Unt Wants Nit But Not Cbi Or Cit

[UNTLifer]

Honestly shocked the DMN covered the game.

[aztecskin]

The WFAA dude annoyed the hell out of me but outside of that I didn't care or expect much coverage outside of the local paper. 

As everyone has touched on, the CBI is not prestigious but NT's participation in it was perfect, useful, and definitely fun. It's great to see basketball in the Pit be fun again. We should make sure that it never reaches another five year run like we saw in the Benford era.

[BillySee58]

1 hour ago, aztecskin said:

The WFAA dude annoyed the hell out of me but outside of that I didn't care or expect much coverage outside of the local paper. 

As everyone has touched on, the CBI is not prestigious but NT's participation in it was perfect, useful, and definitely fun.

Exactly. And NT wasn't playing for prestige.

Quote

It's great to see basketball in the Pit be fun again. We should make sure that it never reaches another five year run like we saw in the Benford era.

This is the biggest takeaway from me in the new era. Make being competitive the norm and losing the exception. I've said this before, but RV had a run of football/basketball hires (basically all of his football/basketball hires) of Dodge, Stephens, Aston, Mccarney, Peterson, and Benford.

Those coaches coached a combined 21 seasons and had a grand total of one winning season amongst 21. One out of 21!! Under 5% of their seasons resulted in a winning record! And what happened after that one winning season? The coach gets a big extension and raise when there was no actual threat of him being hired away by a bigger program, and despite never having proven capable of recruiting and developing his own guys at the most important positions in the sport (QB, OL, DL). Which he ended up failing spectacularly at.

Because of that I was a little disappointed in the trigger-happy move by Wren Baker to do the same for Littrell, but at least Littrell is a legitimate candidate to move up the rungs of the CFB coaching job ladder. But my point is that winning seasons here, going forward, should not be seen as some amazing coaching accomplishment that serves as an automatic extension and raise. 

[aztecskin]

4 hours ago, BillySee58 said:

But my point is that winning seasons here, going forward, should not be seen as some amazing coaching accomplishment that serves as an automatic extension and raise. 

Good points all but this stood out. I'm going to think on this a bit and probably do a blog post to flesh it out more. My initial reaction to it is that for at least the next five years, this will be the case. The coaches' agents will have so much leverage over the department precisely _because_ of the poor hires previously. 

SL probably has a few more raises available before NT can reasonably say "nah, go ahead and take the next gig. We'll find a replacement".  Same with the university and the President/AD combo at the moment.

The real concern should be in finding more revenue -- see that Texas Tribune chart again -- to make sure NT is at least competitive in the state. While UH can be reasonably above us, there is no reason UTSA and UTEP should be at higher athletic revenue points than NT.