vpackrats

When in the French Quarter at night, don't go past Rampart St always worked as good advice for me. But, as others have said, the French Quarter is generally safe.

Same as you. AC Hotel x 2 rooms for our group.

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Yep, I think that judging from the full & complete list (thanks TreeFiddy) that we're pretty sexy for the Conference USA bowl choices. I know lot of you thought this was the equivalent of waking up in bed next to Rosie O'Donnell after an all-night bender in Vegas but in reality we woke up next to Lisa Kudrow. I'm not going to go all the way and say we have a Jennifer Aniston or Courtney Cox type-bowl here but it's sure not Rosie O or Lena Dunham as some on here were implying.

I know we have 4 threads going on right now with the #1 - #39 Bowl Rankings from various sites so I suppose this is my attempt to tie all 4 threads into 1 big one. For purposes of this I'm only listing 3 bowls: New Orleans Bowl / Independence Bowl (for obvious reasons based on the 10+ threads about this bowl) & the Frisco Bowl (only because I know we like to do SMU comparisons). The results are pretty interesting to say the least. Here you go: Washington Post: New Orleans Bowl #15 / Frisco Bowl #33 / Independence Bowl #37 CBS Sports New Orleans Bowl #15 / Frisco Bowl #30 / Independence Bowl #39 Yahoo New Orleans Bowl #22 / Frisco Bowl #33 / Independence Bowl #39 SB Nation New Orleans Bowl #24 / Frisco Bowl #29 / Independence Bowl #38 My take? The national sportswriters that "don't have a dog in the hunt" so to speak, all convincingly rank the New Orleans Bowl as being a waaaay better bowl matchup than the Independence Bowl. Heck, there are 39 bowls so the Indy Bowl finished last, last, next to last & 3rd from the bottom in the rankings. All this to say, all the weeping & nashing of the teeth that's occurred on this board over the past 72 hours because we lost our chance to gain the national attention of the sportswriters, well, it's not exactly working out for SoMiss right now. And, no, I don't think us replacing them would have shoved us up to where we are now in our matchup. I think these outlets have it about right. GMG! Beat Troy!

Man, this is video gold! I usually don't laugh out loud at a lot of videos but this was damn good. Kudos! I 2nd TreeFiddy's comments. Add that to their site ... I bet it will get a lot of likes actually.

I guess I will channel my inner Norm Hitzges and point out some interesting things that tie into the various threads we've had over the past few days. * A lot has been made on this board -- rightfully so -- of the P5's reluctance to play G5's during the bowl season. It got me to wondering just how often does this occur and was this year an anomaly or not? I researched all 4 years since the College Football Playoff has been in effect & these are the totals: 2017 -- 7 games 2016 -- 5 games 2015 -- 8 games 2014 -- 6 games So, this was actually a pretty decent year for P5 vs. G5 bowl game matchups. NOTE: This analysis did not include any independents (Army, Notre Dame & BYU) vs. either G5 or P5 teams (of which there were matchups against P5's and G5's). This is strictly P5 vs. G5 analysis. * Second, in terms of the 2017 Bowl matchups when it comes to win totals, we actually have one of the better bowl matchups. Out of the 33 NON-BCS bowl matchups only 2 others can match the North Texas vs. Troy total of 19 combined wins. Those 2 bowls are the Alamo Bowl (Stanford vs. TCU) and the Dollar General Bowl (Toledo vs. Appalachian State). The Armed Forces Bowl between Army & San Diego St can get to 19 as well if Army beats Navy this week. All this to say, it's not like they're matching us up with a 6-6 Sun Belt team. Heck, Troy has a Top 25 vote in the last poll. It's a good, equal matchup between both teams. * Lastly, and this is NOT a bowl stat but it caught my eye as to what might have soured Independence Bowl officials on us. As I was rooting around doing these stats I noticed that the worst team in college football (our buddies at UTEP who were the only BCS team to go 0-12) gave up 441 points and I thought to myself "man, that's pretty bad". Well, we clocked in at 440 points given up. When your D is +1 point better than the worst team in the NCAA, it probably doesn't help our case any. Just my .02 cents....

Serious question here ... I thought there was an NCAA rule that stated all teams with winning records HAD to be invited first to bowls ... THEN it fell to teams that went 6-6 ... and then if there were no more teams at 6-6 ... THEN it went to 5-7 teams like us last year. Is this not a thing anymore? Cuz as much as I don't like UTSA they did deserve to go more than say 6-6 MUTS. In a related note, how did the Armed Forces Bowl avoid taking a CUSA team and nab a Mountain West team instead? I guess contractual obligations don't mean that much?

Just checked ... Hattiesburg to Shreveport is 5 hours away vs. 2 1/2 hours away for us. So it's sure not the "Southern Miss is closer" argument that drove this decision. Ugh.

