Legend500

Hey - they've done something the other two college teams in San Antonio (Incarnate Word now and St. Mary's decades ago) could never accomplish - lose to a division 3 team. I'm impressed with their dedication and effort in achieving the impossible. Students are great, too. They're not your usual Texas rejects - by the time they end up at UTSA, even Texas State has passed on them, and they can't afford to buy their way into Trinity, St. Mary's, Incarnate Word or Our Lady of the Lake. San Antonio's a great place to visit, though. I look forward to going there next year, especially because it's suburban Austin location makes it useful for enjoying all that Austin and its suburbs have to offer. I'm done now.

UTEP is one of my hometown teams (the other being SMU) and I was always impressed how many they brought to Ford. Even when coming into Ford with a 2-6 towards the end of the year, they still show up. They'll be there.

If we beat Rice, I'll give McCarney one of my eyes.

In my regular personal dealings, and speaking only of that which I may, Dean Montecino is strongly aware of the fact that athletics drives the ship, and for better or worse is what people first see in a university. This is something he understood even when still with A&S, and has not changed since then. Now, back into my hole until I say anything... improper. I can assure you, however, that the meeting in question is solely to discuss potential custodial employees once the renovations to 1900 Main are complete,

I appreciate and support this idea, with the qualification that many of the problems the football program faces in reputation are problems the University is fighting to get rid of as a whole. A good example is the common myth that fits in with this year's theme: "We're new" It applies to both football and the university. It might be useful to include comparisons so people know how close we are to the "majors." For example: Established - School - Football Started 1873 - TCU (as Add-Ran) - 1894 1876 - A&M - 1894 1883 - Texas - 1893 1890 - UNT - 1913 1899 - TxSt - 1904 1911 - SMU -1915 1913 - UTEP - 1914 1923 - Tech - 1925 1927 - Houston - 1946 Generally thinking, you want to make a big, short statement on the top, and then you want itty-bitty type with the facts. The cynical among us always read the tiny text at the bottom to see what the qualifications are before reading the top line.

Ultimately we're all in the same hole. Whether we're Texas State, UNT, SMU - we're all Texans on the outside looking in. I've got no problem talking about other Texas teams on our board - we don't need to be a-holes who are only paying attention to our team. The only way we get anywhere is by working together - UNT and SMU have figured that out (conferences aside - SMU would have no boosters left if they allowed us in the some conference). As far as Mac vs. Fran - Texas State was willing to take a BIG risk hiring him. We already had problems on the horizon with the NCAA (grad rates, etc.) which Mac has done an AWESOME job addressing. And as far as RV - Four conference championships, two dances, baseball and a new stadium makes him the most successful AD in our history.Sometimes even the greatest have down years, but RV has taken us quite far from where we were.

Having been born in EP and growing up young with the Miners, then moving here and growing up at UNT and SMU games, this 1000 times: One of the biggest surprises we're in for is that UTEP travels really, really well given their situation. While it's not hard to outnumber both of the SMU fans at Ford, UTEP was still quite impressive when playing the Ponies. A good example: most UNT games I bring 1-2 people with me. UTEP, I'm bringing 11.

Seven overtimes against Florida International would have been far more enjoyable with a "near-beer."

I'm amazed by the short memories around here. Three years ago, this team goes down 14 during an away game and we end up losing 56-14. Do I want a win? Sure! But do I recognize that we're a better program than even a few years ago? Absolutely. This one hurts because we're in a position to compete in every game again. It's a nice feeling.

It all starts at the beginning. It's hard to get excited for the Best Marching Band in the Country when they waddle out like they're blind people seeing the sun for the first time. The band sets the mood for the entire game.

Under the Inverse Weather Rule of UNT football, this virtually guarantees we'll be playing UTSA in a snowstorm.

Dale has been a big supporter of UNT. I'm sure he'd be happy to give us more than our fair share of time if we were relevant. Again, just win.

RV has a permanent pass from me for two easy reasons - as questionable as his hires have been, his development has been spotless. UNT was dead, dead, dead in investing in sports before him, and now we have Apogee/MGV and a comfortable donor base for sports which will allow us to add another sport in the very near future. UNT wasn't a healthy program before he came here, and he's succeeded in raising Lazarus from the dead. Good enough for me.

Considering the great popularity of vodka-diets in homo-sexual establishments, this could wreck the entire Russian vodka industry. Not that your correspondent has been to any such establishments.

