untjim1995

I think the alternative black jersey would play just fine, as long as it actually looked like something other than the Hutch Youth Black Jersey that Dickey rolled out with from the local Academy. And the final score will not be close today. Kansas State will score over 50, while we will be around 14.

I wouldn't be surprised if this game gets out of hand quick. K-State usually gets off to slow starts in the season opener, but then they put it all together int he weeks ahead. They are a very good running team, as mentioned earlier, and their QB, Klein, is a beast. I just want to get out of this game without any major injuries. After this game, we will play games that will actually let us know how good or bad we really are, except for the game at home against South Alabama, which we SHOULD win easily. Everyone else on the schedule will tell us what kind of progress we are making. Unfortunately, K-State isn't one of those teams we are really able to match up with yet.

This is exactly why the pre-seson polls are ridiculous. With all of the off-season mess that Petrino caused at Arkansas, anyone could see that the Hogs were not going to be as good as they were last year. You just don't change coaches at the top, even if it is a promotion from within or to bring back a guy back for a second tour of duty like they have done with John L. Smith, and not expect a dropoff. They are just not very good, nowhere near a top ten team. Its a great win for ULM, no doubt, and they deserve a ton of credit for the victory, especially considering the lack of resources that ULM has against pretty much everyone. But don't fool yourself, even though Arkansas killed K-State in the Cotton Bowl in January, KSU would return the favor big-time this year. This is another great example as to why the BCS doesn't introduce its own polls until later in the season.

That OU game actually made me feel like we were something special, even thoguh we lost 37-3. I knew then that we would kill Baylor the next week. That OU team obliterated every other Texas team in the Big XII, including a 77-0 beatdwon of Texas A&M and a 65-13 beatdown of Texas in the Cotton Bowl.

One thing to add--Fresno State beat lots of OOC teams that were big names, yet always failed to win their conference. I actually think they proved that beating a big name school was better for your program than to win your non-AQ conference. Also, the $$$ from the AQ bodybag games are necessary for the AD to pay for the non-revenue sports here. Its just the way it is for schools who aren't in the Big 5 conferences (not the Big East). However, the smarter strategy is to play Pac-12, Big Ten, and ACC schools that aren't top five right now, but can still provide a decent paycheck. You don't play the top teams from the NFL-lite league at their places in the first month of the season and expect it to go very well. If you are going to play those type of teams, play them later in the year, like late October or November, when you might be able to pull an upset or at least give that giant a game. I've seen Troy give Georgia and LSU great games in November, and I've seen ULM beat Alabama in November. That's what I wish we would do for OOC games. If UT or OU wanted us to play them every year in OOC, that would be fine with me, if for nothing else that to gain the media and fan attention that those two opponents bring to us when we play them. Make them our permanent OOC bodybag games and flip-flop them every year. But playing games against any SEC team that is not named Vandy, Texas A&M, Mizzou, Kentucky, Mississippi State, or Ole Miss is not smart, no matter how much they pay us.

Its possible that, other than everything GL2Greatness (and all of her other usernames) has posted, this is about as ridiculous as it gets here on this board. If this is indeed your first season of following UNT football, I will inform you that in all of the body bag games we have played against Texas, OU, Alabama, Arkansas, LSU, or Clemson in the last 10 years, this is about as good as it has been. If its not your first season, then I have no idea where you have been following college football for the last 4-5 decades. Actually, its better than the others--because they paid us more than anyone else, which means that our other non-revenue sports will still get funded. Unfortunately, since this is still what is needed at North Texas to fund our AD, due to usually lackluster home opponents to draw decent crowds for, this is how business is done here. Accepting losing was not what this game was about--accepting cash while not getting killed or embarrassed was the goal. Having witnessed OU beat us 79-10, Texas beat us 65-0 and 56-7, LSU and Alabama usually keep us from scoring a TD, etc...sometimes you have to recgonize that things aren't really meant to go your way when all you are doing is prostituting yourself for $$$. Bodybag games at ranked SEC and Big XII powers aren't really geared to be anything but a re-enactment of the Lions vs Christians in the Colosseum. We survived, banked some cashed, avoided a major embarrassment, gained a bit of respect for never giving up, and moved on to a game where we get to be the Lions while the opponent gets to be the Christians. But I will tell you this, if we beat Texas Southern 41-14, I'll accept that win just like I have accpeted this outcome. Coach Mac had us play that game about as close as the talent differential would allow in front of 92k rabid fans at nighttime. At least that is my take...

