rcade

I contacted the NT Daily today to inquire about buying a quarter- or half-page display ad to express alumni support for the stadium vote. The ad would ideally run Oct. 10 (the Friday before the vote) and Oct. 14-16, the days of the week when the vote is going on and the Daily publishes. The Friday ad might be a pro-stadium editorial rather than a display ad. If you are interested in possibly joining in this effort, send me a private message here or in email to cadenhead ATSIGN gmail DOT com. I'm in Florida so I can't easily organize more local get-out-the-vote efforts, but perhaps you can help. Given that students don't like to raise their costs -- particularly in the current economy -- and the football team's rock-bottom performance lately, the stadium vote needs help. If you can pitch in -- either here or with your own effort -- I think this is a fairly monumental moment in the history of UNT football.

That waiter crack is actually pretty mild, by Rice Mob standards. Did they say anything else about us?

I'm going to wait for the overreaction thread to be posted before I give my assessment of the game.

Look on the bright side, people. If it was working you'd have to watch the game.

Can't get it to work here either. Ugh.

I don't know how many more seasons I can take where we're not even remotely competitive in out-of-conference games. As much as I hate to say this, DickeyBall is starting to look better and better. Bring back the black uniforms!

I'm optimistic about next season also. Dodge's offense will be better in his second year, and DeLoach will get a lot more out of the defensive talent than Mendoza did. The Belt competition is better than it was during his last stint here, but not so much that a conference title is out of the question.

Not if we shut the school down before we kick the bucket. Take that you unborn ingrates. And stay off of my lawn!

Seems harsh to knock a guy who just committed to North Texas. Every non-BCS school has to take chances on guys who were overlooked. Keep in mind that if this kid keeps growing at the present rate, by his junior year he'll be 7 feet tall and 450 pounds.

The Engines idea is funny, but it's a total screw-you to the NCAA and the movement to wipe out Indian-related mascots. If ASU was going to go that route, they could've kept the original name. I think Red Wolves is a stone cold lock.

According to a cool reference site I just found, AP Poll Archive, UNT hasn't been ranked by AP since Nov. 11, 1959: http://www.appollarchive.com/football/ap/app_last.cfm We've missed out on the last 739 AP polls, which puts us third behind Louisiana-Lafayette and Nevada.

The AAFL has a good plan. They're recruiting college football stars who couldn't make the NFL to play close to home. Florida's team is in Gainesville, for instance, and will feature a bunch of Gators. If football-starved fans in college towns need a fix in the spring, this could become a successful minor league.

My guess: The timing of Mendoza's dismissal was to put the story during the New Year's holiday when it will get less attention, not to shaft Vito. Troy Phillips of the FWST did recently write that source greaser about Mendoza a month or two ago, so if Dodge or RV were looking for a friendly reporter he'd be more likely to get that call. Any effort to intentionally screw the DRC would, by extension, be taking on the entire Belo chain -- the DRC, DMN, Channel 8 news and that 24-hour Texas news cable channel they run. Surely UNT is not that foolish.

Nice. I yield to your greater expertise in all things North Texas, since you are in Denton and I am in Florida. I'm not disputing that Vito's outside the fence. I'm saying it might not be a good enough reason to get our underwear in a bunch about Coach Dodge. As someone who used to work for the press, in Denton, I know how dependent the school was on newspapers covering events at the school. If Vito and the DRC can't turn that into better access at UNT football, it must not be important enough to them.

It's the timezone. Hawaii's a crazy place to have a college football team. No matter how good they were, most of the country (and all of the media) slept through it. He's doomed at SMU, though. He'll wish they were playing their games in the middle of the night.

I think we're being too hard on Dodge based on some anecdotal evidence. Surely the DRC has enough juice at UNT to get Vito inside the fence, if they want to make a big deal out of it.

What a shock. I figured the Mendoza debacle had at least another year to run its course. This was the right move on Dodge's part. I hope he brings in an experienced hand who's been in the college game for a while. Dodge doesn't need that kind of help on offense, clearly, but on defense we underperformed all season with a squad that should have been one of our strengths. I hang that on coaching more than players.

Given your anti-owner bellyaching, it's funny to see you lionize an era in which the owners didn't have to deal with free agency. Players were treated horribly back then, Fake. Love the "or where ever Bobby Petrino coaches" part.

I wouldn't want UNT to get a coach who already had his eye on the door the minute he showed up. What's the point? One or two years of Petrino -- or another coach with as big a name -- wouldn't make a dent in the long-term success of the program. Four or five years, sure.

If Petrino left one NFL team for another, I think you'd have a good point. But he's back in college, and in college his players can't leave without losing a year. So I think it's fair to slam him for disloyalty and failing to keep his word. College players are completely depending on their coach's word when they join a program.

Which probably means that it's true, given the way the guy lies. When Petrino tried to get Auburn's job after taking the Louisville gig, he lied to reporters about meeting with Auburn until they confronted him with proof of the flight he took.

Pat Forde shreds Petrino on ESPN.Com: http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/columns/sto...mp;sportCat=ncf If you're an Arkansas fan, do you really want this guy? He's looked for jobs five times in the past five years, all the while signing huge long-term contracts and telling people he wasn't leaving.

UCF also has two of the strengths that are often cited about North Texas -- close proximity to a major city and one of the state's largest student enrollments -- and one of its weaknesses -- a bunch of more established in-state rivals with huge juice in state government. I'd love to see UNT's athletic department send a team to Orlando to figure out how UCF got its stadium built and managed to fund its football team so well, given the circumstances it faced.

I've read several game stories from the first two football seasons in which the team is called the Teachers. I don't know yet whether this was an official mascot or just a practice of the media.

Trying to keep Ticket-related Wikipedia entries free from vandalism is hopeless. I made the mistake of editing a prank out of Gordon Keith's entry there and people responded by adding my name (and aberrant sexual proclivities I reportedly favor) into other Wikipedia entries.