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Three things: 1. I'm glad you love this school and do as much as you can to bring others into the fold. I hope you never stop. Lord knows we need as many as we can find. 2. In the same post that you claim to be about supporting our student athletes you feel the need to back handedly criticize and demean the career/accomplishments of one of our recent high profile family members. There were plenty of remarks as to the level of effort that particular player(legitimate or not) gave under Johnny, but somehow a team down two of its best players came together and made it to it's conference tournament final. Did he live up to the lofty hype put upon his shoulders during his time at out school? No. Outside of Rodger Franklin did any player on his team's performance improve from JJ's last to Benny's first season? No. I guess you can blame said player for not only his own, but the rest of his team's lack of progression if you like. Be that your prerogative, I sure don't know what you think coaches are there for. 3. It's wonderful that you can afford to give at the level that you choose to do so. It's even more wonderful that you're able to recruit friends that can afford to give at a similar level. I can't. I don't have any friends to recruit that can. Odds are I probably won't ever. Maybe I read your post wrong and I'm way off base, but the assertion that people being negative, while not afforded an insiders view of college athletics, is every bit as silly as the argument that you can't talk about it if you haven't played it. Again, maybe I'm way off base, maybe I've interpreted it all wrong, but this post read every bit as much condescending/offensive as the one you were apologizing for.

Why the hell would you pull people OUT of Denton? The HoD crowd was because of success. The UGA game got us attention. People came to the UTEP game and I'd bet a LOT of money had the weather not been unseasonably cold, we would've outdid the UTEP attendance vs UTSA. People aren't coming to games because historically we've sucked not because they can't drive 45 minutes to Denton. We need people IN Denton, experiencing the new campus, the new stadium, the top notch tailgating, and the best small town in America & the best college town in Texas. We need people to come early, grab lunch at RG Burgers, Crooked Crust or LSA, grab beer at Midway Mart, check out the Square, pop in some shops, walk around campus and head over to the game. We need to be working up the "college" aspect. We have a small, intimate and loud stadium on a beautiful campus in an incredible city. Re-experience UNT, not fighting off muggers at Fair Park or buying $50 parking and $10 beers at Jerry World. I'd bet a lot of the new fans that showed up at the HoD Bowl haven't been back to campus in forever. No offense to alumni as I'm starting to want to move on from the student section myself, the students are what make college games and our student turnout rivaled SEC teams vs Rice and UTEP. Go to Dallas, and it becomes UTSA. Big crowd, dead atmosphere. Giving up home games for Dallas games would be idiotic and would kill student attendance. I realize it's SEC, but Atlanta people all drive into Athens for Georgia. That's 45 minutes away from Atlanta. College Station with A&M. They come to experience the town and the college. We have a town and college equalled to those two (way superior to CStat) and we need to be taking advantage. Stop with this silly Dallas talk. We don't even need to be Dallas's team. We need to be NORTH Texas's team. Sanger, Krum, Denton, Gainesville, Justin, Prosper, McKinney, Aubrey...those are the places we need to mooch off of. Way too much competition in DFW with the Dallas Brandon Weedens and Big 12 TCU. If I was in the marketing office, I'd be putting up billboards, signs all over the little towns to the North and sides of us, get the coaches doing caravans over there, getting local business interested, tons of advertising, etc. Instead of traveling 2 hours to OU, come 20 minutes to Apogee. Instead of traveling an hour and a half to TCU, come 20 minutes to Apogee. Nobody wants to admit defeat, but the alumni from DFW will come if we win. The T-shirts will come if they care. Make them care. Keep a minimum of advertising inside the metroplex and expand to real NORTH Texas. Tired of hearing DFW DFW DFW when there are way more than enough people ripe for the picking surrounding us that would fill a 50,000 seat Apogee.

April 2nd, according to a Mike Grant comment at the bottom of the 2nd link http://www.nfl.com/news/story/0ap2000000326264/article/2014-pro-days-schedule - - - - http://www.nfl.com/news/story/0ap2000000326264/article/2014-pro-days-schedule#Alphabetical

So trying Gainsville this year means that we have given up on Fort Worth entirely? I am confused by this. So they are having an event somewhere else this year. What's the big deal? I would bet that it will be back in Fort Worth again next year. Not sure why we are reading so much into this. There are any number of reasons that they might not have it in Fort Worth that are not nefarious or problematic. Could be something as simple as finding a place to host the event that meets the needs. Not sure why we need to assume that we have given up on the city.

