rcade

I think all races and ethnic groups make poor mascots -- especially at public schools. Evidently, the folks on your Mascot Committee agreed with me. I'm surprised, frankly, that they didn't follow the Seminoles here in Florida. We'll never be rid of that junk.

Would you sneer at this issue if we were talking about the Washington Wetbacks of the NFL and the Cleveland Mexicans? It seems ridiculous to me that we're willing to tolerate a racist Sambo character like Chief Wahoo -- displayed prominently in the World Series on the caps, dugouts and other gear of the Indians -- years and years after blackface pantomime and characters like Amos n' Andy were drummed out of pop culture. What reason can be possibly sufficient to explain why Native Americans are singled out for this treatment?

Personally, I'm glad the Sun Belt schools that have these mascots are changing them. Chief Wahoo is not respectful. The name Redskins is an ethnic slur. More innocuous names like "Indians" lend themselves to "Scalp the Indians!" and other derogatory use by the fans of opposing teams.

Can someone here tell me Mendoza's accomplishments before coming to UNT? All I know about the guy is that he came on board with Dodge.

It seems like that to me, too. Why put the players out there and let the coaches hide from scrutiny? But some head coaches believe in keeping their assistant coaches away from the press. When Tom Coughlin was in Jacksonville, none of the other coaches were allowed to do interviews. His rationale was that he wanted the organization to speak in one voice.

Grouping all unhappy fans with the fringe folks who would drive by a coach's house and engage in similar behavior is a cheap shot. Would you like us to engage in an analysis of your personality because you're happy with Saturday's game?

That's my perception, too, and I just don't understand the positive thinkers who are overlooking this. A team that returns that many starters on one side of the ball is expected to get better, not worse. I could understand a little dropoff when learning a new system or adjusting to a quick-strike offense that puts you on the field longer, but dropping all the way to the bottom of the FBS is too much. If something doesn't change before next season, it's insanity to do the same thing and expect different results.

He lives in DFW already and is going to probably need a coordinator job before he becomes a head coach again. Both suggest to me that he'd consider an offer from North Texas.

I never thought about doing this when the time changes. Good idea. Can I post this on my blog?

Prep sports sell a lot of papers. Editors also catch hell for leaving out one area school when giving others play. I'm not agreeing with the editor's decision, but speaking as a former journalist, I think people don't realize that prep stuff is important to readers too.

I wonder if they're wishing Dodge was available.

My point is that they didn't hang with Georgia. They played well but like most outgunned teams, they faded in the second half and the game was out of reach. When I said Troy beat us like a paycheck game, I meant that they beat us like the big out-of-conference teams do at the start of every season. It's bad enough UNT fans accept that, but to accept it from in-conference foes is crazy. We're never going to get anywhere expecting so little from this team.

There's no way SMU hires Barnett or any other coach with a record of recruiting violations. They'd be accused of being so desperate to win that they're going back to the bad old days. I wonder whether Barnett deserves another chance after the way he handled the Katie Hnida situation. She was a third- or fourth-string kicker invited to the team by his predecessor Rick Neuheisel who quit under Barnett. When she made allegations of being raped while on the team and frequently abused by players, his response was to ridicule her athletic ability to the press. "It was obvious Katie was not very good," he said. "She was awful. You know what guys do? They respect your ability. I mean, you could be 90 years old, but if you could go out and play, they would respect you. Well Katie was a girl, and not only was she a girl, she was terrible." At a time when his campus was dealing with rape allegations made by several women against his team, Barnett suggested Hnida deserved to be disrespected by his other players. Classy, eh?

UCF isn't predominantly black. Are you thinking of FAMU?

Troy played well, but without a touchdown scored with five seconds left, it would've been a 17-point loss. Getting back to our Troy game, the suggestion that it's OK for UNT to lose 45-7 to a Belt team is weak. The Mean Green ran through the Belt for four straight years. There's no path to football success for this program that includes being hopelessly non-competitive against strong conference teams. When the season began, no one here predicted Dodge's first team would get beat like a paycheck game by Troy.

Amen, brother. Great to hear JubJub standing up for the program.

My kids killed a neighbor with a concussion grenade after they completed Halo 3. Damn videogames! The issue here is parenting. A lot of kids today were raised by absentee or non-existent fathers, drug problems and imprisonment for drug crimes put more parents out of home, and that has devastating consequences. One of the upsides of college sports, when the coach is good and the support system is solid, is that they can bring some athletes out of a terrible background and give them a college education they can use as a foundation for the rest of their lives.

In my limited dealings with UNT players and their families, they've been incredibly loyal to UNT -- a lot more than the average fan. I would think that if these students want to stay at UNT, they'd value the camaraderie of their peers too much to attack the football program and its coaches just to save their scholarships for extra years. They could get financial aid to remain in school.

The story hasn't broken out of DFW yet. I figure it's only a matter of time before AP or ESPN takes it national, unfortunately.

When I was attending UNT in the late '80s, they had a display in the administration building with pictures of those first black students going to school. It was shocking to see, because they were only a little younger than my grandparents would've been at the time. One of the strongest reasons people attend college is because their parents went to school and valued the experience. The question I had then, seeing those pictures: If my grandparents had been denied a college education, would my parents have pursued one? And if they hadn't, would I?

What do you expect people to talk about, EulessEagle? This is a disaster of epic proportions -- worst season in years, hopeless performance on the field, coaches arguing in front of press photogs after a game, and now three players alleging racism. Expecting people to stop talking about this story is like asking Mrs. Lincoln whether she liked the play. Ugh. This has to be more than Dodge ever thought he'd be taking on when he took the job. I wonder if he's up to it, or if he'll pull the ripcord and find a buddy to give him a face-saving job as a coordinator somewhere.

The characterization of the NAACP as a racist organization is idiotic and offensive. It's one of the oldest and most influential civil rights organizations in the United States and has 400,000 members. The group offers scholarships, supports education and health care, and fights discrimination -- all worthy causes. When you consider the fact that blacks were denied education in our not-distant past -- North Texas didn't admit its first black student until 1954 -- the need for African-Americans to work together to protect their civil rights should be beyond question.

Not to be unkind, but given the way the UNT defensive backfield has performed this season, anyone who wants to make a case against a particular player could do so. Changing your opinion based on performance is not hypocrisy.

Good for Miller to say this on the record. Players who feel this way should speak up now. If the team agrees with him, this racial allegation will piss them off and could bring them closer together. I still wouldn't call any of this a good thing, but it's something to hang your hat on as a fan of the program.

Claiming that many blacks play the race card is itself a generality. If you want people to be fair and deal with a situation on its own, without bringing outside stereotypes into it, set an example. Many whites ARE racist. Many whites ARE NOT racist. What's the point of throwing those kinds of generalities at each other?