Greendylan

Very happy to finally beat them! Hell, they lost something like their top 8 scorers from last season and still were tough. Fun rivalry!

I guess we're just never going to beat this team again. Every year. Same thing.

I mean, Vito was kind of the only reporter to get the story correct from the beginning. Maybe he's slower because he's actually fact checking and confirming his sources.

We had a couple near meltdowns but recovered each time, especially after timeouts, so that it didn't get TOO scary.

Bingo

Congrats to Bussey and all our other all-conference players! I hate that this news feels muted by the endless coaching rumors today. Also, Cole Hedlund has really completed one hell of a comeback story.

I'm assuming that Kansas State would like to delay the official announcement until tomorrow so as not to be buried beneath the Urban Meyer retirement news today.

Once Cason Martin starts following Neal Brown on Twitter, it will be official.

In the coming days, we're going to read articles about "Littrell moving up the food chain in college football" and how we're better off having a coach poached after success vs. fired after failures. We will also read about how rarely coaches have succeeded at North Texas and been hired away for "greener pastures" and how Littrell's success at NT has elevated the perception of the program. There's truth in all of the above. However, we do have to ask ourselves about the immediate future of the program. If our recruiting class gets raided, then there is the very real possibility that Littrell will leave here without a single highly regarded recruiting class, no ranking, no wins over ranked teams, and no bowl wins. Now, I'm not blaming him for leaving. It's an amazing opportunity and likely will pay well over $3 million per year. I'm also not trying to diminish our success the past 3 years, which has been quite fun, and consecutive 9-win seasons is nothing to sneeze at. My point, though, is there is a very real scenario in which we are left rebuilding with the proverbial "bare cupboard" under a new coach--even after our recent success. That becomes especially likely if Littrell goes full mercenary and takes our top recruits and certain grad-transfer-eligible star players with him. And, why wouldn't he? KSU isn't going to pay him $3+ million to play nice. So, in the end, it's possible that it will be to the credit of Wren Baker's legacy rather Littrell's if we are to avoid the #olddenton wilderness and rebound within a few years.

Anyone who has been paying attention knows this is a done deal--and probably has been for far longer than some might imagine. Our only hope is that we also have an unofficial "done deal" with a coach who can help protect us from our old coach taking a few parting gifts on the way out the door. If Littrell has a huge head start on persuading our recruits/current stars to head to Kansas State, while we have no one to counter that message, then we could be absolutely devastated and rebuilding for the next two years. An interim coach cannot do that job because the players know that person likely won't be retained by the next staff anyway.

Right. For a guy who has repeatedly emphasized the mission of winning a bowl game--and just received an invite to play a ranked team in one--he seems unusually disinterested. I was holding out a tiny bit of hope that he would at least insist to his KSU suitors that he had to coach the bowl game before bolting and cap off his legacy at North Texas, but that was probably always non-negotiable.

The actual NFF Awards Dinner is tonight in New York. It makes sense that he would remain there. Still, if he is indeed keeping our players in the dark about his absence at such a critical time, that would speak volumes about where his priorities currently lie.

A private search firm helps protect a public institution from FOIA requests.

The New Mexico Bowl is certainly considered the lowest tier of bowl game that there is, but I don't really blame Wren Baker, as playing the #23 team (Coaches Poll) is a great opportunity and perhaps the best we could have gotten. It doesn't sound like CUSA got many great bowl options this season. My concern, though, is that we are quite likely to be destroyed by a former Sun Belt conference mate for the second year in a row. We may be missing quite a few coaches by then, and while I know USU also lost their head coach, I have a hunch that our losses will be far more damaging.