untjim1995

I give the administration a thumbs up for this idea. If I am gonna complain about the things I don't like, I have to give them credit when they get something right--and this is a great idea!!

Its hard to look at that list of talent and realize we went 2-9 that season. Thats when the wheels fell off--home against Tulsa.

I truly believe that CUSA, even as it exists today, is still the best conference we have been a part of for football since the MVC days, maybe even the best of alltime. Is it perfect? Of course not. But being in a conference people have heard of, with teams that people have heard of in Texas and actually can get people to come and watch them are waaayyyyy ahead of anything this place has seen in the last 50 years. Rice, UTEP, La Tech, Southern Miss, and now, even UTSA, are just light years ahead of the SBC, Big West, and the independent days of the 70s and early 80s (not even counting the SLC 1-aa debacle). I can't even imagine how good it would've been if CUSA still had Tulsa, Tulane, SMU, UH, Memphis. UCF, and East Carolina along with Marshall, USM, La Tech, us, Rice, Utep, UTSA, UAB, and MUTS. That would've been a strong 16 team collection of southern based programs and markets, with a great mix of public and private schools. But egos are just too big with this stuff and once you are stuck too low on the totem pole, it seems you pretty much get stuck there in perpetutiy by those above you, which is understandable to some degree. How great though would it be to have small market teams with solid histories in Marshall, ECU, USM, and La Tech, add in the private schools that get you the NO, Dallas, Houston, and Tulsa markets to some degree, get coverage in Orlando and Nashville from UCF and MUTS, then add in UNT, UH, UTSA, and UTEP to get coverage in every big market in the biggest state in the conference, and then throw in markets and basketball tradtion in Memphis and Birmingham. It makes so much sense that it would never happen.

I am not the one who makes it an either-or thing...that is all the university has done toward athletics for almost our entire existence. See SilverEagle's posts about the history of our Presidents and Chancellors and they way they viewed athletics. Again, name me the one school in this state that chooses an art or music college as their main fundraiser over athletics. Name just one. Then ask yourself if we have a lower endowment than those schools. And you will never know how much we profitted off that bowl game--just from getting DFW alums reconnected to our program that haven't dared to go up I-35 to watch a game in decades, but felt enough pride to go watch us in a bowl game against freaking UNLV. Who knows the benefit it has potential enrollment or future donations, either. The point is that the we are choosing to fund much more fully two areas that cannot ever come as close as athletics CAN to being a huge fundraiser to the entire university. Athletic Departments give dollars back to the university at schools where they are profits. And according to that report that Harry posted earlier, we are in that group of schools that made over a million dollars from athletics last year. Sorry, but the endowments and fundraising at even lesser state schools in Texas that aren't Tier One just blow us away--UH, Tech, UTD, UTEP, etc...what do they focus on that we don't? I bet you can figure you out...

So are Tech, UH, and UTD. Two of those three pay a lot more attention to revenue athletics than we do, plus they have huge endowment advantages over us. UTD has the research and engineering advantages because they don't have DIvision 1 athletics. I just ask this simple question of four similar universities as ours in Texas. Texas Tech, Houston, UTSA, and UTEP--which one of these schools would drop athletic spending as much as we did? None is the correct answer, but if you want to argue that one of them would, then ask yourself if that is smart for funding. Texas freaking Tech has gotten to where they are SOLELY because of the emphasis they have placed on athletics, specifically on the relationship they cultivated with their alums and with the big player in this state (i.e. Texas). Their academic record is very poor as compared to most other AQ schools, yet they will have a place at the AQ table, almost certainly, due to their fan following. UH is a better academic school--by far, actually--than Tech, but even they had to overcome the stigma of being a "commuter school" in a big city. Yet, even with getting bitch-slapped out of the AQ big time all those years ago with SMU, TCU, and Rice, they have continued to fund their program at a high non-AQ level. Why? I mean, if its gonna keep you from Tier 1 status, who would do this? NO, the correct answer is that when its been done right, even here in Denton in the Fry years and in this past season, fans come out in droves to show their support. UH is moving out of Robertson Stadium because of their successes under Briles and Sumlin. UTSA is moving upward FAST, all because they looked at the obvious advantages of their situation in San Antonio and started funding FBS football. Now look at them, getting big crowds, a nice media following, and the full attention of other conferences and AQ teams who want to play them, both home and away. Here's a crazy reality to the athletic-haters in Denton: in other college towns, when they win big time at a revenue sport that people want to watch, funding goes up for everything!! So does enrollment, if you want it to go up (see TCU in 2011 and Baylor now). Athletics is a true window to the university--it deserves as much attention and funding as you can feasibly feed it. Billboards and ads proclaiming you as a great value doesn't do it, in case anyone hasn't figured out why our endowment is still woefully small for a school our size that has only been around for almost 125 years. Obviously, if this is wrong, I am not getting it, which may say more about me than I care to admit, but I really don't get why we would cut athletics that much in 2015. Its almost begging Dan McCarney to leave at the first opportunity that he gets. And, believe me, if we have another bowl season here this season, a school like Kansas would be foolish not to go hard after him as their next head coach. It is as close to a no-brainer as you can get in this situation, for both parties. And just like we did in 1978 after Hayden Fry left, we will again have no one else to blame for our ineptness at understanding college athletics at the FBS level. Its just disgusting.

