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What is Seth Littrell’s Legacy to You?


MeanGreenTexan

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I took my soon to be wife to her first CFB game at the Thursday night Army game where it was a windy 35 degrees.  She hates the cold and she made it through. I figured she was for real about me at that point.  We then upgraded to Club seats the last few years and she's a regular armchair Head Coach at this point.  We'll be getting married (finally according to her) in Feb.

I have to remind her she's seen some of the best UNT football since my days at UNT in the very early 2000's.  If we don't win every game she's fired up and ready to trade-in the Mean Green for her D3 Northeast Liberal Arts college's lacrosse team.  I've almost convinced her to let us get a big ass RV and have an absurd tailgate.  She more excited about hosting a tailgate than me buying an RV.

She's excited for the AAC and now expects Neal to lure Nick Saban to the Mean Green with this coaching change.

That's a lot of what the Seth years have meant to me.

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I grade Seth differently based on the fact that no other UNT head football coach had this kind of admin support, salary and facility investment. 

Based on this investment and expectation, and relative to the performance of his G5 peers, he underperformed. 

Seth made bowl games a bare minimum expectation- that's his legacy

 

 

 

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Littrell lifted NT from awful to mediocre.  He just couldn't progress from that point.

Maybe it was not his fault, but NT made substantial upgrades to the facilities during his years there and Littrell just could not get over the hump.

Sometimes it is about change more than records.   Overall, Littrell was good for NT, and he deserves credit for his contributions.

NT may progress or regress, but IMO it was time for a change.  

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Seth Littrell did improve the football program, but he was helped by coaching during an FBS era of enormous bowl inflation. There are 43 bowl games this year and 131 teams in the FBS, so 65 percent of teams are making a bowl game.

Littrell's teams even reached a bowl three times with losing overall records. Last year's 6-7 team wouldn't have reached a bowl without a UNT alumnus creating the game.

Take away reaching bowl games as a mark of success and Littrell's only a small improvement over his recent predecessors despite very large improvements in UNT's stadium, facilities, coach's salary and resources.

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My initial thought to this was: Mason!

But then I thought longer and it became pretty apparent as time went on that Mason was more of Harrell’s legacy than Seth’s. 
 

For me, he’ll probably be the guy who did a lot of good things, raised the bar, raised the floor, initially hired great assistants and unfortunately always got blown out in big games. 

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1 hour ago, MeanGreenTexan said:

He’s the guy who raised the bar.

😕 If he raised the bar it is only because the Dodge regime lowered it.  But they were low paid also.  We are not Rice, UTEP, Texas State, or ULM.  We got rid of Dickey, Dodge and Mac after 2 consecutive losing seasons.  They got rid of Seth before hitting the absolute rock bottom.  I think we saw that we aren't that far from being on par with SMU in a tangible way.  But that was from the fruition of a lot of investment and hard work done before he arrived.  

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52 minutes ago, rcade said:

Take away reaching bowl games as a mark of success and Littrell's only a small improvement over his recent predecessors despite very large improvements in UNT's stadium, facilities, coach's salary and resources.

Ding Ding Ding objective truth right there.  Guy was a hard worker, good guy, nice family man, and I feel bad banging on him.  But gosh darn it some other people on this board make it  hard and not to bang on him.  You can't talk about raising a programs bar that has 25 conference titles (3 this century, 2 bowl game victories also) when you have NONE.  Top in all off you have 2 winning seasons out of 7.  

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My fear is we will be missing 6 win seasons in the very near future once we hit the AAC. It’s absolutely ridiculous they fired him before the bowl game. North Texas makes really bad choices in sports more than they should. Minus soccer. For me it’s sad they did this the day they announced the bowl. It takes  away from the players accomplishments. 

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6 minutes ago, UNTexas said:

My fear is we will be missing 6 win seasons in the very near future once we hit the AAC. It’s absolutely ridiculous they fired him before the bowl game. North Texas makes really bad choices in sports more than they should. Minus soccer. For me it’s sad they did this the day they announced the bowl. It takes  away from the players accomplishments. 

2023 was likely to be a 💩 regardless.  They guaranteed that by not firing him after the bowl game last year.   It was ridiculous to bring him back for 2022. 

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10 hours ago, peanuts104 said:

Calling Mason Fine "tiny" is insulting and that was Harrell's recruit. Seth wouldn't have given him a second look if it wasn't for Harrell.

Lighten up Francis.   "Tiny" in this case, is more of a term of endearment.   Small guy.  Big Arm.  Bigger Heart.  Top 5 all-time favorite player of mine.  But his size is the only reason he wasn't given way more opportunities than just UNT.

And it's fairly well-documented that the "in" on Mason was Littrell's relationship with his high school coach, Matt Hennessey.

https://www.ntdaily.com/true-freshman-mason-fine-taking-the-reins-at-quarterback/

Of course, Littrell is not a QB though.  It's going to be much harder for him to assess a QB's ability... so he sent Harrell to check him out, and the rest is history.

Mason Fine was here because of Seth Littrell.   Give credit where it's due.    The boogie man is gone now, we can look back honestly now.

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8 hours ago, UNTexas said:

My fear is we will be missing 6 win seasons in the very near future once we hit the AAC. It’s absolutely ridiculous they fired him before the bowl game. North Texas makes really bad choices in sports more than they should. Minus soccer. For me it’s sad they did this the day they announced the bowl. It takes  away from the players accomplishments. 

This part is definitely sad.    I don't think Smatresk wanted to announce yesterday, but it leaked, so his hand was forced.   You can't just leave an unsubstantiated rumor about the highest-profile University employee circulating for 12+ hours.

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8 hours ago, UNTexas said:

My fear is we will be missing 6 win seasons in the very near future once we hit the AAC. It’s absolutely ridiculous they fired him before the bowl game. North Texas makes really bad choices in sports more than they should. Minus soccer. For me it’s sad they did this the day they announced the bowl. It takes  away from the players accomplishments. 

I could be wrong here, but it seems to me that most coaches who are going to be let go are shown the door before the bowl game, not after.  What’s the benefit of having him coach the bowl game?

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