I think Hank and George hit it on the head

[Harry]

Look I love our kids but if you watched the game tonight you can't sugarcoat the fact that ASU has a lot more talent than we do. Former ASU Coach Steve Roberts is making Freeze look real good right now. Mac wasn't given a great hand. When UNT is rolling out true freshman QB Andy McNulty who may be 185 soaking wet and throwing passes to walk-on Ivan Delgado who none of us knew a couple of weeks ago...you get my drift.

My point is everyone is unhappy about the game tonight but the person who left us in this mess is not here anymore to accept any of the blame.

I did feel we were outcoached in this game but superior talent, speed and size makes you look like a damn good coach.

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[GrandGreen]

Look I love our kids but if you watched the game tonight you can't sugarcoat the fact that ASU has a lot more talent than we do. Former ASU Coach Steve Roberts is making Freeze look real good right now. Mac wasn't given a great hand. When UNT is rolling out true freshman QB Andy McNulty who may be 185 soaking wet and throwing passes to walk-on Ivan Delgado who none of us knew a couple of weeks ago...you get my drift.

My point is everyone is unhappy about the game tonight but the person who left us in this mess is not here anymore to accept any of the blame.

I did feel we were outcoached in this game but superior talent, speed and size makes you look like a damn good coach.

Isn't RV still the AD?

[NT03]

Sorry , but this is the freakin SUNBELT. One team doesn't have so much more talent than any other team. Hell TD almost beat ASU a few times. No reason to ever get beat down by fellow conference mate , no matter what the situation.

We have talent , it's not like we are throwing out nothing but walk ons out there

Edited October 30, 2011 by NT03

[UNT Mean Green]

Sorry , but this is the freakin SUNBELT. One team doesn't have so much more talent than any other team. Hell TD almost beat ASU a few times. No reason to ever get beat down by fellow conference mate , no matter what the situation.

We have talent , it's not like we are throwing out nothing but walk ons out there

It's hard to agree that we do have the talent or experience on par with FIU, Lafayette, and Arkansas State. I just don't see it.

[Harry]

Sorry , but this is the freakin SUNBELT. One team doesn't have so much more talent than any other team. Hell TD almost beat ASU a few times. No reason to ever get beat down by fellow conference mate , no matter what the situation.

We have talent , it's not like we are throwing out nothing but walk ons out there

It's funny I would have agreed with you before the game, but after watching it I really think AState has a lot more talent than we do right now. Especially at QB and on the front lines.

[MeanGreenZen]

That ASU qb was legit. When is the last time we had a qb that good? Pre-Scott Hall. Pretty impressed with what our staff has accomplished with what they have to work with. Mac inherited talent similar to what June Jones inherited and is doing better than SMU in year 1 of Jones.

[NT03]

It's funny I would have agreed with you before the game, but after watching it I really think AState has a lot more talent than we do right now. Especially at QB and on the front lines.

Do they have more talent ? Yes. Not going to argue that at all.

But do they have so much more talent that the game should have gotten out of hand like it did? I just don't think so.

I do think ASU wins out and hopefully wins a BOWL game.

Edited October 30, 2011 by NT03

[meangreen2012]

Dropping the quarterback early in the first is rough. The team didn't show much heart after that which is pretty concerning, but all in all A-State is much more talented this year. The week off should definitely help get the mental aspect of the game fixed, and lend time to heal. Troy hasn't looked good at all so here is a great chance to get that road win!

[greenminer]

My point is everyone is unhappy about the game tonight but the person who left us in this mess is not here anymore to accept any of the blame.

Interesting note that I found while reading about Paterno's milestone today. From John Gagliardi's Wiki:

Gagliardi is known for his unique coaching approach, which he calls "Winning with No's." He instructs his players not to call him "coach", does not use a whistle or blocking sleds, prohibits tackling in practices, does not require his players to lift weights, and limits his team practices to 90 minutes.^[1]

Sound familiar?

[Arkstfan]

As I stated in a thread a few days back, Arkansas State placed more players on the pre-season all Sun Belt team voted by the coaches as well as unofficial media teams. ASU returned ten starters on defense. Tonight was junior QB Ryan Aplin's 23rd start and his 29th appearance as a QB for ASU. We returned three receivers who had 5 TD catches a piece last year.

Not only were the tools in place for Freeze, he had a year on campus as the offensive coordinator and knew which assistants were worth keeping and who needed to be let go.

You just can't expect the coaching change at UNT to have the same impact as the change at ASU.

As for the "it's the freaking Sun Belt" argument. Was Dickey the best coach in the Sun Belt 2001-2004 or did he have the best horses? One league loss in that span. That last Sun Belt champion UNT team was rated 102 in the nation by Sagarin. ASU is 57, ULL 81 and FIU 89. After the ASU game, UNT is rated 126 and would have been a 5 point dog to the 2004 edition of the Mean Green and a one point dog to the 2001 edition. I'm not a Sagarin fan but it is useful for these sorts of comparisons.

