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On 10/15/2021 at 2:27 PM, MeanGreenTexan said:

Hey MWC fans.  North Texas fan here.
Wow!  296 pages!  That's impressive.   I'll do my part to help it get to 300.   I must admit though, I've only read the last 10 pages or so.  Please forgive me if one of my fellow alumni already came on here and said all of this!

Count me as one who is very hopeful my Alma Mater might join y'all in the MWC.   With the defections of Cincy, Houston & UCF from the AAC, y'all are no longer just competing with them as the best G5 conference... you're head & shoulders above, IMO.

Wanted to highlight utgrizfan's post here as I think he has some great info, and I hope I can supplement.

I think he's spot-on in his assessment of North Texas.   It really sucks that our football team has backslid over the past 2 seasons and all of this conference movement is happening right now.  Believe me, UNT fans are not happy about this and are loudly calling for our HC to be fired.  With Littrell making $2mil/yr, I would think there might be a lot of interest in the job if it came open.   Outside of football results on the gridiron, UNT has just about everything else going for us:  A Conference Champion basketball team that won a game in the NCAA Tourney this past year, very competitive Olympic Sports, Fantastic facilities, and as another poster pointed out, Academically, NT is a Carnegie Tier 1 Research University with a large enrollment (over 42,000 students!)  UNT is the flagship University of our own System.  We're not a Texas, A&M, or TX State system school.  Our athletics budget is 2nd in C-USA behind Old Dominion at over $40mil/yr.
Of course, a draw for you guys is getting back into Texas markets & strengthening your Texas recruiting opportunities (not that y'all aren't drawing from Texas already).  Our University President is former UNLV President Neal Smatresk, who hopefully still has some friends out West!

Looking at other nearby teams, here's kinda how they're perceived in Texas:
UTEP - Obviously they make sense geographically since they're already in the Mountain Time Zone... but I'm here to tell you they're a University of Texas System School that does not have the financial backing to really compete in the MWC.  Heck, they're barely treading water in C-USA.   Geography is the only thing going for these guys in regards to MWC membership.  I can't really see any other reason why the MWC would consider them.    El Paso is not a large market & is way too far away from the types of recruiting hotbeds you're looking for.  It would be an odd move to pick them up IMO.
UTSA - This is an Athletic Department in it's infancy.   They've been playing football for 10.5 seasons total.    Anything they bring to the table is purely potential.  San Antonio is a huge city, and is a very nice recruiting spot.   They just so happen to have hit on their latest football coach hire, and are doing great right now.   They rent the Alamodome and have very very poor facilities (to be expected for such a new, rapidly-built Athletics Department).   They're charging their students a huge Athletics fee, and are still having a hard time financing any of their facilities projects.   Nice potential, but again, a UT system school that does not have the financial backing to compete in the MWC (at least, not right now).  If they can somehow show an actionable plan (re: fundraising) to get their facilities up to MWC standards, they'd be a fine add.
TXSt. - Y'all.   No.   This school is universally recognized in Texas as a "party school".  Not serious about Academics, Arts or Athletics.   They'd bring nothing to the table for the MWC other than the Central Texas market/recruiting grounds, which you'd get with UTSA.  Stay away.

This is a dumb post from a No. Tex fan who seems to want to ingratiate himself to the MW posters, but does not know how things work.

UTSA is in the AP Top 25 right now, so there is quite a bit more there than just "purely potential."  No. Tex can only dream of such success.  They've fired just about every football coach they have had since 1978, and their fan support is weak.  Published attendance numbers usually bear no resemblance to what you see in the stadium on game day.  UTSA does need a new basketball gym, but, otherwise, the UTSA facilities are quite good.  Take a look at the magnificent new athletic performance center.  Also, the Alamodome is a great facility.  It works for UTSA, because it is near the River Walk and all the entertainment of downtown San Antonio.  

He keeps writing that UTEP and UTSA are UT System schools with out the financial backing to compete in the MW.  This is irrelevant and misleading.  Being in the UT System or not has no bearing on athletic department success or lack thereof.  Athletic departments in Texas can accept no tax payer money, so it's up to the athletic departments and universities to generate their own success.  As an aside, the UT System board of regents are supportive of all its universities and will entertain any reasonable proposal from its member institutions regarding major items such as conference re-alignment. 

Also, being the so-called "flagship" of the tiny UNT System isn't much to brag about.  There are a grand total of 3 institutions.  One is UNT Dallas which was an economic development project in South Dallas that has failed to meet all enrollment projections since its inception.  It's a have-a-pulse admission university.  The UT System and A&M System wanted NOTHING to do with this project.   In fact, this fledgling school has been a big SUCK on No. Texas Denton resources and bond capacity.  The other system institution is a respectable osteopathic/medical school in Fort Worth.  (But nothing on the scale of the UT System medical units.)   A few years ago, No. Tex Denton attempted to merge the Fort Worth institution into the Denton campus in an effort to count the Fort Worth research dollars with its own, because the No. Texas Denton campus could not grow its research numbers (still true).  The Fort Worth people wanted NOTHING to do with being merged into the Denton campus.  The howl could be heard across the metroplex, and the proposal was dropped.  Likewise, TWU in Denton wants NOTHING to do with UNT or the puny UNT System.  