You basically got exactly what you wanted!!

UTSA didn't tell their alumni and students that they should accept a demotion in the level of football like North Texas did--and then kept it that way for 12 years, while the other schools in its vicinity were still playing at a very high level in the only conference that mattered to fans and the media in this state at that time. UTSA probably used us as an example of what not to do when making this move upward. They used their market, their media, and their major facility near them all to their advantage. We literally did none of that for 80+ years. I'm more envious of the fact that their leadership recognized the advantages they had and ran with it to CUSA. It stil boggles my mind to this day that it took a poster from this board to basically organize a big enough coalition of students to pass a referendum to build a new facility that by itself has allowed us to gain admittance to CUSA. Because, make now mistake about it, if we hadn't passed the fee to build Apogee, which the AD had proved it couldn't do, and we were still playing at Fouts, our future would probably be no brighter than playing in the SBC and knowing that the FBS sickle would be culling us out again. UTSA may not gain your respect because of their easier road, but they have definitely gained my respect in avoiding the train wrecks that we made during our long road to CUSA admittance.

This result is a harbinger of what is to come for that program for the next decade (bare minimum). Penn State will be a historic name--nothing more, nothing less in 2022. Its also why the sanctions they receive will do the job they were meant to do to Penn State, without giving them the death penalty.

SMU has about 100 years of connections with Baylor and A&M--both of those schools fanbase remember conference games with SMU and view them as a worthy OOC opponent these days. SWC membership had its privileges--this is just one more example of it still helping today.

He is a great coach, there is no doubt about it. And, I think they'll do well in the Big XII, at least for the next few years. But, I agree with you KRAM. I think he has stayed at TCU because he doesn't really fit the mold of the typical big AQ head coach. He's never going to be confused for being Mack Brown or Bob Stoops, just from appearances. Patterson looks very ruffled and rattled on the sidelines, always pulling his pants over his gut and picking up his hat that has invariably been tossed while arguing with a ref. Just to reiterate, Patterson is a great coach and TCU is lucky to have him, where he has been phenomenally successful and I can see why they don't want him to ever leave. I just don't think we will ever see a guy with his "look" and his "personality" coaching at Texas, OU, Alabama, etc...anytime in the future. Those schools need the CEO-type as the HFC, while TCU is doing fine with the guy who looks like the brains behind the operation.

Do topics about the Green Brigade's Marching style and Drumlines get hi-jacked by posters commenting on the football players on the Band Forum? I wouldn't know, as I care zilch about a band at a football game, other than them being present and playing the alma mater, fight song, and the occasional song that helps get the fans fired up. At North Texas, that means I am in the minority, but at all other Texas FBS schools, the band doesn't really get talked up, unless its A&M--and their band (school) is 180 degrees different from everyone else in the state. I go to a football stadium to watch a football game. I go to a basketball game to watch hoops. And its great to have them there while the game is being played, but other than that, you probably won't see me at the SBC/CUSA Band Marching Championship Game. I get the pageantry and all that stuff, but I have never known one collegiate drum major or the guy who dots the i, but I know several football players who have made their schools a lot of money because of their legacies. I choose to go watch them and saver those memories. I can tell you this, our drumline/marching band may be the best of all time, but I never left Fouts after a huge blowout loss to some spare SBC team, thinking, "Man, I'm sure glad our band was good today. Maybe that will get us into a new stadium and we can join a conference people have heard of before. Otherwise, today's 54-2 loss would REALLY hurt..."

Only problem with this is that TCU doesn't want to play us. Their alumni like the history of the rivalry with SMU, their administration and the AD like the coverage that the SMU-TCU game brings every year, which they haven't gotten when playing conference teams from time zones away, and their fans made it clear when we played them last time in FW (and gave them a dogfight of a game) to their AD that they don't gain anything from playing North Texas, and that was when we were good. Lastly, I doubt that TCU will reach out to play us anytime soon, now that they are in the Big XII and will play Tech, Baylor, and Texas, as well as SMU each year. Its why I would follow their own footsteps and schedule teams out west for OOC games, get BYU in here, play Colorado State or Air Force again, setup a series with Fresno State or San Diego State. Those teams are good names for OOC and you can get home-and-home series with them fairly easily. SMU only has Houston in its conference from Texas, so they will entertain playing us at least for a couple of games, or until they don't need us anymore. But TCU and Baylor and Tech are in much different places today than when we used to play them 10 years ago. I doubt we will see any of them on our schedules for a long time. And to be honest, we don't need them. We have in-state conference games now (finally!!), plus we need more OOC home-and-home series against teams from the MWC, MAC, and lower-rung AQ teams.