[Aquila_Viridis]

As for the "it's the freaking Sun Belt" argument. Was Dickey the best coach in the Sun Belt 2001-2004 or did he have the best horses? One league loss in that span. That last Sun Belt champion UNT team was rated 102 in the nation by Sagarin. ASU is 57, ULL 81 and FIU 89. After the ASU game, UNT is rated 126 and would have been a 5 point dog to the 2004 edition of the Mean Green and a one point dog to the 2001 edition. I'm not a Sagarin fan but it is useful for these sorts of comparisons.

Does this mean that the current stAte team is gonna travel back in time and erase the beatdowns that North Texas used to put on the former stAte teams??? Will my memory change too??? Will the old stAte teams have the new name???

[Arkstfan]

Does this mean that the current stAte team is gonna travel back in time and erase the beatdowns that North Texas used to put on the former stAte teams??? Will my memory change too??? Will the old stAte teams have the new name???

Not as long as your memory is good enough to recall that in games determined by 21 or more it is 4-2 ASU lead.

Largest margin of victory in the series was 56 at someone's Homecoming.

[Travis Scott]

Isn't RV still the AD?

Yes, and thank God he is. He had done amazing things at UNT. No, not perfect and not every decision was the best, but geez, he has grown our AD program leaps and bounds from where it was when he got here.

Let's all just take a breath and realize that we were not going to win the Sun Belt title this year. Our team is making great progress and going in the right direction. Last night was tough...injuries suck. We have a by-week to rest and get ready for another tough road game in Troy.

We now have hope in future of the program. Please don't drag RV or Coach Mac down when we are only 9 games into the first season of a new era. The wins will come.

[meangreendork]

Looks like a whole lot of ship jumpers here. Coach Mac got a bad hand from Dodge. He's turning the same handful of guys into actual wins. Not close shaves, but wins, even if there are just a few. Going 3-6 with a possibility of going 6-6 is a great place to be considering that with Dodge, I think we never eclipsed more than 1 win per season, and our mentality was, "can we scrape up 2-10 this season?" Now it's, "I think we can hit 5-7 or 6-6!"

That's enough proof. Back the coach, give him a season or two, and if he doesn't prove his worth, then feel free to dog him like we all dogged Dodge in year 3.

[FirefightnRick]

As I stated in a thread a few days back, Arkansas State placed more players on the pre-season all Sun Belt team voted by the coaches as well as unofficial media teams.

Freeze, he had a year on campus

Please stop feeding the EXCUSE TRAIN around here. No one expected NT to win out but getting our asses kicked between our shoulder blades by three Sunbelt team's, including two that very few had on their radar as the next conference power, plus the fact that we have the leagues' highest paid, most experienced staff who had a top ranked running back to build upon with last years offensive coordinator having a year on campus, also, is inexcusable.

Here's where two of the so called experts had the team's picked at preseason.

Phil Steele:

ASU 4th

UNT 6th

ULL 8th

The Sporting News:

UNT 3rd

ASU 8th

ULL 9th

We come out and beat the conferences' top defense at home one week with a bare cupboard. The next we can't even hardly get a first down. There's a reason this team stinks it up on the road, and player talent has absolutely nothing to do with it.

Rick

[untcampbell]

Don't try to reason with this fan base, Arkstfan.

Some of the manic/depressives here are encouraging our own guys to transfer.

By the way Arkstfan, I am not a fan of Jonesboro...something voodoo-ish happens when we play them. Have been to two games there. One in 2007 back when a Dodge team got up 21-0 that we lost 31-27 on a long pass with 2 seconds left. The other was way back in the late 80's, before Prozac. We lost something like 72-0. AState ran out of fireworks that year, literally.

I am not happy about the game at all, but please admit this: there IS a talent difference from top to bottom, even in the Belt.

Throw in some injuries at some key-placed positions, and its not even that good. One day, we will be on the right side of that difference.

And we will not ask our players to transfer.

Flame away, lads.

GMG

[PlummMeanGreen]

As I stated in a thread a few days back, Arkansas State placed more players on the pre-season all Sun Belt team voted by the coaches as well as unofficial media teams. ASU returned ten starters on defense. Tonight was junior QB Ryan Aplin's 23rd start and his 29th appearance as a QB for ASU. We returned three receivers who had 5 TD catches a piece last year.

Not only were the tools in place for Freeze, he had a year on campus as the offensive coordinator and knew which assistants were worth keeping and who needed to be let go.

You just can't expect the coaching change at UNT to have the same impact as the change at ASU.

