UNT18Grad

I hear there's a guy just up in OK waiting for a phone call..

Just because you're playing a team you believe you should beat without a doubt doesn't mean you prepare for that game any differently than any other. Why should we even practice at all before this game? It's pointless and we could risk injury for a game our 3rd stringers could win according to your thought process. The point of this type of approach isn't so they are shocked when they see who takes the first snap. It's that we made them use their limited defensive game prep going over strategies to face 2 different styles of QB. It probably doesn't take much research or game tape on their part to see that Bean is a scrambler while Aune prefers to pass. Obviously the guessing game is over once the first snap takes place, but you still made them waste time prepping for a running QB when you don't even have a running QB in the game. You can call that pointless if you'd like, but I personally will let any team we play waste time practicing defenses they won't even have to use in a game rather than getting better at the stuff they actually will need to use against us.

Wouldn't surprise me to keep it in house until the first snap. Even then, still wouldn't shock me for them to get mostly split reps this game and leave it a mystery who the starter might be for SMU. I'll take every advantage we can get for that game.

Yes that's true, I say if we have a few freshmen ready to play we let them get as much experience as we can. However, we have been building up depth and improving our recruiting the last few years so I'd also hope there aren't many chances for a true freshman to step in unless they are really talented.

For those who don't want to look at the whole article, below is the part about Jalen. Doesn't sound like he had the best week of camp and might have lost his shot to work with the starting offense for now. **The Chargers are looking for a specific wide receiver to fill their vacancy on the starting offense. They’re in need of speed and that has made their search limited and complicated after one week of padded training-camp practices. Jalen Guyton’s blazing speed gave him first crack for the No. 3 starting role behind Keenan Allen and Mike Williams. He received most of the first-team reps, but struggled to find chemistry with quarterback Tyrod Taylor. The results weren’t good when Taylor targeted him. Chargers coach Anthony Lynn said Guyton has good ball skills, but still has plenty to learn as a second-year player. He was a practice squad player for the Chargers in 2019. Guyton has 4.35 speed in the 40-yard dash, but he left the door open for another wide receiver to enter in Week 2 of camp. Lynn mentioned Tyron Johnson as a candidate to fill the speed role. Johnson has been impressive as rookie quarterback Justin Herbert’s go-to target on the second team. Johnson also has sub-4.4 speed and might be faster than Guyton. “We’re trying to develop those guys as best we can because we need to get some speed on the football field,” Lynn said Friday about Guyton and Johnson.

Why wouldn't they be able to? The rules currently don't allow immediate eligibility when transferring so it's not like they would play both seasons if that's what you're suggesting. However, I'd love to see a graduate transfer try and do it just to see what the NCAA does.

I mean he's right. I don't really see spring football happening and that's what those conferences that cancelled are using as the reason for why players shouldn't be able to leave. A lot of players have NFL dreams, but many more know it's not going to happen and probably won't get the chance to ever play football again because they are done with school after the fall or spring semester and don't want to stick around for another year. Pretty unfair for them to not even have the option to go try and play somewhere if they'd like.

The only solution is to make changes to scholarship limits. I understand where this decision is coming from, because the 2 options are to change scholarship limits and have to deal with the impact of that for years, or have one year where you screw over some high school players and the G5 schools. From the NCAA's perspective this is the easy choice and really doesn't do much harm to the schools that bring in the most money for them because they'll still be losing most of the draft eligible players they already planned to and won't have to significantly change their recruiting plan. I support the rule change and I'm on the player's side, but there has to be some way of doing things where a majority of the schools out there don't get screwed over.

This makes zero sense and is going to create a complete cluster f*ck financially and with roster management for smaller programs. Allowing seniors to be exempt for one year without making any long term changes to scholarship limits only solves things for one year. Let's say none of our players leave after this season, not exactly something that is extremely far fetched for most G5 schools. So after a season where we already have significantly reduced revenue we now have to pay for the same number of scholarships as this season + about 25 additional to account for the 2021 recruiting class. Then look ahead to after next season..since nobody loses a year of eligibility we somehow have to figure out how to find about 20 spaces on our roster. Are we just supposed to bring in 5 players in the 2022 class to account for this?? These rules make sense for the spring sports that got cancelled because they usually only bring in 3-5 new scholarships a year and it's a lot easier to manage. At every opportunity so far the NCAA has absolutely dropped the ball and shown they have no idea what they are doing and this just continues that trend.