Ohio is a home game again? I figured we were going back up there, since they beat us in the downpour here in 2008.

I feel that 5-7 is right, too, with 4-8 possible. I see wins over Texas Southern, South Alabama, Florida Atlantic and Troy. Then I think we will get another win somewhere.

To most fans, outside of the few thousand hard-core fans we had back then, the reality of that time was that North Texas only won because they played in the Sun Belt, which has always been looked at as being FCS-like. During that timeframe, our teams for 2002-2003, though, were very good--and I think they should be the ones that we hold up in high regard. That 2001 team, pulled off a miracle, but it wasn't a legitimate bowl team. The other three were legit, though, for sure. The 2002-2003 teams didn't look out of place against anyone, including Texas, TCU, Baylor, Cincy, etc...We really killed ourselves in that bowl game against Memphis or we would have been two-time champs. The real issue for UNT is that you couldn't sustain anything from those two years with the funding and support that the school gave to the program. Literally, if the students hadn't passed the stadium fee for Apogee, I truly believe that we would have been back at the FCS level in due time. We had the worst stadium in all of college football, among the very lowest in salaries for coaching staffs in college football, and played in the worst conference (perception-wise). Imagine if we played in Fouts still today? We would be in an SBC without FIU and probably MTSU, while we would be watching UTSA go to CUSA. We would hear people "celebrating" the fact that Texas State would be in our conference now, so we would be getting our oldest "rival" back. We would probably have Chico as head coach, which is no knock on him, but it would be because he wouldn't cost much. Thankfully, today, we have seen progress that has given us a huge bump in realistic hope for our future. We are funding a program that is at least in the neighborhood of where we should be today as a big university in Texas, while moving up to a conference that people have heard of and has teams that actually have been ranked before...how amazing that will be the first time an SBC team pulls that off!! Coach Mac is doing it right, building for the long-term. I actually expect that we could see a step back this year, just because the schedule is much tougher this year than last year in OOC. But we have to give him time to build this up to a place where our lines are deeper and bigger, so as to compete against CUSA teams. I think that Years 3 and 4 of Coach Mac's tenure are going to be great years for our program, even as we move to CUSA's tougher competition. That's why I agree that Coach Mac is right to shoot much higher than anything that has been "glorified" in Denton in the last 35 years.

What amazed me about FIU is that they literally won their only game of the seaon against North Texas in 2007. From that point on, they have been better and better. Cristobal has done a great job down there. To go from 1-11 in 2007 to a bowl win in 2010 is damn near miraculous in and of itself, no matter who the program is and how long they have been around. Those kind of turnarounds aren't really normal.

I think the real line is about $750k+ to North Texas!!

The lines are the hardest areas to build quality depth and to recruit to. The previous regime couldn't do it, so you are going to see depth issues rear its ugly head for at least another year.

What was great about the Pony Excess documentary was seeing how SMU literally thumbed their noses at the NCAA until it was too late. It was also very interesting that it took a huge SMU upset of #2 Texas in Austin that really got the NCAA on their trail. So many non-UT fans believe that the NCAA has always been greatly influenced by Texas, so this actually feeds that thought a little bit. But, the SWC of that day cheated so badly (except Rice, which is why they sucked), that literally nothing could surprise you when it came to recruiting. Of course, the Oklahoma schools did it, too. I still think the SEC of today probably has lots of skeletons in the closet that would resemble the SWC of yesteryear if they ever get uncovered. The biggest advantage the SEC has with this is that all of its schools are in separate states, so there is less influence from a media outlet standpoint than the SWC had. Literally, the Dallas, Houston, Ft. Worth, San Antonio, and Austin media could "out" all of these Texas programs because the markets they were serving were all big and made up of SWC alums. It couldn't ever get to the Oklahoma schools and their cheating, though. In regards to the SEC, other than Atlanta, no other media market has ever really been that big in the old SEC, and its influence over Georgia and Auburn may have been big, but it wasn't going to get anything on Tennessee, LSU, Alabama, Florida, etc...

