DentonStang

I live in Denton, I've always followed UNT on the side. Of course a scenario where UNT, for the first time ever, suddenly commits to football and makes the systemic changes necessary to be top tier is bad for SMU in general. But worse, now, would be to have a top tier program NOT in AAC. We'd snatch that up in a second, as we have been trying to do to Boise, who IS an add. You're just not. Maybe one day.

Basketball is irrelevant to expansion but to your point, no, other than the last 2 or 3 years when we have been as high as the teens in football for parts of the season and gotten some press. But when the AAC formed, nobody was doing that other than UCF. We got in on the ground floor. But now the AAC has a number of teams competing at a high level. We don't need to add anyone who isn't going to push us higher. 2016 SMU would not get in today. But the conference is in a different place today. If we look at final 2020 RPI rankings, UNT was below everyone in the AAC other than Temple and South Florida. That's not an add. That's not even competitive.

There is no SMU animosity to keep you out for some non-existent (to SMU) rivalry. Does adding UNT to AAC further their goals? The AAC goal is to get P5 level treatment. There are only two factors that matter to that: 1. Football Prestige and 2. Money. 1.Does UNT regularly appear in the top 25 and get mentioned for potential high bowls? No. So you don't help there. 2. Does adding UNT generate more money, significantly more money, per school to further competing for a P5 upgrade? No. So you add nothing that matters.

Staff has been raided every off-season under Dykes because he makes great hires. We've lost OC, DC and a slew of assistants. I was an early Dykes supporter - I figured he had been successful rebuilding several times and spent a year comping out at TCU learning. I figured a consistent boring hire to stabilize the program from the wild ups and downs of Jones and Chad Morris and build a base. However I could never have predicted we would get what we have gotten. His transfer strategy and his focus on local recruiting (in a real way not Chad Morris lip service) was part of his interview. And his hires have been solid except for Garrett Riley that I'm not sold on but we'll see. It's certainly helped the OU to SMU transfer pipeline. Transfers are the way now. You can get better talent and can do it quickly. It's better than high school recruiting for a team needing to rebuild.

We count tickets not butts which inflates the numbers, sometimes wildly, like everyone else. It's a tactic everyone uses. You can come back and debate who does it more or some other detail, but ultimately neither one of us are hosting butt-in-seat sellouts too often. It's a bit like University of Aleppo and UH giving each other crap over violence surrounding the University.

If a single poster who lives in Denton and never came here until we got a RB transfer off you proves a rivalry to you, then I guess that's a rivalry, to you

Also hire the best up and coming assistants. Not son-in-laws

You could have done better

Hire a proven, experienced program building head coach. The difference is amazing.

They really are lose-lose for both teams and, I don't know how much of the "rivalry" talk is a joke from the UNT side but the game generates very little emotional interest on the SMU side. Better to end the series or make it am occasional game. Is like to see a dedicated OOC rotation between all the non-Big12 in the state more than a yearly SMU-UNT game.

Attendance smack from a school with no better attendance but 4 times the student population is strange.

Indeed. Just the other day we thought we'd be thin at RB next season, but suddenly we snatched a transfer out of Denton from a lower division. How wrong we were......

That's what we thought. How wrong we were...

Nice to see you copying the SMU gameplan. Although it's funny how transfers aren't "mercenaries" anymore.

Of the nine incoming transfers headed to SMU, Siggers is the lowest rated and the only to come from a non-P5 school. That he was able to overcome, get noticed, and get to the next level is a testament to his talent and work ethic. Thanks to his coaches at UNT for preparing him to move up!

PB's head coaching results were certainly felonious

SMU's DC just went to Illinois. Word is Bennett is interviewing for the DC opening. Have you heard anything like that on your side?

SMU has 6 or 7 transfers. Of course they are transferring IN not OUT, but they had to come from somewhere.

UNT is the new "Transfer U"

I'll give my true unbiased opinion - he sucked as a head coach, made a ton of bonehead decisions and in-game management was very poor. Personnel and other decisions that I would assume the HC and not a coordinator would make were also poor. That doesn't mean much at all about his ability as a DC. Bennett's recruiting was relatively good given the situation at the time. Defenses were poor. The statistical improvement from Bennett to June Jones at SMU was in defense, not offense until June got a top shelf QB transfer. His DC was Gush. Not sure how applicable or not that is to his stop in Denton. He seems to be liked at his other stops.

Didn't someone already post that Bennett said he failed at SMU because he didn't rescind his predecessor's offers and thus didn't get "his" talent in quick enough?

Phil Bennett has forgotten more about football than anyone on this board has ever known. And he will literally tell you that when you question any of his poor-outcome decisions at booster functions.

I strongly recommend avoiding ponyfans.com. All the rational and sane fans have moved to the SMU 247 site. If you are a paying member of a 247 site I recommend you go there. There is some questions over Siggers because he is less proven on our level than some other P5 targets, but nobody has any problem admitting that when you have a strong players that can help us, we'd love to farm your team for transfers and maintain that pipeline. He certainly ran all over us and looks talented.

That's 10 outgoing or 10 going in and out combined?