MeanGreenWithEnvy

My head says 38-24 SMU. My heart says 27-24 UNT.

I've got a couple of problems with this op-ed. First problem: A commencement speech isn't a free exchange of opposing ideas. It's an audience listening to a speaker, not a conversation. Second problem: I wrote earlier this week that this kind of opposition is to be expected when so-called culture war ideas are central to your platform. We'd be seeing the same kind of discussion if this was Governor Wendy Davis coming here to speak because this is the nature of partisan politics in our contemporary day and age. The culture war issues involved in our recent gubernatorial election and the culture war issues involved in our current legislative session are not sterile policy discussions taking place on a dry erase board. It's a head scratcher to me why we should expect our students who are impacted by these issues to treat them as if they're inconsequential or to treat the Governor who will sign them into law as if he's an unbiased umpire calling policy balls and strikes. If we or any other higher ed institution bring controversial speakers to university public events, we should be prepared for controversy. The bottom line for me is that controversy isn't a bad thing. It's the nature of our contemporary political system and I think the healthy way to deal with it is to embrace it. Give students an opportunity to protest by walking out or holding up a sign or whatever they choose to do and, at the same time, keep the commencement ceremony going. If you don't want to deal with controversy, don't court it by inviting a controversial speaker. If you do court controversy, welcome it and be healthy about it.

I don't think the push back is a bad thing. I think it's healthy and appropriate. I'd be writing the same thing if it was Governor Wendy Davis coming here and conservative students were pushing back against her. We live in political times that are an oil-and-water mix of deeply polarizing and disengaged. Governor Abbott just won a divisive election that featured some prominent cultural issues including abortion and gay marriage. Identity issues like these aren't tax policy or transportation funding; they're intensely personal and I don't think it's practical nor fair to expect people affected by them to ignore it. Some of our students have some hard feelings towards Governor Abbott because of his stance on these and other issues. Were I one of those students, I'd be upset about his being the commencement speaker because a commencement ceremony is supposed to be about the graduates and their accomplishments, and it's hard to see that when the speaker believes in and advocates for ideas that become official policies that remove agency from you as an individual. Like some people have posted earlier, I don't expect that Governor Abbott will show up with a partisan barn burner of a speech. I expect he'll give a great speech and that the folks who are upset about it will boycott Commencement or otherwise protest it and that's a healthy thing.

I feel confident that President Smatresk will get around to Athletics. He's had bigger fish to fry, but he's getting things done.

Setting aside the discussion about UNT, that article is a mess. "A Harvard professor found..." This smells like something the author heard second-hand in an elevator or read on a bulletin board. If he's going to make the findings of this study central to his article, CITE IT. I know CBSsports.com isn't a peer-reviewed academic journal, but c'mon.

#hit500

Thus sprach Gino: @GinoTorreta Would love to see one of my old teammates Kevin Patrick come back to the U and coach DL.

For everyone turning their noses up at ULL, much like most of C-USA at the time did when we were being discussed for promotion, can you give me one legitimate school from another conference that is a realistic add? In my mind, this is how it works. C-USA is the next step up from the Sun Belt. After one good season of football and one bad season of football, suddenly our poop doesn't stink and we're too good to rub shoulders with the likes of another Belt program? That's some serious lace curtain thinking, y'all. They're a competitive school and that makes the conference better. I'm all for it.

I'm imagining all the varieties of swing pass-bubble screen-deep throw and Swinging Gate we could run with that many QBs on the roster...

Well, at least I know I was on to something when I found that job posting. Good for Coach Wintrich! Let's hope we bring in another like him.

I was cruising the UNT job board earlier this evening and saw this posting put up on January 9, 2015 for a Director of Strength and Conditioning for North Texas Football. Isn't / Wasn't that Coach Wintrich's position?

I approach this as a research computing professional who has a network of friends and acquaintances who do similar jobs at other public universities, private universities, and several national laboratories. I don't think it's a good idea to compare ourselves to UTD in any way; they are a very different institution than we are, especially when it comes to research and grant activity. From their inception, they were a science-focused, research-driven institution. If the current mantras in software engineering and software development were around in the 60s, they would have been the ideal of what it means to build a lean product. That focus and the research successes they've enjoyed through the years attracts money. Comparing us to UTD is, in my opinion, like comparing the University of Massachusetts to MIT.* We're very different institutions with different histories, different student bodies, different strengths in our undergraduate programs, different strengths in our graduate programs, and different areas of high research activity. * If you really want to see a mind-blowing gap in endowments, check out UMass vs. MIT!

http://espn.go.com/college-football/bowls14/story/_/id/12015248/ad-barry-alvarez-coach-wisconsin-badgers-outback-bowl It's not the first time that he's stepped in to coach the team in a bowl game after the coach left. What do you think our Mean Green would look like with RV stalking the sidelines? 3 yards and a cloud of dust? Five wide? Maybe a Swinging Gate or two?

