TWISMUNT

These guys are a solid team coached by a very committed and exceptional man(Art) along with assistance from former top players and the coach of the premier rugby team in Dallas(Michael Engelbrecht). These kids are road tripping out there to represent UNT and keep an eye on them, because anything can happen in the crazy rugby world. Especially 7s. GMG!

I can appreciate what you are saying here. There are those that are not student athletes who work multiple jobs to remain debt free and I have a lot of respect for them. But let me tell you about a student athlete's life and how much free time they have. At least from a football perspective albeit a while ago now. As a disclaimer I do understand that we are playing a "game" to most people, but it isn't all sunshine and farts. Your year starts with Fall Camp in early August where breakfast is mandatory at 6am, followed by morning meetings, then morning practice, then meetings, then mandatory lunch, then afternoon meetings, then afternoon practice, more meetings, mandatory dinner, more meetings and finally bed. Wake up the next morning and do it again. Sometimes instead of two practices it was weights or maybe a few hours of "free" time, but the month of August you were basically not able to do anything other than football in 100 plus degree heat. Fun fact, free dorms are offered and meals, but no extra money. Hope you dont have any type of bills that need covering if your parents can't help. Then school starts. Monday and Wednesday you lift for at least 2 hours before 2pm around your class schedule(which has to be a minimum of 12 hours), meetings start at 2pm everyday except for Friday(unless we are playing at home), practice goes until 6pm(at the earliest), usually meetings after that, get home at around 8pm and then do it again. I suppose you could be partying at night and I wont lie that I did that from time to time, but that was my choice and one that is offered to every student. Point is we didn't have hours a day of "free time" that wasn't available to anybody else. For games on Saturday you report at 7am for breakfast, maybe a little downtime but usually final prep meetings before making the walk, play the game, maybe get home around midnight and go from there. Sunday you watch game film but is mostly free and then you start a new week. That is the fall semester. I'll discuss financials below. Spring semester is a little more free. Most usually take significantly more classes. Monday, Wednesday and Friday you lift before 2pm around your schedule. Most will lift more than the 3 mandatory times throughout the week. Tuesday and Thursday are 6am conditioning workouts(Any former players remeber PEB workouts?). When spring ball comes around, you are basically back on the fall schedule(see above). Afternoons you are free to do what you want for the most part. It's not that great though because you can not have a job(NCAA rules) and that scholarship money is about enough to live in a small place with multiple people to keep the rent down and feed yourself. Unless you have family financial support which most dont have, you are scraping by. Sure your tuition and books are covered, but if you live off campus you are on your own with significantly less money than you think. On campus living has room and board covered but you get no additional money. Pick your poison. One way or another, you are probably not coming out debt free. Most come out with a ton of family and/or credit card debt. Over the summer some go home, some stay in Denton. A few are offered summer school either as a reward to help graduate early or a necessity to qualify. Off season work out programs are "voluntary" but that isn't really true. You can work and try to save some money but still have commitments to UNT football that need to be kept. Oh and our summer "break" is only 2 months before reporting. Dont get me wrong, those were the some of the best years of my life and I wouldn't trade it for anything, but I still remember my first year out of it. I literally didn't know what to do with my free time and it took a long time to figure it out. Can you guess why? We spend four years on a schedule with very little "free time". I know that doesn't sound bad to most, but for the most part student athletes are told what to do and when to do it during their time of eligibility. As you previously mentioned if you hate it you should quit and some definitely did. I didn't hate it at all, but dont think that it is easy by any means. It may not be a job, but it is a full time committment. Those "loads of people who would gladly do it for free" should know the commitment that it takes. I leave you with this. If you wanted the life style of a student athlete but didn't get the opportunity, you should have played better in high school. It isn't some gift that was given, it was earned and continually paid for. Btw, I graduated in 4 and half years with 2 bachelors degrees.

I'm not sure if it is a good or a bad thing, but we sure get overlooked on these lists. I cant believe they didn't show us on this one and we obviously belonged on the 25 lowest attendance list from a day ago. Maybe they are showing mercy, maybe they dont care....

McCarney has introduced more physical workouts than in prior years during spring practice and believes that approach will pay off in the long term, even if it causes some injuries that will keep players out of practice now. “We have no choice,” McCarney said. “We have to get this team ready and make decisions. We have to find out who can play and who can’t, who will make plays and who won’t. That’s what spring ball is for.” I love reading this..........

I know that everyone is wondering if we do this stuff and the answer is a huge NO. Couldn't be farther from it actually. Somebody eluded to the fact earlier that we dont have enough wealthy alumni that are bought in to the program and that is pretty well put. In fact a running theme for our team in the early 2000s was about the "Low Budget". Coach Dickey even made us shirts that said I.S.H.P.B.I.H.S on the front and on the back "I should have played better in High School" as a joke about it. Say what you want about him, he cared about his players. We recruited the old fashion way. After coaches offered visits you put them with a good player chaperone based on personality match on the team and go from there. Not just position matching but personality. You put the quiet kids with quiet players, party kids with party players, etc. It's certainly isn't scoring us big time D1 recruits but it was a hell of a lot of fun for the party players on recruit weekends!