Interesting that the college of music sees a drop of 2.8%, while the college of arts and sciences gets a small increase to their budget. Yet athletics loses 18.7% of its budget in 2015. Music and Arts will always be the window to the University of North Texas, according to the BOR and Administration. There isn't one other university in Texas at the FBS level that would have cut athletics by this much. And this is why you have such a disconnect between the university and its alums. Every other school uses football as their main advertising arm to connect to their alumni and their community. We use music and arts. I'm sorry, but 40k people gathered to watch a UNT Football team play in a bowl game against UNLV on January 1st. That ain't the area to cut--unless you think that you can host a concert or recital or exhibit that can draw even close to that same amount of people and dollars. I may get tons of-1s because music and arts matters so much around here, but I, like a lot of guys, like football and basketball. Music and arts will never get my interest or my dollars ahead of athletics at UNT. There are a lot more UNT graduates like me from the past 35 years who have been so alienated by the lack of attention to athletics that we have paid that they simply have chosen to just follow UT, A&M, Tech, OU, as well as all the pro teams to choose from in DFW. That "opportunity" cost is why we are where we are now, still being on the outside of the major players in college athletics. And that's a damn shame, in my opinion.

Whoops. Shocking that you don't know what the hell you are talking about...again.

The team to get down this way for a game at JerryWorld or the Cotton Bowl is simple--Nebraska. They need Texas games again now that they are in the B1G and they would bring a huge crowd that Apogee couldn't handle.That is who you target. Otherwise, its a team like LSU for a big neutral-site game in the Metroplex. Another team that could benefit from playing down here, but Apogee would work fine for is Mizzou. Iowa would fit that bill, too, but that is gonna open up a can of worms not worth opening anymore. The other teams to go after for a series seems really obvious, too--Okie State, Kansas, and Kansas State. They could use another game in the Metroplex to offset the years they don't play TCU and Apogee could hold that crowd. Games against Oklahoma, Texas, Tech, Baylor, Arkansas, or A&M are not really feasbile as opponenets in the area for us since they play up here every season. I don't think any Pac teams would travel that well here. BYU would, though, which is another game I'd go after really hard, since they are an independent now. I think the potential of getting a great draw for a game against teams like UNC, Va Tech, UVa, Ga Tech, and NC State is better than a lot of people would guess, as a lot of folks from Atlanta, Charlotte, Raleigh, and the state of Virginia live here in the DFW market now. No matter what, any of these teams beat the hell out of anyone we have played at Apogee or have scheduled to play in OOC so far, including UH, Indiana, SMU, and Army, even though each of those teams is a fine OOC opponent. I just think making SMU your crown jewel to sell to your fanbase as a marquee OOC game for years to come is really just sad.

No offense, but this first set of rivals isn't even close to being true. Hell, the best rivalry setup we could have had was with Texas Tech and they bolted after we won 2 of the 5 games in the series and literally fumbled away a win in the final game in Lubbock of that series or we would have won all three games played at Jones Stadium. They quickly replaced us with SMU for the next decade on their schedule and never lost to them. Now, they get TCU in FW and Baylor int he Metroplex every year. But the three private schools you mentioned don't give a rats ass about us. Maybe SMU will care after we start this upcoming series, but I fear them buying it out if we beat them a couple of times. Both SMU fans and TCU fans have complained loudly in the past about playing us because they feel like its a lose-lose situation for them. Baylor feels the same way. The historical rivals are really just Texas State and NMSU, neither of whom our fans give a rats ass about. To me, MUTS, was the only team I looked forward to playing in the early SBC years, but that rivalry never really developed because neither team was ever really good at the same time. Now, MUTS is a nice team to continue playing year-in and year-out in CUSA, similar to playing Marshall. BUt the real possible CUSA rivals are those teams in our division--teams like UTSA, UTEP, Rice, La Tech, and USM. UTSA and La Tech are the two that really stand out to me as the teams that could easily turn into decent rivalry games, due to proximity, recruiting, and being state schools.