Also, trying to knock Texas State as a party school is weak.  There are plenty of party universities in P5 conferences.  And, they are quite reputable with academics. 

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9 hours ago, nvspuds said:

I like Spokane..My mom was born there..I was just pointing out that Gonzaga being good is the money driver. If Gonzaga isn't good, Spokane doesn't have a population that is very large..

I retired to Spokane recently. 

Spokane metro population is more than Reno's and comparable to Boise metro population.

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Just now, Nevada2012 said:

I retired to Spokane recently. 

Spokane metro population is more than Reno's and comparable to Boise metro population.

Boise and Reno are small markets..So is Spokane..If Gonzaga basketball falls off Spokane is not a difference maker viewer wise. 

I am okay if Gonzaga wants to come..I would be against giving them some sweetheart deal to do it...

They used the MW to coerce the WCC to give them more dough, better tv slots and a say in scheduling..

 

 

 

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3 minutes ago, nvspuds said:

Boise and Reno are small markets..So is Spokane..If Gonzaga basketball falls off Spokane is not a difference maker viewer wise. 

I am okay if Gonzaga wants to come..I would be against giving them some sweetheart deal to do it...

They used the MW to coerce the WCC to give them more dough, better tv slots and a say in scheduling..

 

 

 

This.  I'm surprised at the amount of people that want to cut a special deal with Gonzaga considering how much angst there is regarding Boise's deal.  

No more special deals for any teams unless it is something like Hawaii's situation, although I'd like to even that out as well.  

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3 hours ago, Wyobraska said:

This.  I'm surprised at the amount of people that want to cut a special deal with Gonzaga considering how much angst there is regarding Boise's deal.  

No more special deals for any teams unless it is something like Hawaii's situation, although I'd like to even that out as well.  

Has anybody said “get Gonzaga no matter what deal they want”? I definitely haven’t read every post in this thread, but I don’t recall seeing this sentiment. 

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6 hours ago, SalinasSpartan said:

Has anybody said “get Gonzaga no matter what deal they want”? I definitely haven’t read every post in this thread, but I don’t recall seeing this sentiment. 

There has definitely been some.  Not everyone obviously, but enough people.  Might have been some of the other threads too. 

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20 hours ago, HawaiiMongoose said:

Some food-for-thought attendance numbers:

  • North Texas (1-4 coming in) vs. Marshall (3-3) in Denton - 13,123
  • Texas State (2-3) vs. Troy (3-3) in San Marcos - 15,083
  • UTEP (5-1) vs. Louisiana Tech (2-3) in El Paso - 18,468
  • UTSA (6-0) vs. Rice (2-3) in San Antonio - 27,515

North Texas and Texas State lost to drop to 1-5 and 2-4 respectively.  UTEP and UTSA won to improve to 6-1 and 7-0 respectively.

SMU had a bye yesterday and was on the road last week.  Two weeks ago it took a 4-0 record into a home game against 1-3 USF and drew 23,355 fans.

Rice had a bye last week.  Two weeks ago it took a 1-3 record into a home game against 1-3 USM and drew 16,031.

Here are yesterday’s MWC game home attendance numbers for comparison:

  • New Mexico (vs. Colorado State) - 15,403
  • San Jose State (vs. San Diego State) - 17,177
  • Wyoming (vs. Fresno State) - 20,002
  • UNLV (vs. Utah State) - 21,322
  • Nevada (vs. Hawaii) - 22,098
  • Boise State (vs. Air Force) - 34,446

 

This is so frustrating.   
Gridiron results are the biggest lens into a University's athletics program for sure.   I completely understand y'all would be apprehensive about UNT due to how awful our FB is right now.   I also completely understand how you'd be piqued by a UTSA school now in the top 25.  UTSA made a home run hire in Jeff Traylor, who has extremely strong high school connections across East Texas and can pretty much get any non 5* guy coming out of there.   Mark my words, he won't be at UTSA for long, especially if he does something special with them this season (I don't see a team that can beat them in C-USA West, so they'll likely be undefeated heading into the C-USA Championship game).  They'll need to make another great hire to keep this momentum going.  That's the life of a G5 school I suppose.   Again, there is potential there!