"Coach Benford barring some natural disaster is going to coach this team next year. That is the way it is." This means we are either broke or are exercising horrible, horrible judgment. Either way, it's depressing as hell. I'm starting to understand why so many NT alumni have just given up on athletics over the decades. "They both stuck it through this year and we had a relatively good time watching NT basketball with way lowered expectations." "Lowered expectations" appears to be the only prescription for the Benford blues. Some fans (such as most on this site) can enjoy the Mean Green whenever, wherever. I'm proud to say that I'm in this group. The vast majority of NT students and alumni, however, just go back to watching Big XII teams when it looks like we're not taking things seriously. That is the way it is.

Haven't you heard? It's was the coaches' fault.

So you're going to abandon the western half of the metroplex to cater to Gainsville. Outstanding.

MGB (updated with wrap-up thoughts): http://meangreenblog.dentonrc.com/2014/03/spring-practice-live-blog-tuesday-edition.html/

Yeah, if anything success in one usually comes at the detriment of the other. A few schools succeed in both simultaneously (like say the year Florida won both national titles), but it's the exception rather than the rule.

We'll see. North Texas went to the dance 2X while mired in football purgatory.

Do we ever have the perfect candidate...

I've been sick. I'll start posting some this afternoon. I just want to say this: Unless Putin's plan is to round up the Ukrainians and send them to death camps, stop calling him Hitler. You don't make your argument against him stronger, you just cheapen what Hitler did. It's just sensationalism and bad history. You already have the perfect archetype to call him: STALIN!

I think you mean football? This is the basketball forum though. We had an awful basketball year, the past 2 years.

This has last year of Dodge written all over it.

What MGC newsletter?

With his performance and the number of publications mentioning him, I'm sure coaches are aware of Brelan and he'll at least get a chance to get a look one way or another over the next few months.

Mike...I was there as well....and I went to the Dallas, Denton and Plano events as well....all were better attended than the Ft Worth event. Don't misunderstand...I am not advocating abandoning Ft Worth. But, I see no reason to keep hitting ones head against a wall when history has shown that turnout is sparse as best in FT Worth the last few years. Who knows what the future holds...hopefully, FT Worth will be back on the agenda.

C-USA will go away first.

You are right. I don't know what goes on behind closed doors in the AD, and I don't care. And you know what, I don't want to. I want to have expectations and never get too close that my judgement is clouded because of personal friendships. I could care less about being called a jerk (I'm pretty sure you called me this and not an idiot, but either way no biggie). Truth be told, I can be a jerk, so no harm, no foul. What does bother me is you choose to blame the only 5 star player ever to attend this university for a lack of effort, suggesting that was our undoing last season. This is the same thing I have heard from others close to the AD. Hell, it's the same thing RV basically said on a podcast with Harry. What worries me is that this group will continue to close their eyes and lie to themselves, telling themselves "just wait till Carrington Ward and Greg Wesley play next year," while conveniently ignoring the fact that Benford HAD AN NBA TALENT on his roster and screwed it up. You want to blame Mitchell for last year, yet you seem to lack the basic understanding that motivation IS the coach's responsibility. You also completely dismiss the dismal performance of Benford recruited bigs this year. Was that their fault, too? Keep your eyes closed all you want, but you shouldn't be able to ignore the rapidly declining attendance numbers and the view of the crowd from your seats. Maybe some want to keep UNT athletics a club. Hell, I don't know. But I think they should recognize that this isn't working. I think they should have recognized at the end of last year that the massive first year failure when expectations were high and knowledgable basketball people said we had the talent to make some noise only to have a 1st year head coach lay the terd of all terds directly on our program, that Benford would never be forgiven by many of the fan base. And that it was an experiment that should have been quickly ended. But they chose to lie to themselves and double, no, triple, down. You should know this is a pretty good concensus for those outside the AD inner circle. Please don't believe me, just look at all the empty seats next year.

To answer your question, yes all three events. There was nothing dismal about any of them. In fact at the last event I brought two tables of friends. If the expectation is 300 plus, clearly other efforts need to be made to inform the masses west of 35E. Half the friends I brought knew nothing of the event. I won't complain for the sake of complaining so if it's NCAA compliant, why not invite coaches & recruits? Trinity, L.D. Bell, Aledo, Martin etc. I'm sure we're targeting kids on the Clear Fork. However if you continue to think that Gainseville & Mexia are more fertile grounds to grow alumni support, your just being an ass.