This is one of the Chargers beat writers. The team cut a WR many expected the fill their slot WR role this season. They drafted 2 slot wideouts this year, but to cut a player most picked to see a lot of reps is pretty surprising and looks to be good news for Jalen.

Was just looking at past classes, and from what I can see this recent recruiting class looks to be one of our best ever. According to 247 four of our top 15 all-time commits by ranking are in this class, and we also managed to add 2 solid P5 transfers as well as a RB just today who had some big time offers at one point. Obviously I don't think our best individual recruit ever is in this class, but it looks like from top to bottom this could be the best. What do you guys think? Regardless, the difference in recruiting between Littrell's first few years and now is pretty big and I think we will start to see that paying off on the field over the next couple of seasons.

Yep, exactly. While I don't believe these offers are on the table anymore, this is a player who was getting offers from schools like Texas and LSU at one point, and then I guess he got hurt. He fully expects schools of that caliber to start coming around again, and I bet some will. This will be a tough one to pull in, but the fact that we are in the running and looking good at this time says a lot about our recruiting staff to me.

Big time, getting an OL with multiple FBS offers and I've always preferred landing lineman with space to put on good weight instead of trying to help them lose bad weight when they show up. Great pick up!

They'd have no choice, and it would be for much longer than a year. They have already set the precedent by granting spring sport athletes an extra year for missing this season. With recruiting already in full swing they can't expect teams to maintain the same roster size if nobody leaves and roughly 25 new faces show up. I seriously doubt coaches will be willing to budge on the amount of scholarships they can offer, schools would to save money, but no way the coaches want that. Even if they reduce the scholarship number by one from 25 to 24 it would still take 25 years for things to reset. Cancelling the season will change the way college sports operate forever. Not sure if they would carry this policy to football or not (one of dozens of questions that would need to be answered asap) but with those spring athletes the NCAA gave the schools power to reduce scholarship aid to $0 to those who were in their final year of eligibility. I can't imagine any school telling a 4-5 year scholarship athlete that they can come back for their missed senior season but they have to pay their own way for everything, but that's a decision the NCAA left up to schools. Again, with football you're dealing with roughly 20 scholarships vs maybe 5 in those spring sports so football is a whole different animal. https://www.usatoday.com/story/sports/college/2020/03/30/coronovirus-ncaa-grant-spring-sports-athletes-extra-eligibility/5090362002/

This really, really pains me to say, but I would rather not have a season and go into next year with the same team instead of half-assing our way through this one and having things get cancelled once one player gets the virus. However, the financial ramifications of not having a season are crippling, the NCAA would be forced to give everyone an extra year of eligibility so we would also be paying more than ever for our athletes in 2021 and beyond due to few seniors leaving, and a whole new class coming in. Paying more than ever after a season where we have zero revenue come in and are still paying our coaches salaries is truly the worst case scenario for our athletic program and I would imagine many schools, UNT included, will be put into very tough positions.

Just curious, but what programs are you referring to? He broke WKU out of the funk they were in causing him to get the South Florida job, where he led them to their first double digit win season in school history. That led to him getting the Oregon job where they went from 4-8 the previous year to 7-5 the year he was the coach. Yes, he wasn't quite up to the standards FSU normally has, but outside of that one job he has shown he's a winner. I think it was a phenomenal hire for FAU, and to top it all off thanks to his huge buyouts from the other schools they are paying him about $1 million less annually than we are paying for Littrell. Like it or not FAU continues to beat us in basically every aspect of the game at this point in time.