What sucks is that UNT has positioned ourselves well everywhere else it counts... and all of this opportunity is happening RIGHT NOW, while our football product is in the toilet.   The optics are bad ("UNT Football sucks must mean UNT sucks", I get it).
As y'all may recall from old TCU crowds, DFW is a bandwagon fan town with the exception of the Cowboys (Cowboys fans show up no matter what).   UNT has over 100k alumni in the DFW area alone.   I guarantee you, if UNT were 7-0 and ranked #24 in the nation, Apogee Stadium would be SRO.  Heck, we were pulling in 30k+ crowds with only 9 wins!  As it is, coming off of back-to-back 4-win seasons, and what is now looking like a 1-11 season, the fans don't want to show up.  I'm surprised 13k were there on Friday night (I was one of those suckers)!   Everyone knows Littrell is gone after the year (if not sooner), and with it being a top-10-paying G5 job (Littrell makes double Traylor's salary, which is also frustrating!), consensus is that the opening will be flooded with quality candidates.  Ideally, whoever we hire will do for us what Traylor is doing for UTSA!

Hoping Thompson and y'all's University Presidents might overlook this season's football trainwreck and see all of the other great things going on in Denton and UNT's football potential (the last remaining piece to be strictly "potential"... everything else is currently realized) moving forward!   Fingers crossed!

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1 minute ago, MeanGreenTexan said:

This is so frustrating.   
Gridiron results are the biggest lens into a University's athletics program for sure.   I completely understand y'all would be apprehensive about UNT due to how awful our FB is right now.   I also completely understand how you'd be piqued by a UTSA school now in the top 25.  UTSA made a home run hire in Jeff Traylor, who has extremely strong high school connections across East Texas and can pretty much get any non 5* guy coming out of there.   Mark my words, he won't be at UTSA for long, especially if he does something special with them this season (I don't see a team that can beat them in C-USA West, so they'll likely be undefeated heading into the C-USA Championship game).  They'll need to make another great hire to keep this momentum going.  That's the life of a G5 school I suppose.   Again, there is potential there!

What sucks is that UNT has positioned ourselves well everywhere else it counts... and all of this opportunity is happening RIGHT NOW, while our football product is in the toilet.   The optics are bad ("UNT Football sucks must mean UNT sucks", I get it).
As y'all may recall from old TCU crowds, DFW is a bandwagon fan town with the exception of the Cowboys (Cowboys fans show up no matter what).   UNT has over 100k alumni in the DFW area alone.   I guarantee you, if UNT were 7-0 and ranked #24 in the nation, Apogee Stadium would be SRO.  Heck, we were pulling in 30k+ crowds with only 9 wins!  As it is, coming off of back-to-back 4-win seasons, and what is now looking like a 1-11 season, the fans don't want to show up.  I'm surprised 13k were there on Friday night (I was one of those suckers)!   Everyone knows Littrell is gone after the year (if not sooner), and with it being a top-10-paying G5 job (Littrell makes double Traylor's salary, which is also frustrating!), consensus is that the opening will be flooded with quality candidates.  Ideally, whoever we hire will do for us what Traylor is doing for UTSA!

Hoping Thompson and y'all's University Presidents might overlook this season's football trainwreck and see all of the other great things going on in Denton and UNT's football potential (the last remaining piece to be strictly "potential"... everything else is currently realized) moving forward!   Fingers crossed!

I, personally, don't think the MW will expand but if they do it will have more to do with a potential tv contract than anything else..

 

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37 minutes ago, MeanGreenTexan said:



What sucks is that UNT has positioned ourselves well everywhere else it counts... and all of this opportunity is happening RIGHT NOW, while our football product is in the toilet.   The optics are bad ("UNT Football sucks must mean UNT sucks", I get it).
As y'all may recall from old TCU crowds, DFW is a bandwagon fan town with the exception of the Cowboys (Cowboys fans show up no matter what).   UNT has over 100k alumni in the DFW area alone.   I guarantee you, if UNT were 7-0 and ranked #24 in the nation, Apogee Stadium would be SRO.  Heck, we were pulling in 30k+ crowds with only 9 wins!  As it is, coming off of back-to-back 4-win seasons, and what is now looking like a 1-11 season, the fans don't want to show up.  I'm surprised 13k were there on Friday night (I was one of those suckers)!   Everyone knows Littrell is gone after the year (if not sooner), and with it being a top-10-paying G5 job (Littrell makes double Traylor's salary, which is also frustrating!), consensus is that the opening will be flooded with quality candidates.  Ideally, whoever we hire will do for us what Traylor is doing for UTSA!

Hoping Thompson and y'all's University Presidents might overlook this season's football trainwreck and see all of the other great things going on in Denton and UNT's football potential (the last remaining piece to be strictly "potential"... everything else is currently realized) moving forward!   Fingers crossed!

Apogee Stadium, capacity 30,850, has never had a sell out.  The average was 22 and 23k during the 2017 and 2018 9 win seasons (2 of the 3 winning seasons in the last 17 years).  Official home attendance figures for the team's first six seasons at Apogee Stadium averaged 18,563 per game, which is 60% of its capacity of 30,850.