As for the "it's the freaking Sun Belt" argument. Was Dickey the best coach in the Sun Belt 2001-2004 or did he have the best horses? One league loss in that span. That last Sun Belt champion UNT team was rated 102 in the nation by Sagarin. ASU is 57, ULL 81 and FIU 89. After the ASU game, UNT is rated 126 and would have been a 5 point dog to the 2004 edition of the Mean Green and a one point dog to the 2001 edition. I'm not a Sagarin fan but it is useful for these sorts of comparisons.

In The Red:

(1) 5 years of TDodge recruiting what this board complained about were too many DB's and WR's yet always a noticeable dearth of linemen is part of our problem today IMO.

(2) Dickey's last 2 years of recruitng were a train wreck as most would agree. The lack of interest from schools he would have liked to have upgraded his own career never happened and it seemed to create an attitude of bitterness from DD (which would happen with many under similar circustances).

All of the above add up to 7 years of bottom of the barrell recruiting (even for SBC standards). We did get some good football players during this time, but never 22 on both sides of the ball with across the board championship talent.

Still, my problem with the Sun Belt is how grossly ignored this league is by the national media toward our top team(s) as far as generating interests to vote for any of them in the Top 25 polls. The MAC has even had a few Top 25 ranked teams in years past as compared to the 'Belt. Most of us always want our best team to break that drought.

As posted in another thread, since Fry left this program in 1978 Mean Green football has trended downward as far as wins versus losses with stats that I don't even want to post again. I didn't realize just how bad it has been until I saw it on the Wikipedia write up on North Texas Mean Green. It's depressing and I suppose the reason we went a different route in the kind of HFC we would hire last go around. Coach McCarney told us all months ago what we were up against, ie, what many on this board still do not want to accept and that is what I posted above in the red letters.

The coaches represented in red (of course) did not have Apogee Stadium to recruit toward, but we of the Mean Green Nation are going to still have to exhibit a trait we are all but thread bare in exhibiting and that is the trait of patience.

Addendum: Still amazing is that if this football team is not too injured to run the table with our last 3 games and we got lucky and won all 3.....we would be bowl elgible and this board which too many times has both Saul Allinsky "isolate & demonize" along with Roman Mob characterstics would all be so ready to forgive and forget. We are a fickle (but for the most part) loyal fan base but post Fry downward trending we sorta' have 1 or 2 reasons to be this way.

GMG!

Edited October 30, 2011 by PlummMeanGreen

[FirefightnRick]

Some of the manic/depressives here are encouraging our own guys to transfer.

And we will not ask our players to transfer.

Maybe I missed it. Please point out where ONE poster here encouraged or asked any of our players to transfer?

Rick

Edited October 30, 2011 by FirefightnRick

[oldguystudent]

I'm pretty sure the Ark St. greeks just crowd the stadium and heckle creatively. Clearly, that's the edge.

[greenminer]

LaMo is terrible. Trump their D all you want, but they have two wins and one of them is Grambling State.

Where is the thread calling all teams who beat Troy awesome? Because they were picked second in the league before we started this roller coaster ride.

[untcampbell]

My apology for not getting it absolutely correct, but the inference below is close enough, Rick:

"Ossy's getting the shaft. I hope for his sake he leave (sic) at the end of the year. If he thinks he'll ever be in an even competition at UNT for QB much less waterboy and he's lying to him (sic)."

GMG

[FirefightnRick]

My apology for not getting it absolutely correct, but the inference below is close enough, Rick:

"Ossy's getting the shaft. I hope for his sake he leave (sic) at the end of the year. If he thinks he'll ever be in an even competition at UNT for QB much less waterboy and he's lying to him (sic).

That's someone hoping for the best( in their anonymous opinion) for the sake of another. I don't read any encouragement at all. Although given the fact that we have now lost 4 potential starters/contributors under this current staff I can see where it might be a safe prediction.

Safe predictions are still allowed here on a fan message board isn't it?

Probably not.

Rick

Edited October 30, 2011 by FirefightnRick

[untcampbell]

I am not the one that sets the rules on this board, but I would assume, Rick, that 'safe predictions' are allowed.

I will leave it to the player to decide what is best for him.

GMG

[NT03]

We have a team that is 4 - 1 and has a chance to WIN the conference title. That same team got embarrassed at home by a average FCS team.

Once again the SUNBELT is at the bottom of the conference rankings , not even a debate who is # 11.

And yes ULM is what I would consider terrible , yet they almost beat this same team that blew us out. So I'll still contend that the talent difference is not some great mountain

We played Arkansas State , not Arkansas.

C'mon people , raise your expectations

Edited October 30, 2011 by NT03

[Green P1]

Odds are that we will not have as much talent as them next year, or the next year after that, or the next year after that.... so we just relax and take our asskickings until the entire team is cycled new?

Edited October 30, 2011 by Green P1