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Sorry I'm not buying that. UNT can and should be among the upper tier of G5 programs. Location alone gives you a huge advantage. Facilities are among the top half of G5. Coaches are being compensated at or near the top of the AAC. The foundation is there.
NIL, for better or worse, is the new coin of the realm (along with the portal). It can be done. I'd rather have the resources at UNT as opposed to nearly all other G5's.
What is the legality of this?
And to think back in 2013 I was banned from this site for like 3 months for suggesting/asking why we don't do $100 handshakes to/for our players. I was chastised as if I was Genghis Khan. It was as if the people closest to this program was completely unaware that it was happening literally everywhere else. Now fast forward a short 10 years and conference administrators are trying to loophole money to affiliated players.
It's not really doom and gloom. It's a pattern of behavior that has led to a pattern of results. We are cash poor, we spend average money, our collective is in the bottom third of our own peers, and we are perceptually a weird, liberal arts college (some truth to that). The Why not North Texas mantra has been ran through by coaches, players, administrators, and alum. There is a list of reasons as to why not North Texas. I don't want it to be this way. I don't like it. But it just is.
Absolutely--all of this. My son is going off to college in the fall. Both of his parents are UNT grads, but he wanted nothing to do with coming here, because he wanted to go somewhere that had good academics AND that athletics mattered, just like his best friends and cousins all felt. So, he's heading to one of those P4s and we are very excited for him.
I just think if we hadn't given up after the SWC pipe dream was burst, it would've been different here...a lot different, too. Again, I think UH was who we could've been just like. In the mid-to-late 70s, our programs were very similar. Both were successful as independents. UH got into the SWC because they only had little ol' Rice to compete with in their market. And they were hugely successful immediately, in both major sports. That got a lot of Houston Energy Money to be invested in their program. We could've emulated that in some fashion, but instead, Hayden Fry leaves and we eventually gave up. That was just too much to overcome, particularly in the timeframe you mention above.
UCF moved up to FBS right around the time we made our way back up in 1995. But they didn't have alumni and students that watched their school blow off sports for 12 years like we did. They went about building up a program in a manner that made sense and today, they are in the Big 12. No reason at all that we couldn't have been something like this today if we had made athletics a priority. Instead, we decided that I-A was a way to make more money by whoring out the program and playing at a toilet for decades. Those decisions still have ramifications that killed any chance of us being anything close to what we wanted to be. And the portal bit has killed college sports for me. I literally watched about 3 games of college football last year. And college basketball, which is my first love, is also losing its appeal, too. The NIL, while I'm not a fan of it, I understand why its there. The portal, though, is just too much for me to accept. It's just not worth my time or money to invest in it when the players are using that system to move up from Denton as soon as they can. I don't blame them, either. But college sports was built on familiarity and the players being "ours". That's just no longer a viewpoint that I feel anymore when any player that produces in any fashion just can leave at any time they choose.
I don't understand all the hand wringing. I think UNT is positioned about as well as anyone in the G5 to consistently contend for the at-large playoff spot. Its undeniable that access to the playoff is at a level never seen before at the G5 level. Financially there shouldn't be many G5's that will outspend UNT (if the collective has its sh*t together). There is more premium talent in the portal from the DFW area than you can shake a stick at. There are only so many places those prospects can go. Why not UNT?
Use the system to your advantage. Go poach some talent in the portal that would've never considered UNT out of high school. Its how you build depth and increase competition. It can also be done at a relatively low cost for certain positions.
The doom and gloom is misplaced (for now). I do, however, think there will be an eventual break away by the P4 but that is years away.
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