DentonLurker

I think these games probably had the fans in mind years ago, but I think they have morphed into a practice to get the players a little bit of love from some fans and end spring ball with a practice that’s not “just like yesterday.” That said, I like the things the athletic department is doing to make it more fan friendly like the youth clinic, the reception on the club level, discounts at concessions and team store, making it an athletic village wide event with the other sports having stuff going on. Should be a fun time to get your Mean Green fix.

I’d also like to see them shorten TV timeouts, but $’s probably won’t let that happen.

As long as we get to see 1’s vs 1’s and multiple QBs going with the 1’s), I don’t care how they structure it.

You do realize that their whole schtick is that they make fun of ridiculous things people post on message boards, right?

It’s not being live-streamed.

Men’s Track and Cross Country

I don’t really see how that matters. There are so many variables that play into a department’s budget. Are the other sports funded in the same ways as ours? What about coaches salaries? Do they pay the same? Do the other schools have a stadium debt payment in their budget? At the end of the day, it comes down to- how would we pay for baseball? We need millions upfront for a stadium and an additional $1.5-2M a year in operational funds to get Baseball moving at the average AAC rate. How does UNT find those dollars? And are those dollars we want to commit to Baseball instead of doing other projects on our list? You have to either cut costs or find new money. Those are your choices.

I sure hope we are striving for more than UTSA’s dinky little ballpark. If you’re picking a Texas school that we could look at for Baseball, I hope we go to San Marcos. Bobcat Ballpark seats 2,500 and looks a lot more like a ballpark fans would actually want to go to. Not to mention they have a much better Baseball program than UTSA.

From the best I can tell, this gets you around $650k. Looks like it is around $1.2M As of 2019, the average baseball budget in the AAC was around $1.6M. What else are you cutting?

Curious what other sports you’d drop? My guess is the entire cross country budget might cover 1 set of baseball uniforms.

UNT Athletics Strategic Plan

I think he was talking about SMU

I’m not expecting that things will be absolutely perfect before Baseball, but we have to address the AC being undersized for our current needs (especially if we are going to add sports), a new basketball arena is a necessity for this program, and our general lack of financial support makes me wonder where the millions for a stadium and $1.5-3M per year to fund the program is going to come from.

My point is the argument lacks teeth. No one is disputing that being in DFW would be good when it comes to starting and running a baseball program. The arguments I’ve seen and heard about baseball center around where it lands on our priority list. From a facilities perspective, it’s below AC expansion, new basketball facility with state of the art amenities and practice facilities, etc. in my opinion. I think we still need to show a lot of commitment to current sports before we start talking about adding more. From a general athletics support perspective, we need to sell a lot more season tickets across the board and bring in a lot more donations before we start adding more sports. I’m all for adding baseball when the time is right. We just have some things we need to get right before we go there.

But it’s not an argument at all, much less a good one. I’ve seen lots of reasons to not add Baseball yet at UNT and I’ve never seen anyone say it shouldn’t be added because UNT is in DFW.

The good argument is that UNT is in DFW?

Just to make sure I understand your idea- you’re proposing that we would recruit an athlete by saying they should come to UNT so they can get to Georgia?

I like the black uniforms. I think they’re a real clean, nice look.

I would expect WKU to keep falling back. Rd1 seems to be a bit of an anomaly for them. Right now, we just need to keep playing our game and we should win this thing.

I wish we could clone Mike Akers and have him coach the men's team too.

I’d ask the city to expand Bonnie Brae past the stadium before I’d even pick up the phone. That’s the root of most of our football traffic and parking issues. If they can’t get that done, I’m not even having a conversation about anything.

I don’t get the constant propping up of Cross. His teams have always been fine, not great. His coaching record is slightly above .500. I’m not willing to chalk all of that up to facilities.

That doesn’t change the fact that looking at his entire career, a betting man would put their money on him finishing 3rd to 5th in conference any given year. It’s also worth noting he followed up that regular season title finishing 4th the next year. And finished tied for 4th/5th in conference each of those years. This is a reflection of the hires they made after Cross. It doesn’t mean they “screwed the pooch” for aspiring for more and choosing to move on from him.

But did they? His norm seems to be finishing between 3rd and 5th in conference. I hope that doesn’t really wow anyone.

For those of you hating on Lubbock, you do realize they have fan support and $’s that we could only dream about, right?