meangreenJW

Brint Ryan and Neal Smatresk hired Seth. Don’t mean to start the whole RV involvement debate but those in the know say Brint and Neal called the final shot. So I’d bet they drive the strategy here. It’s risk/reward. Are we assuming a risk, yes. But so far, it’s paid off (people made this same point last year when SL got a raise). My guess is the raise was part reward to Seth, part warning shot to TT and KU that hey we’ll play ball.

Most sports venues work this way. Been to a Cowboys game? Every nook and cranny is some kind of different "premium." The reality is we are trying to play with the big boys now in many regards. That takes money. The cabanas last year, now these. I like my regular seat on the 35 (would prefer 50 but can't afford it) but kudos to the department for trying to find every way possible to make money. They added the fancy seats in the old media seating at basketball last year too. It's about capturing dollars. They don't need 20,000 people to like those seats. They only need two dozen. Last I heard they were almost sold out of club seats so they need something premium to offer I'm sure.

Tulsa has been in the tank since he got there so I that may be the only reason he is still around

There really aren't way to describe the difference between the old and new. Huge improvement.

Overall lateral move IMO. But he will be their top assistant. Ross Hodge is ours. He and Jareem were kind of tied (at least in salary they were). So theoretically puts him one step closer to the chair.

For some of these same reasons, I never really understood McCarney extension. At his age and health, this was highly likely to be his last stop. Reward him with a modest extension but what we did was more like you'd do with someone you were really concerned would leave. Perhaps someone had called on him. Maybe he had Jimmy Sexton as an agent. But I never really understood a contract that was near the top of CUSA at the time.

Devil is in the details but I trust current admin. Many thought the extension of Littrell was premature. Reality is that these young coaches have buyouts that decline each year of the contracts (both ways). So extensions increase our liability if we had to fire them but also increase what it cost power 5 schools to come hire them. With Jalie, McCasland and Seth we have three young coaches that probably will draw attention. Hard to imagine any of the three getting fired in the next 2-3 years. I agree with WB and NS that the smart money is to keep rolling them over and keep the buyout for them to leave high. The probability of that is higher than the probability of having to pay out their salary because we fired them.

This is being made a complicated debate when to me it is quite simple. Should UNT have baseball at some point? Yes. Will it cost money? Of course. Every single sport at UNT loses money (and at most non power 5s). We lose a crap ton on football. But there should be ZERO hurry to add baseball right now. we've spent the last 5 decades not investing in athletics. To dilute resources after only two years of being serious about competing would be really foolish in my humble opinion. Spend another 3-5 years getting current programs shored up. Then talk about baseball. And for the record I'm a huge baseball fan and will buy season tickets. I just don't think doing it today makes any sense. We are on our way as a dept, but we dang sure haven't arrived.

Agreed. Despised at Pitt. Fired by Arkansas. Can't see this helping KU's search.

Agreed. This seems like a small, simple step yet one we haven't taken for years. These little things on the field, off the field, all over the dept are adding up and building momentum. Really fun to watch.

I don't think athletics has any say. Same for any campus. Other than allotting "X" amount of time to the band, it's all in the music school. But I'm sure athletics does receive a lot of the feedback and hopefully they share it with CoM

Agree. Even the new Embassy Suites. It's a vast improvement over any other hotels and has to make an impression on recruits.

I hear you. my comment is more directed toward it being about every damn recruit, not our highest profile commit. I kinda get it here. But he does it for every single recruit that commits elsewhere and held or supposedly held a UNT offer.

I agree. I'm usually not critical of BV but really Brett? I'm fairly active on social media. Follow a handful of beat writers and CUSA programs. Vito is the only one that announces every kid that goes somewhere else or gets an offer from somewhere else. It's like are you that hungry for attention? What is the deal?

I disagree but here's why. If it was take Kansas or stay at UNT, perhaps he leaves. But if it's take Kansas or stay at UNT with Mason Fine as your QB and wait for good job that pays as much or more than KU and you can actually win, he waits. I'm confident the latter is the case. SL is about 40. So probably at least 15 more years to coach. Every coach that has gone to KU has been fired. He knows that.

I'm with you. I'm middle of the road politically probably leaning left. Certainly in the minority in Texas. But I despise the ole hire a female to coach females stuff. I have 3 daughters. Two played sports and they never cared about the gender of their coach. Never came up one time. What I want is the best coach available who will teach kids about sports and life at my alma mater. If there's a tie, hire a female. Otherwise hire the best coach.

We differ here. With OU assistants making triple what our previous HC made, it would have taken drastic resources to even have a chance at an OU assistant. And while I want us to be good in everything, spending that kind of money on one non-revenue sport doesn't make good business sense to me. I understand a differing opinion, but that's mine understanding we may be trying to keep a football coach in December getting offers from Texas Tech and Kansas and we have limited resources.

And we have some covered seats. I also like the "curb appeal" of ours better. But don't like the loss in environment with the track as a barrier.

There's some miserable folks on this board man. They are in the minority but make up for it with record level negativity.

A) 1,000 seats doesn't mean 1,000 capacity. Literally infinite standing room, grass space tickets. B) I'm sure they would like to have it bigger or separate. Money isn't infinite and candidly the athletic department can only spend so much on sports like track/soccer. I honestly have a hard time with spending $14 million on anything other than football right now. C) Stadiums like this are easily expandable. I'm sure if the need is demonstrated, it will be on the list. If money was spent on locker rooms, meeting rooms, coaches offices, etc. that help us get better players then I like that call. Get that wrong now and it's much more expensive to change.

Huh? Prices did go up. But home schedules are done for several years. We have at least six every year and a couple years will have seven so the less games claim is blatantly false. As is the claim schedule is worse. in the next decade we will have home games against Houston, Cal and Texas Tech. Get you on being upset your tickets went up. The rest of this isn't true. And by the way at the Rockwall caravan WB mentioned club seat sales hit an all time high last year and they expect to sell out this year.

Then chances are we were gonna lose you anyway. I've heard of fickle fans but damn

You constantly push the rankings (which I personally don't think are all that valuable) but yet as of this moment we are 2nd in 247 rankings. How can that be no momentum? Have you ever tried antidepressants?

So you seriously think that low MGSF membership numbers are because Liberty was subbed for Army? You can't really be serious on that. It's been this way for decades and is more to do with a heavy commuter culture, historically underperforming (win/loss) program and a general lack of brand pride in UNT. It didn't take overnight to get there and it won't be fixed overnight. Winning helps, incentive programs like the one above could help. Making everyone aware of MGSF, what it is and what the benefits are helps. Seems like the Ath Dept is doing a better job at everyone of those. Let's see how the numbers trend over time. We all know you love to play Army and despise Liberty. If officials promise to not let Falwell deliver a pregame prayer, can you move on?

I'm sure they won't say it but no way the Ath Dep like the 8:30 Thursday slot. But CBSSN owns our tier I rights. They dictate the date and time. Which isn't just CUSA, the Pac 12 bitches about their start times non-stop. My guess is as our program gets better, this will happen more often.