Just to make sure that I get this straight, you are mad at "cheating and covering up breaking the law" by a college kid smoking marijuana, yet the person in your avatar did the exact same thing, admittedly, while in college and he is the POTUS who you unequivocally support for re-election. I marvel at that reasoning even more.

What Texas State has going for it over us is that SWT/TSUSM was never a Division 1 (FBS) school until now. Their alumni and students have never seen them play anyone above a SLC level opponent, other than the bodybag game. Their school's administration never told their alumni and students to enjoy going back down to Division II for over a decade, which would have killed a generation or two of fans. At North Texas, we have stronger support from alums of the 60s and 70s for athletics than we do from almost all alumni who went here in the 80s and 90s. We will probably see a nice spike in lifelong interest from the graduates of the 00s because of the 4-year SBC run and the university actually acting like athletics matter. People still don't realize just how far behind we are even today. With Apogee and CUSA, we have a chance to gain back a lot of ground, but we have to win--and it can't be against a watered-down CUSA, one that loses Southern Miss, East Carolina, Tulsa, etc...and gets rebuilt with SBC teams. We have to beat those current teams in conference AND beat a big-time ranked program one of these days. Operation WINGFILL isn't a problem if you beat LSU or Kansas State, most likely. If you want to see a big crowd for the home opener against Texas Southern, the only way to do that is to compete closely at LSU (less than 10 points). Even that might not do the trick beause the OOC opponent is so weak, but if LSU beats us like they usually do (50+ to 7), that TSU game will be lucky to draw 13k. If we lose at KSU like we have in the past (40+ to 7), the home game against Troy will be lucky to draw 15k, even on Family Weekend. The good news is that this SHOULD be the last year we have as poor a home schedule as we do, which is still the biggest draw to get folks out to watch games in Denton. I still can't believe that our home schedule at APOGEE is made up of games against Texas Southern , Troy, Louisiana-Lafayette, Arkansas State, and South Alabama. That would not have been acceptable to me if we still played in Fouts, much less in the stadium we just built for $78 million dollars. But, again, this should be the last time that we have such a poor slate of home game opponents to sell to North Texas fans.

Games at Texas, OU, LSU, Arkansas, Alabama, and Clemson have really been great nailbiters for our program in the last 10 years...I'm sure that our future road games at Florida, Georgia, and Tennessee will be no different than the results of the previous $$$ body bag games. Those OOC games against Iowa in the future look better and better all the time. We might get killed against them, too, but I'd like our chances to compete with a slow Midwest team than a fast Southern team.

I just can't see a scenario in place where Penn State will field a decent team for a long time. I doubt they'll even contend for .500 in the B1G, much less a championship. I get that you are worried that Penn State could still win big again and that their chance of that occurring should be stripped, but the cost to the Big Ten, to the Pennsylvania communities that benefit economically from Penn State games, and to those kids on the team all combine to make this level of punishment acceptable. And I disagree on the entire community being the monster here. Sandusky was the monster, Paterno and the other administrators that turned a blind eye were complicit in helping the monster so as to keep their reputations intact, but the kids at Penn State and their fans weren't monsters. If the entire community was the "monster", Paterno would still be on the sidelines becasue they wouldn't have allowed this to change anything. If this all would have come to light when it should have 10-15 years ago, Paterno and the admins would have had the same thing happen--they would have been fired and prosecuted. The kids there and the fans there would have recognized then what they do today or will soon enough--that this place is toxic because the "royalty" of Penn State turned it that way and kept it that way--not the students, alumni, or citizenry of Happy Valley, PA. They would've said then what they say today, "Now is the time for true change in the eladership of our university and athletic department and our football program". The citizens of Happy Valley, PA and the counties that surround it don't deserve to lose their jobs or lose governmental services (due to lack of taxes generated from the revenue spent during those home games) because of this, though. They'll all be hurt enough as it is by the fact that a stadium that holds over 100k probably will see its attendance plummet over the coming years once the losing really sets in. This will kill their program, its just a matter of killing via lethal injection instead of by electrocution.

I remember thinking similarly of Indiana fans when Bob Knight got fired, that their culture caused some hate to come out because of thier beloved coach being fired. But, as time went on, most Hoosier fans realized it was the right thing to do and they moved on. And IU basketball fans love their team every bit as much as Penn State football fans love their team. But I believe that time will change the mindset of those who are fighting this now. Time has a way of healing people and making them recognize their mistakes.