I think this is the best plan for a conference like ours. HoD Bowl and NO Bowl will always be attractive choices for UNT, UTSA, Rice, and La Tech. UTEP will ove being able to go to the NM Bowl Bowl or HoD Bowl. F_Us will love Boca Raton Bowl. No one will ever want to go to The Hawaii Bowl or The Bahamas Bowl, just because of cost and length of travel time.But, make not mistake, for UNT, the HOD Bowl, NO BOwl, and NM Bowl are nice places for a school like ours to end a season in a bowl--almost every season that ends in New Orleans, Alburquerque, or Dallas will be great years...

I had dinner with a former USM football player on Saturday night. He said directly that he wishes that USM had also left CUSA for the AAC. I told him I didn't blame him for feeling that way, especially since they lost a lot of their rivals over the years to the AAC and beyond. But in the end, I told him the reality ofd why CUSA is the place USM will always be--Hattiesburg, Mississippi. Conference affiliation is all about TV markets and national appeal. USM has zero on the first and a dying amount on the second part. The teams in CUSA that will have options of moving upward into the AAC or MWC, if they are even wanted in the future after the P5 split off, are as follows: UTSA, F_U, UTEP, UNT, Rice, MUTS, and Charlotte. UAB and Old Dominion are maybes on this list, because they have decent TV markets and good basketball resumes.. But USM, La Tech, Western Kentucky, and Marshall are pretty much stuck in CUSA--they provide no TV markets at all. Even with a little national appeal, there isn't enough there to make up the difference that their small markets provide. I still believe that the MWC will come back into Texas and get UTEP, UTSA, and some combination of UH, Rice, SMU, and UNT to get to 16 teams. When that happens, the AAC will replace any Texas teams that leave with the other school available in that market (SMU leaves, replaced by UNT or UH leaves, replaced by Rice). CUSA will replace anyone who leaves from Texas with Texas State and ULL.

Buying home games against Texas Southern, Idaho, and Nicholls State wasn't what I thought we would have to do when we came out with plans to build Apogee. Surely, if we had to buy these guys for an extra game, it would be because we were playing Iowa or Tennessee at home as at least a 2 for 1 series, so playing a bought game against them might balance it out. Instead, we gave our fans who made a financial commitment to this place Texas Southern as the lone OOC game in 2012. We got Idaho and Ball State as home OOC games last year. This year, we get SMU and Nicholls State. Next year, as of now, we get Army as the only home OOC game. That is just disappointing, to put it mildly. Again, if its just because we have to keep playing on the road to pay the bills and we cannot afford anything more, just tell us. We all get the situation as it exists in Denton--getting the athletic fee passed just to build Apogee was a tough sell and paying less than half what other in-state schools like Texas State, UTSA, and Lamar pay for a sports fee just illuminates the tough sell of athletics at our university. None of us will freak out if RV just came out and said, "Look, we are poor. The BOR doesn't want to pay anything more toward athletics than they have to because its not important to the university, so this is the only way we can pay for an athletic department until we start drawing more $$$ from alumni and fans through donations and attendance." We would not be thrilled, but we would understand the sitaution better than we do right now. Because right now, it just makes the AD look incompetent and it makes the BOR look like they are just rewarding someone who does their bidding.

Drinking beer is about the only thing left to try at The Super Pit to improve the fan experience with Bumford in charge...

The Iowa games are tough to swallow just because we were told that building Apogee would bring in better known teams from AQ leagues for OOC games, teams like IOWA!! Rice does have the SWC advantage, though, along with capacity flexibiilty and stadium possibilities we don't have, so them getting those opponenets while they are good doesn't surprise me. Now, if La Tech or Texas State start playing big teams in their backyards, while we act like playing SMU and Army at home is some kind of coup, I don't know what to say. Already, the 2015 season will have 5 home games and 1 game that will be sold as a pseudo-home game opportunity (at SMU), so as to pay the bills. I don't even have a problem if that is why we have to continue to schedule the way we do (poors have to do that), just come out and say it. Tell us that an extra road game at an AQ team pays for soccer, volleyball, track, cross country, etc..,maybe then, now that we have stronger facilites and conference affiliation, the alumni will step up to donate even more to help the situation. If the alumni won't stepup to help this, then you really need to ask yourself as a university if we should be playing football at this level and why we even built a stadium as nice as Apogee. I think RV is bad at scheduling because the BOR makes it clear, still, that spending inordinate figures on football is not acceptable. Playing non-conference games at AQ home stadiums helps to make sure that spending doesn't get too out of hand in the minds of the BOR and administration. I've said it before, but I feel like we are giving about 3/4 effort when it comes to running an athletic department, which beats the hell out of the quarter-ass we used to give. But that final 1/4 of effort we need to employ at UNT in regards to athletic spending is to buy out contracts of people who aren't getting the job done before there is just a year or less left on the contract and it is also about paying more to get more recognizable teams here in Denton for games at Apogee and at The Super Pit. When we get to that point, as well as to increase the sports fee to a level that matches that of power programs like Texas State and UTSA, then I'll fully recognize that UNT has finally begun giving a full effort towards athletics like our other FBS peers in the state and region.