Rick -- great trip down memory lane! And, yes, I think all of us who were around back then would say we went 3-0 against the Southwest Conference that year! :) One clarification though on that 1988 season ... that egg we laid against SFA in 1988 when we were the #1 team in 1-AA was at SFA, not Denton. I know this because I was a freshman at the time & we traveled to Nacogdoches for the game. Well, me & my buddies were all cocky about our team being #1 so we decided to sit in the SFA student section for the game along with some SFA friends. Bad decision. Scott Davis threw 5 INT's that game and we ended up getting upset 17-10. Lot of good-natured verbal abuse in the stands ... thus the vivid memories. LOL.

I was always partial to this version of Scrappy vs. the Eugene Levy Scrappy. But I gotta admit, Scrappy's been awesome this year.

I would give you a +1 for this as well, but, alas, I too have run out of votes after 5-7 minutes. Doh!

I'm more of a reader than a commenter on this board but sometimes I wonder if people realize how hypocritical some of their posts are? For months we hear stuff like "Man, screw SMU -- they always look down on us & think they're so much better than us" -- or -- "Man, why does school X always try & blow us off? Their fans' message board keeps talking about how they have nothing to gain & everything to lose by playing us or Conference USA. Eff them!". NOW: "Man, screw Troy -- we're so much better than them -- or -- "Man, why would we play anyone from the Belt? We have nothing to gain & everything to lose by playing Troy or the Sun Belt. Eff them!". Can we at least please be consistent? I'm got a neck brace on due to the extreme whiplash of reading these posts.

Just finished taking the survey. I'm in agreement with y'all that it's pleasing to see the AD care enough to see what we think about the whole gameday experience (parking, stadium, food, band, etc). Very comprehensive. Having sat through years of the Fouts Field experience, clearly an Apogee Stadium survey was a home run for me! I do have to ask though, is anyone else besides me asswhipped by the band playing "Seven Nation Army" by the White Stripes incessantly over 4 quarters? Don't enough college bands already beat that song into the ground? "Fly Like an Eagle" is more unique to us and now getting underutilized. If you see a guy next year in Section 208 stab out his ears with an icepick, that's me.

What's with all the Friends episode references these days? LOL

I'm guessing the Bahamas Bowl needed to announce their teams earlier than the bowl announcement day because there's a whole different set of variables that need to be factored in. Coaches & players need to start getting their passports ASAP as many of them likely do not have one. Also, by announcing the teams 1 week ahead of schedule the UAB & Ohio fans get that crucial extra week to book flights to the Bahamas, get a passport as well if one is needed & in general start planning a trip that has much greater logistical challenges than flying to NM or New Orleans. That's probably why those teams got "picked" ahead of the usual pecking order.

Here's a link to the ESPN article with more details. Logan is really complimentary about the coaching staff here! :) http://www.espn.com/college-football/story/_/id/21056794/logan-holgorsen-commits-north-texas-mean-green

Honest question. Is there an unwritten rule that the band has to stop playing when the visiting team lines up to snap it? (Similar to how in hockey the music gets cut off once the puck drops). I've noticed that too ... the band will play right up until the visiting team snaps it and wasn't sure if that's considered a "no-no" when it comes to that. Anyone know? Also, in related band news, it seems we've cut back a ton on the "Fly Like an Eagle" riff (which is nice & distinctive) and replaced it with a ton of the "Seven Nation Army" riff that 95 other colleges play now.

Dale Hansen might not have time to mention UNT. Too busy using his allotted time for ridiculous and grandiose "Dale Hansen editorials" instead of sticking to actual sports.

SMU must be pretty desperate if they have that tool Mike Rawlings doing ads for them. SMU & Mike Rawlings -- two thumbs down.

For lunch you can go out to the Olive Garden, which is lovely. Between lunch and the game you might want to take a trip to Home Depot or maybe Bed, Bath, & Beyond. I don't know if you'll have enough time though. After the game you can hit up KFC if it's still open. My buddy Frank loves that place.

Sorry for the crickets. We're here. Had a big day of Field of Dreams and a random concert downtown last night so off to kind of a late start. BTW, everyone up here is freaking out about the heat -- it's going to be 90' at gametime!! We're all like yeah, so? Maybe it's our one advantage of the day. P.S. Due to the heat I'm sure the Iowa band will be wearing khaki shorts and T-shirts so I will take a picture of that for y'all when it happens. No picture = they dressed like a normal band.

Yeah, I hear you. I could easily sell the Great Smoky Mountains in TN to my non-UNT friends for the Tennessee game -- or the beach last year for our game against Florida. But corn is definitely a harder sell. (I can say that cuz the wifey is from Iowa). Next year is Arkansas and the Ozark Mountains -- an easier sell for the casual fan. Wish we had more diehards! :)

Pretty random I know because Iowa isn't exactly a hop, skip and jump but is anyone on the board planning on heading up to Iowa City this weekend? Me and a few guys are heading up there for our 16th annual "paycheck" game / Guy's Road Trip and looking to tailgate and/or hang with any UNT fans on Saturday. We have only 3 people going this year instead of the usual 7 or 8 cuz, well, it's Iowa. LOL. Anyway, if you're going let's do some tailgating! :) I can PM you with details ... or vice versa. GMG!