmen. Blanco acknowledged that looting was a severe problem but said that officials had to focus on survivors. "We don't like looters one bit, but first and foremost is search and rescue," she said. Officials said it was simply too early to estimate a death toll. One Mississippi county alone said it had suffered at least 100 deaths, and officials are "very, very worried that this is going to go a lot higher," said Joe Spraggins, civil defense director for Harrison County, home to Biloxi and Gulfport. In neighboring Jackson County, officials said at least 10 deaths were blamed on the storm. Several of the dead in Harrison County were from a beachfront apartment building that collapsed under a 25-foot wall of water as Hurricane Katrina slammed the Gulf Coast with 145-mph winds Monday. Louisiana officials said many were feared dead there, too, making Katrina one of the most punishing storms to hit the United States in decades. Blanco asked residents to spend Wednesday in prayer. "That would be the best thing to calm our spirits and thank our Lord that we are survivors," she said. "Slowly, gradually, we will recover; we will survive; we will rebuild." Across Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama, more than 1 million residents remained without electricity, some without clean drinking water. Officials said it could be weeks, if not months, before most evacuees will be able to return. Emergency medical teams from across the country were sent into the region and President Bush cut short his Texas vacation Tuesday to return to Washington to focus on the storm damage. Also, the Bush administration decided to release crude oil from federal petroleum reserves to help refiners whose supply was disrupted by Katrina. The announcement helped push oil prices lower. Katrina, which was downgraded to a tropical depression, packed winds around 30 mph as it moved through the Ohio Valley early Wednesday, with the potential to dump 8 inches of rain and spin off deadly tornadoes. The remnants of Katrina spawned bands of storms and tornadoes across Georgia that caused at least two deaths, multiple injuries and leveled dozens of buildings. A tornado damaged 13 homes near Marshall, Va. ___ Associated Press reporters Holbrook Mohr, Mary Foster

Just a guess here, but I think the temporary home for the New Orleans Bowl will be: Lafayette. We have a league member there. The stadium is just the right size for our bowl (I know they've had as many as 38,000 in there, for the A & M game). Also, it was just announced that the league offices have been temporarily relocated there.