That anti-trust lawsuit won't change anything. The P5 controls the legislatures in the statehouse and in DC and the networks won't let them get screwed. The separation just needs to happen. The best thing that can happen is let these semi-pro schools play against each other and prove to be nothing more than an athlete-mill, that education isn't the main focus. Yes, you can pick an upset or two each year between p5 teams against non-AQs and FCS schools, but no one believes that is close to the norm. The norm is getting pounded by 5+ TDS and getting a huge check. I'd rather the P5 just play themselves and make the Texas Techs and Mississippi States of the world feel what its like to go 4-8 or 5-7 every year without their cream puff non-conference schedules against non-P5 schools at home usually. See how that makes their alumni and students feel when they cannot even build a winning record because they have to actually play teams each week that are on even footing with them on a regular basis. For us at North Texas, we have no one to blame but ourselves when this all occurs. We tried hard in the 70s under Fry to gain admission to the SWC, to be included, as we should have been allowed to do, in the best conference in the country at the time. But once we got rejected, we did what anti-athletic schools do--we quit. Dropping to 1-AA in 1982, and allowing that to be the status for 12 freaking years, is why we are where we are today. We moved up in 1995, but we weren't ready for it, budget-wise, so we basically whored ourselves out to ANYONE who would host us in an OOC game, just to pay bills. We did that for the first 5 years back up in 1-A, basically telling everyone that we were still smalltime. No one in CUSA would even touch us, so we got stuck in the SBC for 13 seasons, a league that screamed smalltime. It is my belief that if we hadn't quit 1-A ball (or at least moved up ASAP after getting booted down in 1982), we would have been in CUSA at a bare minimum when the SWC had its breakup and that conference formed with UH, Tulane, Cincy, Louisville, Memphis, UAB, Southern Miss, and East Carolina. Hell, we could have been even higher than that if we had actually TRIED to win and fund a program in the years from 1979-2010. In all honesty, in the late 70s and early 80s, if our leadership hadn't completely bailed on athletics and actually decided to do whatever it took to move upwards into a conference, I'm convinced the old Big Eight might have been willing to add a DFW presence into their league if we had continued to win at the clip we were going at in the Fry years. And who knows if the SWC basically would've jumped in and said, no way we are letting the Big Eight get a foothold in our territory and reversed course on allowing us into their club. No matter what, though, we made it easy on everyone by just giving up. When this future separation happens with the current P5 conferences, we need to look no further than down I-35W at what we could have done by emulating what TCU did--basically just winning in their leagues and increasing their budget to stay competititve. They have a ton of cash, no doubt, but we have a ton of people. And we could have easily used those numbers to our advantage, just by levying a student fee for athletics long before we built a stadium to replace the toilet we played in for about 30 years too long. We made our bed the same way for decades, which is why we have to lie in it today, even if we have decided to make it a different way over the last 10 years or so...

This. Bowl win in front of at least 35k Mean Green fans, whipping conference champion Rice on national TV at home (Apogee), and giving Georgia all they could handle in Athens with Coach Mac vs best season under Dodge was 2-10, lost just about every way imaginable and possible in his 3+ years here, and lost to Rice 77-20 (and they called off the dogs that day or it would've easily been 100+ to 20), while getting prison-raped against all AQ opponents, and our games in Denton were played at Fouts, the biggest toilet of a stadium in the entire country for FBS level football. Yes, RV has been the AD the whoe time, and yes he hired Shanice Stephens, Todd Dodge, and Bumford, so that is a connecting point to everything between then and now. But Oldguy is dead-on. This place is light years ahead of where it was at the end of the 2010 season.