Always open to discussion and never assume I'm always right, instead of making some lame joke let's discuss, that's the whole point of this forum after all. I'd love to hear what part of my statement is bad in your mind. If you can find me an example of a coach who had a decent year and is completely safe in their job but also fired both coordinators I'm all ears. We are paying a very hefty fee for Littrell, that's a fact not an opinion. Many coaches just within our own conference are doing more with a smaller contract and supposedly less talented players. If you believe that Littrell can go 4-8 again this year and be secure in his job I would love to hear the reasoning behind that.

Typically firing both coordinators to save face is not something a coach who is super secure in his position does, can't imagine they did too much research on the G5 coaches for this article. We have a handful of challenging games this year, but the highest paid coach in the conference and one of the highest in all of G5 should not miss a bowl game 2 years in a row without feeling a ton of heat under his seat in my opinion.

You guys forgot his best tweet in my opinion! Pretty crazy recruiting for this guy, his first offer was from LSU about a year and a half ago and then he got an offer from Texas shortly after and looked like he was on the verge of truly blowing up. Recruiting experts were even saying the same thing. It sounds like he missed most of last season with some injuries and then his most recent offers are definitely a couple tiers below where he started (Utah St, Prairie View A&M, Grambling, UNT, then Southern most recently) so you wonder what exactly is going on and if big schools are waiting to see if he's back to form or what. Regardless, I think we have stumbled on a major sleeper prospect here and I really hope we can stick with him.

https://247sports.com/college/smu/LongFormArticle/Shane-Buechele-Richard-McBryde-Thomas-Shelmire-Kedrick-James-Chevin-Calloway-CamRon-Jones-SMU-Mustangs-college-football-transfers-new-players-134499064/#134499064_1 To be fair most of SMU's transfers did not get big minutes or make a big contribution on their former teams, the main reason SMU had/is having success is because their best grad transfer by far happened to be at the most important position on the field. Buechele started 19 games for UT, and wasn't bad while doing so. If it wasn't for him SMU would probably go 7-6 and be wondering if all the transfers were worth it.

So is Rucker a grad transfer or is there still more good news to come? Seems unlikely he graduated in 2 years, but maybe this was just a typo?

I noticed he averaged 6 yards a carry last season, however defensively when the defense preps all week for a QB that can run vs prepping for Mason who wasn't exactly a threat will make a huge difference should he get some game reps. I think for that reason we could keep the "competition" open as long as we can even if coach knows who his long term starter is, possibly even into the SMU game. HBU and A&M will likely both be blowouts in opposite directions so I could see Aune/Bean both getting a lot of reps in each game. I'm also not sure I entirely agree with your second point, track times are great for just knowing general speed but rarely is a guy going to have 50+ yards to sprint away from everyone without making a cut or move. From what I personally saw with Bean his cuts and start/stop speed weren't super quick and I believe that translates to a slow-ish 40 speed for a guy with such great speed over a longer distance.

Wow, never knew that. Pretty shocking that his 40 time isn't a lot lower with that kind of straight line speed, but maybe he just had a bad day at that camp. Thanks for the info.

I continuously see Bean labeled as our speedy QB, or that he has freakish athleticism, or he's a guy who could play WR for us..am I the only one who wonders where these labels came from and why he's the only one who gets them? Now, I'll admit I didn't actually see any of his game time from this past season as it happened, so my opinion is solely based on the film and facts I can find. What I see on film is a a player who is decently fast, but not freakish or breakaway speed. He has a 4.65 40 yard dash on record from HS, which is respectable but I'm not sure how much damage that could do as a college WR. Aune looks just as athletic in his HS tape, but the main difference is arm strength and that Aune gets away from pressure looking to throw while Bean looks to run. Since a few people were throwing their QB thoughts out there I figured I'd put mine out there as well and see if I was alone in wondering why we constantly describe Bean in this way. Just my opinion, and I would love to be shown something that could help me understand.

I remember reading somewhere that he was very raw when he first got there but had a ton of growth throughout the year, plus the WR they put in was just chosen in the 3rd round and played pretty dang well for them so can't say I blame them for choosing him over a true freshman QB who's redshirt they probably preferred not to burn.