I don't want to add to the sombre nature of the thread, but I feel compelled to thanks to the thoughtfulness of so many of these comments. UNT as an institutional entity and the UNT System as a whole find themselves in exceptionally trying times right now. I know that we are here to focus on UNT athletics, but most, if not all of us are also UNT alums. I think we're getting "business as usual" from Athletics because of the bigger picture of uncertainty and challenge that UNT is facing as an institution. Hell, right now no one knows how much $ we're going to owe the state of Texas over what time period thanks to the malfeasance of the former employees of the UNT Budget Office. UNT was already in a tight jam before the Budget Office disaster. Now? I don't think anyone knows, and that should frighten all of us.

Easiest: South Alabama. Dark Horse: Liberty. Sentimental Favorite: ULL. Most Intriguing (for C-USA): Texas State. Most Intriguing (for UNT): Texas State. Would C-USA think about shifting from a 7 team East Division to a 7 team West Division by adding Texas State? If that decision was made, do they take the plunge and add a 7th team to the East, say Liberty or South Alabama? Selfishly, I'd love to see UNT, Rice, UTSA, Texas State, and UTEP all in C-USA West. I know there are several folks around GMG who don't think Texas State has "earned" the right to play in the same conference as we do, but I disagree.

It would be wonderful if we could convince some or all of Cody Clements (Jr. / QB), Jordan Howard (So. / RB), Jake Ganus (Jr. / LB), Rolan Milligan (Jr. / S), Robert Mondie (Jr. / DT), and/or Darius Williams (So. / CB) to join the Mean Green family and play out their careers here. Four of those guys are one-and-done, though, and on a team that so strongly values paying dues and earning your way onto the field, I wonder what the guys already here would think of four dudes, all accomplished, coming in for one year and presumably sliding into starting positions. I would hope the players already here to embrace them, but that's never a safe assumption to make. I don't believe we realistically have a shot at any of those guys, though. None of them have Texas ties, and given the question marks surround our recruiting, I don't see much of a shot that we could land any of them. As long as we're dreaming, I wonder if you could pitch all these guys or some other combination of guys to join the Mean Green family as a group? More realistically, they have a redshirt freshman #2 QB from Houston. I feel horrible for all the Blazer players. They turned things around and they're still getting screwed because of circumstances beyond their control. There's too much of that going on these days, both inside college football and in life in general.

I was talking with my parents about that game last night as part of a bigger discussion about where we find ourselves after this season. As losses go, that KState game was a fun loss; maybe a better way to put it is that it was entertaining. I went to the Baylor-Tech game Saturday and pulled for Tech, and that was an entertaining loss. Non-diehard fans will stomach a losing record as long as the losses are somehow interesting; non-diehard fans won't stomach a losing record when the losses are as formulaic and grinding as what we suffered this season.

Impetuous thread! Who wants to comment forever?! DIIIIIIIIVE! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q5HfDIwNI8w

If you want to boost attendance while also getting some wins, bring in Texas teams: Stephen F., Sam, Texas State. We're not going to get a UT or OU or anyone else of that nature to come to Denton any time soon, plus if they did, they'd pancake us. My gut feeling is that the optimal program to try to get a home-and-home with would be Texas Tech. We would get loads of butts in seats for that game and, hopefully, it could be a competitive game; we could also likely get a lot of Mean Green fans to travel to Lubbock for that game.

I am embracing optimism and ignoring my measured skepticism. UNT - 31 UTEP - 28

I didn't expect to beat FAU, much less dominate them. I don't expect any other victories in the remaining games, but I'm always happy to be pleasantly surprised.

The Convention Center is a great example of what, in my opinion, is a fundamental problem with a lot of attitudes on this board toward the city of Denton with regards to what the city does or doesn't do for the university and what the university does and doesn't do for the city. At no point in time did UNT's leadership put any skin in this game. NO. POINT. IN. TIME. I know that the city council reached out to UNT's leadership to ask for their support, even if it was nothing more than vocal support. The answer to that was crickets. UNT in general and UNT Athletics in particular were going to be huge beneficiaries of this project and yet they couldn't bother getting behind it beyond a press release or two. Regardless, to more than a few of you here, this is all the city's fault. It's merely the latest in a long line of perceived slights and let downs. If you want to be angry at an institution and individuals who could have made a difference in moving public opinion on this, be angry at UNT's leadership and their deafening silence on the subject.

I'd caution against framing this as a library fee vs. athletics fee discussion, too. That's a guaranteed loser for an athletic fee increase.

Something else that would factor into the discussion right now is the overall price tag of a college education. It's going to be almost impossible to get any kind of fee raised right now what with tuition what it is and the likelihood that tuition will need to be raised further.

Wouldn't surprise me at all. Just because the position is a mess this season doesn't mean it will be going forward. I'd ten times rather focus recruiting and scholarship offers on the defensive side of the ball. Unless we're planning on going early-90s-Oilers on C-USA and putting it all on the offense, we've got to stop conference opponents and create conference turnovers.