I'm guessing you meant Louisville? Also, Tulsa fans didn't know they were leaving either. Everyone on my row was laughing at the Tulsa fans.

I will go one step further and say that Gainesville people, and surrounding areas, are huge high school football fans and are great candidates to get hooked on D1 football. The 30 mile drive South on 35 is a breeze.

Mr. Case puts on a hell of a greeting...complimentary food and brew...shiattttt...I'm in!

Short answer? No.

The American ninja warrior is a like a top 25 program though so if he could just keep it close then I would be all right with it. I'm just a fan of the game shows.

If we had fans here that actually signed the checks, would we really be in this situation?

We're making UNT Dallas's team?

Take away the previous 10 plays and it's a single play where 11 players did their job. Take away the 10 plays before Booger's insane move, and it's still an insane move.

So i remember us talking about this when we were discussing the Heart of Dallas Bowl. I couldnt help but think that if UNT has a successful season.. we can convince the alumni in the DFW metroplex to wake up and smell the coffee. I think part of this is SMU's suckiness will continue.. I project SMU to start the season 0-5.. Their schedule next season for the first 5 games...SMU is going to suck. We should take advantage of this.. 08/31/14 at Baylor 9/06/14 at North Texas 09/20/14 vs. Texas A&M 09/27/14 vs. TCU 10/04/14 at East Carolina I think rather than us.. being semi-bored with this blog because we dont have alot of content to discuss right now.. that we come up with ideas for the next season to get the word out about UNT football. The first thing i am going to do is try and get the pedestrian bridge to apogee to have its lights changed to green to grab the attention of drivers on the highway. I already proposed this to a high ranking city official and he loved the idea... also loved it because it wouldnt cost alot of money and its doable. Remember this... didnt this happen due to someone on this blog mentioning something to the omni.. We have a little over 5 months, imagine what we could do if we worked on things now.. This post has been promoted to an article

Probably going to Gainesville trying to attract new people that might actually show up to games. A 20-something minute scoot down I-35 from G-ville is a whole helluva lot easier than trying to trek up through the abysmal traffic and construction from Funky Town. And come on, think about it. That's a whole city/area close by that you could possibly get behind the program. At least worth a shot.

Seems a bit late for a blog post about combine snubs but ProPlayerInsiders.com posted a list of their top 50. Brelan makes their cut... http://proplayerinsiders.com/top-50-combine-snubs/ (I'd never heard of this site until Vito linked to them in a draft-related MGB entry, so I wonder if he has some relationship with the site's admin or if he sort of clued them into our guys)

Those other examples you mentioned were all in the same market before markets were a "thing" though Ben.

I'm way the hell out here so I haven't been to any, but...is there any way to do a scaled-down version? Then you don't spend as much, and if there's a good turnout, you spin it as, "Hey, we'll have to plan bigger next year, so glad to see so many of you!" Or maybe they all go to Plano for the Jordan Case one. I watched the Alumni/Varsity game Drex sent me and damn, years later Jordan still looked like he had more game than anybody else on the field (except for possibly Iseed Khoury).

Because make no mistake the big12 will be trying to pluck a couple universities out of other conferences in order to keep up with the evolution of college sports. They won't be able to maintain with 10 schools. No way we would get pulled out of CUSA, but if we somehow could back door our way into the AAC and establish ourselves then who knows, the big12 might come calling. Point I am trying to make is that the step up from the Sun Belt to CUSA was an improvement in perception, but the conference perception that is CUSA is going to die off quickly. GMG

The Big XII took West Virginia instead of Louisville. Why would you hope UConn and Cincy leave the AAC? The AAC will just plug its holes with the best schools from C-USA; and right now, that's probably not us.

Looks like the abandonment is reciprocal.

I doubt contracts are being signed. If they end up missing FW, they'll come back. I do get the sense, not just from this move but in general, that they are much more interested in Dallas than FW.

We need these people on campus IN DENTON. Set up the Mean Green Express (A Train), get the downtown establishments to offer post game specials, run a shuttle from the train station to Apogee and have the A Train's return trips a couple hours after the game with multiple runs. Make Denton the destination, not counting on these folks to come to one game a year in Dallas.

