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DeepGreen
I'm one of the old traditionalists regarding football uniforms, but I'm also a realist. And you are correct- kids like this stuff, and if you can close in and sign one or two solid HS players because of the great uniforms North Texas wears then it's worth the change. That is why the helmet design below is one of my favorites. The designer, a GoMeanGreen poster, was way ahead of his time when he created a series of similar helmet designs.

stebo
First off - Happy New Years to all!

Quick reminder - the Houston game was moved to 2011 in order to have a recognizable opponent for the stadium opening. This allowed our inaugural season to contain both Houston and Indiana (in OOC) at home this year. That hurts the 2012 schedule but you have to weigh the pros vs the cons. We moved that game and were able to open the stadium in week 2 rather than week 4.

I believe that our OOC home opponents have been pretty solid over the last few years: Tulsa (2008), Ohio (2009), Army (2009), Rice (2010), Kansas State (2010), Houston (2011), Indiana (2011).

I am sure that RV is trying to get another team into Denton but I don't want him to move away from his scheduling philosophy to make it happen. We need wins in 2012 and if that means one less game at home, I am ok with that.

As for UTSA's schedule... Most of those game were scehduled when UTSA planned to move up as an Independent. When the WAC invite came along, it was a perfect alignment of the stars. Half of those games get cancelled if they start winning. As it stands - they are an easy win on the road and it is a great opportunity for a school to recruit that area without risking a loss. In the past, the only option they had was Austin.

I still would like to see them invited to the Belt. It is very impressive that they were able to schedule that many games with recognizable teams and their attendance was outstanding for Year 1.
FirefightnRick
Sarah Stanley with another game scoring in double figures and stepping up against a bigger team when we needed her most.


And how about our fire breathing dragon on the sidelines getting teed up and lighting a fire under this team to get them down the stretch and to the finish line in this game? Loved it!



Rick
Harry
As an addendum to my earlier post I wanted to add a couple of freshman redshirts that came on the scene in 2011:

Antonio Johnson (6-5, 285) - Johnson played a lot and started pretty much the entire season at left tackle. He made some mistakes, but without question figures into the future in a big time way. North Texas has ALWAYS struggled to land legitimate offensive tackles and this kid has the size and tools to be very, very good.

Blake Dunham (6-1, 215) - Blake did not play much this year from what I can tell. With Troy Kokjohn graduating, Dunham appears to be the heir apparent at deep snapper so look for his name more next year.

Mason YBarbo (6-2, 312) - This kid was the onus of me writing this redshirt specific update. I thought he had a fantastic year and his performance was unfairly overshadowed by the emergence of Lemon. Ybarbo started every single game this season at left guard ahead, and was pretty damn solid.

Derrick Teagarden (5-10, 165) - Teagarden - recruited as a QB but moved to WR - played in 3 games and had one reception for 22-yards.

Sadly, that's where the story ends in terms of redshirt freshmen who were on scholarship this season. The good news is we have 10 coming back in 2012.

So why so few redshirt freshmen this year you might ask? Let's take a quick look back at the final two years of recruiting (2009/2010) under Dodge to determine why:

2009 Dodge Class

Signed 21 total 13 HS and 8 Jucos. Part of the problem was Dodge went so heavy JUCO in this recruiting year (2009) with 8 spots. In his mind (and most others) if he did not have a winning season he was gone. He did hit on a couple, in particular juco defensive tackles Kelvin Jackson and Shavod Atkinson as well as WR Mike Outlaw. High School recruiting in that 2009 season in retrospect was appalling. Defections included DE Tyler Washington, DB Chevy Bennett (who played against us with UH), WR Darius Carey, TE Austin Fitzpatrick, WR Daniel Mayberry, OL John Noble, Safety DeAundre Stewart, DT Kyle White. That's 8 of 13 original high school signees who are no longer with the team.

2010 Dodge Class

Signed 22 total with 12 HS and 10 Jucos. I remember saying at the time I could not recall North Texas EVER signing 10 juco players and frankly it worried me and in hindsight it probably shouldn't have been allowed. However, you have to let your coach choose his players. The interesting thing is Dodge didn't see nearly as many defections in this class as he did from the 2009 group. OL Graylin Hawkins, JUCO DB Jamison Hughes, DB DeAundre Wood made up the defections from this class. To Dodge's credit there were some good high school players in this class including, LB Zach Orr, WR Brelan Chancellor, OL Antonio Johnson, K Zach Olen, LB Will Wright, and OL Mason YBarbo. The problem in this particular class was due to the fact Dodge was trying to save his job forcing him to go heavily the juco route. His high school recruiting was decent but the good ones had to play right away and there just weren't enough of them due to heavy juco recruiting.

The Future

North Texas signed 22 players in 2011 - 20 HS and 2 Jucos, both of which were mid-terms available for spring training and one (Brent Osborn) having 3-years of eligibility. When Coach Mac says he wants to build this program through the high school ranks there is a reason. High school players can be redshirted allowing them an additional year to develop physically and meld into the system. High school players can often give you 2,3 or in some cases 4 solid years of performance whereas your lucky if a JUCO can give you 1.5. Dickey - I thought in his early years- did a pretty nice job of building through the HS ranks and adding quality JUCO's who fit critical needs or were difference makers. It appears that Mac will do the same thing and focus on using high school players to rebuild the program. I also think that the day of landing superstar JUCO talent is going by the wayside for mid-majors to a certain extent. K-State used to live off of Jucos because other Big 12 schools wouldn't sign them. When you see Mack Brown signing Juco's at Texas now you know the cat's out of the bag.

WE BELIEVE IN THE MEAN GREEN!

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