My gods, that could get ugly very quickly. So long as the Coogs don't implode like they did against TxSt, they'll be fine. As far as UTSA, I can count to 2 - UTEP (which could unbearably bad to watch this year, sadly, as we should all want our fellow non-SWC Texas team to do well when not playing us) and Tulane (Realy AAC? Really?). It depends to an extent just how bad New Mexico intends to be this year.

There's a lot more than $3 million waiting to be announced , but it's mostly gifts to the academic side. Still, when our university gets donations from anywhere it helps out everyone, athletics included.

It was obvious to anyone watching the entire field during games last year - DT's favorite, go-to-receiver was Spiriki (at home at least). It's an accuracy problem, and if he's spent the offseason working on that and not getting impaled, we should see notable improvement.

Maybe we should consider this more as a regional pride thing than a school only pride thing. As was mentioned earlier, these games include 4 out of the state's 5 metro areas. Is there some way to work that fact in? Again, taking the Cascadia Cup model from the MLS (Vancouver, Seattle and Portland), it's not just team pride on the line, it's civic pride as well. Additional scatter-shot thoughts: I like a flag. As far as figuring out, we should consider several tiebreakers - Texas on Texas record, overall record, points against, attendance, distance from a major highway (Rice would never win, it's a close call for the other three), selectivity (Rice needs something). Having been to games at all of the schools and having lived in 3 of the 4 cities (sorry Swamp Castle), this is a big thing for everyone - let's not mess it up. Corporate sponsorship isn't coming unless our broadcast partners talk about it. If they do, there are a lot of options - for example, anyone ask Southwest? This seems like something that the CUSA would be interesting in finding a sponsor for over the individual schools. Whatever we do, has anyone bothered to figure out how much it costs to by a Safeway shopping cart?

Going to a private university for undergrad is great if it's Ivy. Otherwise, it's just proof that a person can't do math. Nothing is more fun that spending time at our master's program orientations - filled with kids from SMU and TCU who still ended up at UNT because their universities can't afford or maintain actual graduate programs. That aside, trashing SMU is a tradition around here (even though our universities are working well together these days). UNT's athletic anger at SMU comes from our failings - even though we've been playing the game for longer than many of the FBS universities in Texas have existed, we have gotten nowhere. 100 years of frustration evinces itself in many odd ways.

It was really a great write-up, and is generating so many good feelings in the comment thread that I couldn't even bring myself to take the required pot-shot at SMU. Rarely am I left quite so speechless.

Typical AddRan fans forgetting that there was one other state school which didn't get into the SWC - UTEP and forgetting the reason UNT, Houston and UTEP were kept outta the SWC - integration. Still It is true that UNT doesn't have much of anything to say about anyone else's football program - right now. Now as to why TCU is not playing UNT right now - 1) there's no history between the schools, 2) UNT wants a home & home, and 3) it does little to help TCU - unlike other schools in the area, TCU doesn't have attendance problems or scheduling problems which UNT can fill. Interesting fact - Normal & AddRan were playing each other before SMU ever existed. We can talk smack because we're not dumb enough to think that a 5-7 record in any non-AQ conference makes us eligible for the XII. SMU made a good move in moving the the AAC, but Houston is really getting screwed. It's ended up with the same lot of private schools it griped about taking from the WAC in 2005, which have very limited upsides.

Again, a quick reminder that we are griping about students (and some alumni) who are actually present at sporting events getting carried away while being engaged in our fight song. I don't care if they want to drunkenly faux-sodomize Scrappy whilst screaming all manner of blue invective - if they're there, they're showing better sportsmanship and school loyalty than the vast majority of our students and alumni.

All of this talk reminds me of when SMU (and more than a few PonyFans posters) indicated that they were interested in joining the Big XII. You could hear the laughs coming from Irving in Denton. It's far more likely that Houston rejoins the CUSA once it realizes that being surrounded by small privates doesn't make you look any bigger.

Dr. Lively is still deeply involved with the University (especially with the current fundraising campaign), but he actually wants to retire. Don't worry, he is very much still around. Alumni and the administrations of both schools have been working together for some time now with the understanding that the only way we can even keep up with the Texas-es of the world is by owning our market, and that having three teams that don't play each other just means that we divide a very lucrative pie. It would be nice if the third leg of the stool also realized this. UNT and SMU have a lot in common - and (aside from the usual message board stupidity and historical arguments that have long since passed) are very much interested in using their differences to help the DFW area as a whole. Now if you want to see a real dysfunctional relationship, try UTA and UTD.

Paying attention to what SMU is doing to improve attendance is like asking Ron Jeremy for virginity advice.