Dear Mr. UNT90. I am sorry that in a public forum I called you an idiot. I really mean this. I could have said everything I said in referenced post without saying "your an idiot". And you are correct. I will never give my opinion on a coach as at this institution on a fan board. we had a losing record in basketball in year one. this is a fact. People were projecting us as a top 25 team potentially, and if we were to handle business we might actually get a beloved 12 or 13 seed in the tournament. Not only is this a fact, but there was a billboard less than a quarter mile from my store on I-35 with Tony Mitchell's picture on it. My wife and I then on our own dime flew to Kansas City, drove to Manhattan Kansas, and watched in horror as Alabama (insert city name of a prison in texas) proceeded to make us look stupid with swarming defense, precision ball movement, and kicked our ass handily. But I did not give up hope. Then for the rest of the year I watched the "greatest recruit" in the history of our program for whatever reason walk up and down the floor is some games, show flashes in other games, but otherwise underachieve. Last year was a kick in the crotch. I sold the program to every one I know. I convinced two families to donate enough money to buy the floor seats behind the dance team, and they did. They both stuck it through this year and we had a relatively good time watching NT basketball with way lowered expectations. So now there is this year. We scheduled an easy schedule. We had 11 ??? wins versus real d1 teams. Did we make progress? I would have to say compared to last year yes. The great program savior is playing some form of professional basketball, and I think we were better. I say that bad CUSA is better than decent Sun Belt. Is this where we want to be? NO. Coach Benford barring some natural disaster is going to coach this team next year. That is the way it is. When he is our coach, I will support him with my time, energy, and attendance at games, just like I did Coach Dodge. You see, and this is my opinion, with my donations I am helping student athletes get an education. My donations help build facilities that are needed to help these student athletes succeed. My donations do not dictate who is coaching the team. There are people that are hired to do that. It is their responsibility to do that. When you run a business, you sometimes hire the right people, and sometimes you don't. You try to put those people in positions to be successful, but sometimes you just have to pull the plug on them. At the time I thought Todd Dodge was a great hire. He is a good man, time just proved that he can't coach college football. Shanice Stephens was the choice at the time, the plug had to be pulled on her, we then went and got the best available womans coach in Karen Aston, only to have her hired away in one year by arguably the richest school in country. Nothing could be done about that. My point is that Mr. Villarreal is going to do the right thing for our program. I just cannot for the life of me understand the constant negative negative negative from someone who has no idea the real inside workings of college athletics. Its our school, lift it up. Lift the kids up that are representing us. Lift the coaches us that are representing us. I am going to be in those stands when we line up against Texas. Do I think we will win? I put it at 25%. Do I want us to win? Your damn right I do. I would like to say one time to one of those pompous orange wearing jerks. "You have a great team. I hope they play better next week." Go Mean Green

Hell no?

. Of course it is ... but did you ask "is gas it a fossil fuel" or to just "name fossil fuels".if you did they likely will name oil and coal first and likely stop.... you likely will get a big difference in responses..... They know it is a fossil fuel but don't think to answer that way.. A lot in random sampling questions is how you ask..... and unfortunately people who often report results don't report results as the question was asked... and the results reported is flawed. I teach stat. .. A lot if not most fossil fuel discussions is about pollution and usually they are talking about oil and coal.. Going to electricity eliminates a lot but where that come come.. in much of the USA... gas fired generators mostly at least in this area ( not Nukes, wind, solar or water power so much) and we have decreased oil and coal usage which messed up the atmosphere more..... That is also why a lot of people dislike the Keystone pipeline... that would be very dirty oil coming in from Canada (highly polluting oil) Oil from inside of USA is much cleaner burning and/or processing.... Don't hear West Texans* or American oil areas yelling "build that pipeline". Better for Texas economy if it is not built. Besides another big objection is the route proposed... it is awful and very political as well .. It would provide temporary jobs (and brags) for some Congressmen's districts..that explains the stupid route mostly.. over developed areas instead of further west over sparser areas and cheaper to build.. . *People who don't live here or Texans that don't understand it often do. .

or the Muenster peeps! When/where is it going to be in Gainesville?

The Plano event has always been very well attended the times I went. There were easily several hundred people.

http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=J7HIxqDpJ0Q

"People say, 'It's a sleeping giant, it's a sleeping giant,' well thank God we finally woke his ass up!" - Coach Mac. Totally awesome! Go Mean Green!

I've been a UNT fan a long time and the last time UNT players said SMU was a bad team, the Eagles got seriously embarrassed. SMU will not be easy. SHould be a great game and party while hosting SMU in the (still) new stadium.

I see Correcamino has a new screen name. Poor junior college.