I think UTEP and La Tech have just as good a chance at being our rivals as UTSA and Rice do. It just depends on who is winning and who has fans that start to loathe the other school(s). Right now, UTSA is high on the loathe list, amongst conference foes. We all have SMU high on that list for a lot of reasons, but their fanbase doesn't care one iota about us right now--that changes if we start beating them in this upcoming series. I'm still not convinced that SMU won't buy this series out for down the road if they start losing to us and it costs them bowl bids, like it did back in 2006. I guess we'll see, but losses to us hurt them waaaayyyy more than they do the other way around, just from a local media and recruiting perspective. That SWC mentality still keeps the Ponies well-regarded in this area, even if its been almost 20 years since they last played an SWC game.

Just to clarify here--the P5 do the telling and the G5 do the listenting, which is how this has worked itself out. The serfdom of the G5 has always worked that way for decades. I can promise you that the P5 will pull away, but it will be interesting to see if they will throw the G5 a bone for OOC scheduling. I'm completely against ever playing any p5 school ever again if they completely separate, but money talks pretty loudly in these situations, especially if they give you millions of dollars to play them and it covers a ton of your non-revenue sports budgets for the year.

I don't care if they own a stadium or play on a parking lot--if we have to play them every year and compete against them in recruiting, we need to beat them. SMU never played in a conference with us--they have ALWAYS been higher up the foodchain in college sports. UTSA and UNT have played in the same conference in all sports, except football, in the SLC fiasco years. Now, we play in the same conference--until they get invited away in the future to go to the AAC because SMU and UH want that presence in the state in a market that don't share or up to the MWC as part of another Texas move back out west with some combo of schools located in El Paso, San Antonio, Houston, and DFW. We have been no rival to SMU or TCU because they have been able to largely ignore us for decades. UTSA is a whole other subject. I know you hate them and don't respect them, so this is going nowhere. But to the rest of the GMG.com, I truly believe they are the in-state rivalry we have wanted for years. And they have so many more built-in advantages that we have never had, which really stacks the deck against us. From having their own media market that wants to cover them and prop them up, to having a civic pride angle that we have never had, and having no losing seasons and a complete apathy from the university's alumni and leaders to overcome, make no mistake, UTSA got to start this 100 yard dash about 25 yards ahead of where we did when we came back up from the i-aa purgatory years in 1995. That may irritate all of us that they got to start on second base and that they think they hit a double, but its really more of a reality check for us on how poorly North Texas treated athletics for decades and why we will be sitting left behind when the P5 separates here in the upcoming years.

When we have played SMU on even terms, we have been equal in record. We split the last two games in the series, they beat us 2 out of 3 when they came back from the death penalty with about 30 more scholarships to offer than we had by the last time we played them. And we did beat them at Texas Stadium in the Fry years before they started blatantly buying players.

I don't blame him for being beaten down after experiencing what he did in his time here. He was beaten to a pulp by a system that focused on everything but linemen. Sure, that offense got lots of numbers between the 20s and in games where we weren't even in it. But when we needed to move the chains or score in the red zone while the game was competitive (usually in the first quarter), having weak offensive linemen play just got the QB killed. Vizza was physically as tough as anyone who has played that position at UNT, but mentally, he was a pampered kid from Alamo Heights with what appears to be a dad who bordered on being a helicopter parent. Playing at Fouts, in the SBC, with Todd Dodge's HS system in play, and having Riley waiting in the wings would have been too much for anyone with his background to overcome.

They should celebrate it--it was their signature win of their program, up to this point. Plus, if they do it again--and I figure they will since they play us at home in SA--its a huge advantage in recruiting for Coker and the Roadrunners. I hate them, too, but I knew this was going to turn into a rivalry the moment they moved up to CUSA with us, instead of moving to the SBC with Texas State.

Vizza was very talented, no doubt. But, mentally, I wouldn't want him coaching my kid--when the going got tough, he quit the team and basically quit the sport. Riley, for all his faults, was never a quitter. Even after his dad got fired, Riley gave it all on the field, while never publically disparaging anyone at UNT about the handling of the situation. Heck, he even went to McNeese State just to finish out his career. Vizza left to go to A&M, where he never even made the team, IIRC. Oh well--water under the bridge now.

As much as I wish that was possible, this thing will probably break down and split within a couple of years. There probably isn't any non-AQ teams that are going to get included in this move upward, unless its a UConn or Cincy from the AAC.

Thinking a trade for Larry Brown for Tony Benford is a bad idea is just dumb. Sorry, Larry Brown is a HOF coach, has won an NBA Championship, won an NCAA Championship, and is one of the most recognizable names in sports. Tony Benford, in two years, has shown an amazing ability to trash an entire roster of the most talented players the university has ever had. Larry Brown, in two years, has absolutely buried everything that Tony Benford has done in two years. Its not close...