2016 Schedule Series: Bethune Cookman

Better Know Bethune-Cookman

We have a lot of time on our hands before football returns to us, concussed and all. In the interim let us know our opponents a little bit better. I will not over-football you, or pour statistics all over your head. Instead, we can briefly browse wikipedia to learn some things about the teams our favorite college football squad will face come the fall. Sure, you could be doing worthwhile things, but do this instead.

The last time UNT hosted an HBCU school, everyone in the stands was enraptured with the Texas Southern dance team, and rightly so. They were pretty dope.

Bethune-Cookman is hyphenated because it comes from a merger of the Mary McLeod Bethune Training school and the Cookman Institute. You might know Mary McCleod Bethune as an activist, philanthropist, and member of FDR’s Black Cabinet. She was a pretty awesome person. She’s in the National Women’s Hall of Fame and she carried a cane because it gave her ‘swank’. So she was better than you.

Her wikipedia entry is extensive and interesting. Click on some of the reference sources for more very interesting things.

Their band, The Pride is awesome, also. I don’t know if they will be bringing the band to Denton, but that would be pretty legit.

White Hall, is on the national register of historic places. This is cool, but not necessarily relevant as they will be visiting Denton.

There is a blog. It is called Hail Wildcats. It looks like it is a one-man operation. I can relate.

BCU had a good squad last season, losing only two games. One was to Miami 45-0, which was understandable, and the second was North Carolina A&T in their only MEAC loss. In the years before 2015, we would have easily penned this game as a win but after the Portland State Evisceration, no game is a given, no matter the coach.

BCU is a good team, and should give an unprepared North Texas a challenge. Given that the matchup will be only the second game under Seth Littrell’s watch, I do not expect our guys to give up like they did against PSU ¹.

FBS-FCS scheduling is not as favorable as it once was, but lots of teams have these games on their schedules from long ago, when it was a lot more common and uncontroversial. While I am not excited about an FCS matchup, there is some good that comes from it. It is an easy boost if your team is good and winning as the average fan gets to see a high scoring show, and the press — whatever press there is now — gets to rave a bit about the lopsided scores.

For a Power 5 conference, FCS match ups do very little. For a program in CUSA, the lopsided scores make a mid-major program feel good in the way that a Power 5 program satiates their fans by playing a Sun Belt/CUSA program.

I don’t love it, as I am not really excited about a Bethune-Cookman game, but I do not hate it either. Last year was an example of the worst that could happen. Even then, that is more indicative of deep problems in the program than anything else. We saw the previous year that Dan McCarney did not have the firmest grasp on his program, and with the ‘resignation’ of AD Rick Villarreal, we see that the underpinnings of the athletic department were not strong.

If my choice is yet another beat down by a National Title contender, or a ‘guaranteed’ win against an FCS program, I take the latter. I’ve sat through enough beat downs and an FCS matchup is a balance to the Florida game a week later.