untjim1995

I agree... Now, can TX HS football produce this defensive talent that WE can get? Probably not. This is why the Gary Patterson type coach is so great. He sees a running back and envisions a DLinenan or Linebacker. An option QB becomes a DB or WR for him. What we have seen go wrong here since the SBC glory run is plentiful but it’s seeing staffs focus on one side of the ball and then being shocked when our defense either can’t stop a YMCA team (Dodge and SL) or gets so tired because of draws and bubble screens on offense that they can’t stop anyone late in games or later into the season ( Dickey and DMac).

I get it, but it still reeks of SWC teams looking down on us. The worst was when the Doak Walker Semifinalists were listed and Jamario Thomas was leading the nation in rushing and would win the rushing championship, but couldn’t even get on their SMU-led list...

UH was very good in football and basketball in the 60 and 70s, which made the SWC have to give them a look. Also, Rice was dying on the vine in Houston, so the SWC wanted to pro up that market. In DFW, you had TCU and SMU already and we got good just after UH got admitted and the privates saw how successful UH was right away, so adding us was a non-starter. What drives me insane to this day is that Hayden Fry/North Texas only limited themselves to the SWC. The Big Eight would have been the perfect conference for us to join and help grow into Texas. At the time, OU was the only team that played annually here in Texas. The Big Eight getting into DFW would’ve been massive and might have made the SWC think twice. We could have been playing OU, Nebraska, Colorado, Kansas, missouri, etc...as conference mates. But instead, we were told no, Hayden left, and we basically gave up. And that’s how you end up like this, desperately hanging on to FBS status, but well below the UHs of the world, who are miles below the teams of the Big 12.

ok

If you finish this season with wins over ACU, UTSA, MUTS, UTEP, and Rice, it looks terrible. Take away 0-9 Rice from this list and its setting you up for a real probability of falling back into being no better than the 3-4 wins per year program we have been averaging for the last 30 years...

I think you will still agree that losing to them at this point would be absolutely disappointing and would add one more level of suckitude that this place has provided to us for so many decades.

It will be very telling if we lose to an 0-9 team. It’ll basically let us know that we are going to have SL here for about 3 more years unless we pony up some serious cash. We bought out DMac for around $2 million, IIRC. The next buyout could easily be more than double if he doesn’t turn things around.

I think that used to be true, but the glorified 7-on-7 we play now at our high schools in Texas is showing how little defense matters in this state. Look at our colleges (include OU and OSU ). All of them play spread offenses, all of them have bad defenses. Big XII, AAC, CUSA, and SBC—the Texas schools can score a lot but can’t match up with physical teams that play defense in other states. A&M barely competes in the SEC, the Big XII schools almost always get pummeled by the physical teams in the Southeast, none of the AAC, SBC, or CUSA schools from here can compete week-in and week-our with the teams in the Southeast, either.

It’s yet another way we see the uphill road we have to walk to be relevant in this area, much less state or region. The SWC media legacy around here is still strong. I’ve never seen a group more interested in seeing a team succeed like they all do with SMU. It’s like they feel bad that they brought them down for cheating and they got the Death Penalty for it and never recovered for decades. Meanwhile, this same group of people thinks we are super spare to even have a football program and that we most be spat upon at ANYTHING we achieve. Seriously, Apogee is about 10x nicer than Ford Stadium. It’s one of the best G5 stadiums around. Until this piece of shit article, I’ve never heard anyone say a bad thing about Apogee, especially if they ever had to sit down at Fouts for a game, which was the worst stadium in America, bar none.

He’s just a troll—admitted one, too. He’s been banned on several other boards, as well. He spends time here making fun of us and our lack of football success. He’s the same kind of guy that would laugh at the homeless while living in a shady apartment. We have played UH 4 times in football since moving back to FBS, 3 of which have been in Denton, and not one of them have been close. They have murdered us each time, with three different head coaches. I doubt next year’s game in Houston will be any different. So why this guy comes around here to laugh at us is very telling. I’ve never, thankfully, met him, but he seems like he’d be Matt Dillon’s character in Something About Mary, based off of his posting style here.

Well, if he can play behind a line that doesn’t get him crushed over and over, his durability will increase immensely. He’s broken down this year for two reasons: this OL sucks ass and he’s taken 4 years worth of a beating because his line play has never been real solid. His marquee play against UTSA in 2017 said all you need to know about him—knew the hit was coming from the blitz straight up the guy with nobody even touching the defender, threw a perfect strike, got crushed into the turf and barely was able to get up. Mason Fine won us many games that many more “talented” QBs couldn’t have done in his career. I give SL credit for having the contact in OK to get him here when he looked at the QBs here and knew immediately that Fine as freshman from podunk Oklahoma was already way better than anyone on the roster. But I give Mason the credit for making SL look like this great young coach. I’m telling you that without Fine, SL will have a lot to prove, most likely losing out on the P5 gig because Fine will be gone.

That K-State job offer that wasn’t for SL is looking more and more like the Arizona State job offer that went away from june Jones at SMU. Let’s pray it doesn’t end the same way...

What absolutely amazes me around here is how much people act like recruiting here should be easy. If you are a TX HS coach in your late 40s or older, you saw UNT basically give up on big time football in the 80s and early 90s. If you are in your 30s and early 40s, you saw us roll out a team that had facilities and support worse than many 5A high schools and playing teams nobody cared about. And if you are in your 20s, you’ve seen UNT suffer the worst loss in modern college football history and then bounce back to being a team that is finally looking like there MIGHT be some hint of winning, but we go right back to where we were 3 years ago. For the last two classes, we have finally shown some decent talent here, mostly at skill positions, not much at all on the lines. Those linemen are the hardest to recruit and they often go to schools high on the FBS totem pole. But if stability is the key for getting in more talent, then SL staying here should help on that front. But to think it’s ever going to be easy here is simply not recognizing facts about who we have been for the last 40 years. It’s only been 5 years since we even started to not half-ass it on running a football program.

There you go with your facts and reasoning...that won’t play real well with many posters on here. SL makes $1.8 million dollars and has 4 more years to go on it after this, IIRC. Going 5-7 isn’t getting him bought out around here. We are paying $7.2 million to replace him and pay someone else $1.8 million. This isn’t a power school budget living on gigantic TV contract revenues and conference money. He will be coach here next year. And he’ll be here in 2021 if we don’t have a huge turnaround. My guess is that his last year here would be 2022 at some point if he can’t turn it around.

One of these days, I’m going to know I’m about to see the end times when we hire a staff that can do the following: 1.) Focus on both sides of the ball instead of one—not since Hayden Fry have we had a FBS coach who could do that. 2.) Develop a S&C program that actually builds up linemen and then we coach said linemen to be so badass that some of them get drafted. 3.) See a head coach here get hired away because he was so GOOD here that someone else wanted him.