I guess we should just go ahead and give the National Championship to Oregon. Oh yeah, they are getting investigated also. If this keeps up we may be de facto National Champions from last year!

What a jackass! I'm sure Nader never made the team or got picked last or something. I'm also sure when he wasn't paying his way through his Ivy league education he never took the time to notice what the life of a student athlete is really like. But instead of talking about how difficult it is to devote the majority of your time to a sport while maintaining a GPA to stay in school, lets state the obvious fact that a lot of people wouldn't be able to afford college and that is myself included. A lot of times a scholarship opens the door for young men and women to recieve an education that would otherwise not be available to them. It sucks that not everyone gets that shot, but I certainly dont want to hear any bitching from a guy that is just trying to ruffle feathers to keep his name in the paper since he will never get voted in to the white house.

"A: On defense we have to get much, much more physical, work on our fundamentals, and get better tackling. I think we have made great strides in our attitude and expectations, but what I need from those guys is for them to give me all they have for 4-6 seconds every play. I don't need 60 seconds worth of effort, it's not like that, I need them to give me there best for just that length of time. If we can get better in our tackling, I told Coach Bowen that if we are able to do just that, you will see the results." That excites me a little and it should be interesting to see how they go about this. Please tell me they line them up for Oklahoma or Cover Drill (1v1 or 3v3) at the end of every practice again. Noone ever got hurt(not even the kicker trio of Bazaldua, Kadulabar and Hopovac) and it will make you more physical. Trust me......

You should go to the Letterman's tent at the first home game and mention that to one of the guys with a ring(or multiple rings) on his hand and see how that goes. Some of you armchair critics are unbelievable in the stuff you will say about your "team"..........

Our passing game and more importantly our down field passing game mainly worked off play action in Coach Dickey's offense. 3rd and 5 isn't a strong down for that. That's basically no mans land for us. It was a little crazy on the field watching a draw on 3rd and long but I will be damned if it didn't work every now and then. I look back on that and remember how close we were to a 10 win season it just hurts. Still one of the previous posts was absolutely right, the North Texas faithful came out in good numbers everytime for the bowl game. Cant wait to finally go back this year! Or maybe next.....but soon!

9. * Michael Stojkovic (pronounced STOCK O VICk), LB/Safety/ATH, 6-2, 215, 4.6, ValleyForge Prep/Katy HS - Coached by Glen Foley. A quarterback at Katy who spent a year at Valley Forge and was converted to an outside linebacker. 375 bench press, 4.3 shuttle, 32 inch vertical jump. Recruited by Coach Anthony Weaver. Signed and enrolled at North Texas 1.18.10 If this kid is really 6'2(not actually 5'11), can put on 20 to 30 lbs and still run a 4.6 he could be the second coming of Cody Spencer. I really like his coverage skills from the film and if that can translate to him playing linebacker he should be a solid player. Again this is contingent on if he is actually the size and speed he is advertised though. Man it would be sweet to have someone in the middle of the field with a nose for the ball again. We shall see.........

I'm basing this on studying stats and the gamecast. Our top 4 tacklers are LBs and are leading the charge today. This usually means that the D-Line is eating up blocks. It seems as though it is the old DeLoach classic 4-3 system being executed finally.

Good point, but still this is something positive and God knows we need that. I still wish we played up and not to the level of our competition all the time. I like that our D has some fire again, but hate that we cant be the same team each week. Injuries and everything else can be taken in to this, but you saw the drop off from Clemson to Rice and it has just continued each week with each different opponent(except for Army, just awful). We will continue to play close games and not win until this team decides that they are the better team and not play to stay close.

After the Rice game I would have 100% agreed with this. I am absolutely sick of losing by a point or two. We are at a point where lopsided losses are easier to take and that is sad. However, as long as these guys keep going out there this year and playing until the end I'll keep going and dragging as many people as I can. I'm not talking about keeping their head up either, I'm talking about a "fragile" young QB that catches a lot of crap in the media playing a game until the end with a broken wrist and almost pulling it off. Top that off with the loss of a player and friend Josh Rake may he rest in peace on Thursday night which I can not begin to describe how that hurts(RIP Andrew Smith). We have 15 injuries ranging from torn ACLs to spider bites and pitbull attacks and still the game comes down to a blocked PAT? That is effort and after the initial dissapointment wore off I decided that as long as that is there, we should be there. That being said, if they lay an egg on Arkansas State and look like they are throwing in the towel you will be lucky if 12k show up to farewell game against K-State and they will all probably be on the visitor side.

UNT90 hit the nail on the head! Less penalties, more TOP and solid defense will get us more wins! Proud of these kids for fighting and finally beating FAU!