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This has made a lot of people very angry and been widely regarded as a bad move.

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3 minutes ago, RSF said:

Apogee Stadium, capacity 30k, has never had a sell out.  The average was 23k during the 2018 9-4 season.  Official home attendance figures for the team's first six seasons at Apogee Stadium averaged 18,563 per game, which is 60% of its capacity of 30,850.


Correct.   There are a myriad of excuses for this, none of them very good.  
I will say, since President Smatresk & AD Wren Baker have come on board in 2014 & 2016 respectively, UNT has won at least 1 C-USA championship in every single sport we sponsor... with the exception of Seth Littrell's dumpster fire (closest he got was a division championship).   Littrell was hired prior to Wren Baker's arrival.   Hopefully, Baker's next hire is like all of his others.   
If you're challenging that a ranked North Texas team wouldn't sell out Apogee... I believe you're wrong, but I guess we'd just have to see (something I look forward to).   As for Apogee's capacity, how big of a stadium would you propose building back in 2010 while UNT was parked in the SBC?   Heck, CSU's brand new stadium (which is beautiful, btw) only has 5,650 more seats than Apogee!
It was specifically designed to allow for easy expansion, mainly via a 2nd deck over the student side.  Obviously, that hasn't been necessary yet. 

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2 minutes ago, BacksThePack said:

I'd much rather have UNT who can put together an 9 win season in football every now and then and do us proud in MBB.

One tournament win and 4 lifetime appearances (same as UTSA, BTW) is 'doing us proud'?

 

 

Aw righty, then....

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In the beginning the Universe was created.
This has made a lot of people very angry and been widely regarded as a bad move.

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18 hours ago, Denton County said:

This is a dumb post from a No. Tex fan who seems to want to ingratiate himself to the MW posters, but does not know how things work.

UTSA is in the AP Top 25 right now, so there is quite a bit more there than just "purely potential."  No. Tex can only dream of such success.  They've fired just about every football coach they have had since 1978, and their fan support is weak.  Published attendance numbers usually bear no resemblance to what you see in the stadium on game day.  UTSA does need a new basketball gym, but, otherwise, the UTSA facilities are quite good.  Take a look at the magnificent new athletic performance center.  Also, the Alamodome is a great facility.  It works for UTSA, because it is near the River Walk and all the entertainment of downtown San Antonio.  

He keeps writing that UTEP and UTSA are UT System schools with out the financial backing to compete in the MW.  This is irrelevant and misleading.  Being in the UT System or not has no bearing on athletic department success or lack thereof.  Athletic departments in Texas can accept no tax payer money, so it's up to the athletic departments and universities to generate their own success.  As an aside, the UT System board of regents are supportive of all its universities and will entertain any reasonable proposal from its member institutions regarding major items such as conference re-alignment. 

Also, being the so-called "flagship" of the tiny UNT System isn't much to brag about.  There are a grand total of 3 institutions.  One is UNT Dallas which was an economic development project in South Dallas that has failed to meet all enrollment projections since its inception.  It's a have-a-pulse admission university.  The UT System and A&M System wanted NOTHING to do with this project.   In fact, this fledgling school has been a big SUCK on No. Texas Denton resources and bond capacity.  The other system institution is a respectable osteopathic/medical school in Fort Worth.  (But nothing on the scale of the UT System medical units.)   A few years ago, No. Tex Denton attempted to merge the Fort Worth institution into the Denton campus in an effort to count the Fort Worth research dollars with its own, because the No. Texas Denton campus could not grow its research numbers (still true).  The Fort Worth people wanted NOTHING to do with being merged into the Denton campus.  The howl could be heard across the metroplex, and the proposal was dropped.  Likewise, TWU in Denton wants NOTHING to do with UNT or the puny UNT System.  

Also, trying to knock Texas State as a party school is weak.  There are plenty of party universities in P5 conferences.  And, they are quite reputable with academics. 

We've gotten a lot of info from a lot of sources but I like your take.  So which 2 who would you recommend today & on potential.

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17 hours ago, Wyobraska said:

This.  I'm surprised at the amount of people that want to cut a special deal with Gonzaga considering how much angst there is regarding Boise's deal.  

No more special deals for any teams unless it is something like Hawaii's situation, although I'd like to even that out as well.  

Frankly I don't much care one way or another but my opinion is simply based on the belief that the MWC's future as a football conference isn't bright. SDSU, Boise and Air Force will all probably be gone within the next decade and one or two other current quality football members could also leave depending on B12 and P12 realignment. So the conference needs to focus on maximizing basketball income and if it could still manage to lure Gonzaga, it could probably also then get Wichita State away from the Aresco conference. NCAA tourney credits add up if, rather than falling on your face most of the time, your teams actually WIN games in the Dance.

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