rcade

Can anyone get a picture? I'm getting a little weepy.

Darrell Dickey has $524,000 reasons not to dishonor the university with a cheap stunt on his way out the door. He also has his next coaching gig to worry about, his honor, and his commitment to his athletes. The idea that he had to be escorted out the door by security with a cardboard box of his belongings -- or he'd cause trouble -- is unfathomable to me. How many times does a departing college football coach cause problems? Most of them are like Larry Coker and Ron Zook. If they agree to finish out the year, they do so with pride and dignity.

I like the Central Michigan vs. Middle Tennessee State matchup. It's the clash of the centers!

Best line: Nothing looks better on a university than its football team rejecting school colors. Link It's been a Darrell Dickey month. It seems the head coach of the 2001 to 2004 Sun Belt conference champs will not go down quietly. And for once this semester the Daily Editoral Board and the Student Government Association agree on one thing. SGA members met Nov. 15 to discuss a most pressing issue, to legislate the SGA's reaction to Mean Green football head coach Darrell Dickey's termination. Of course, just like the SGA, the bill is mostly ceremonial. This is something we at the Daily call student service fees at work. The actual student body, of course, is divided on the issue, but that's not really a concern for the SGA as long as they have a say on the issue. In a $5,000 advertisement in the Denton Record-Chronicle, Jim "Matress Mac" McIngvale scared administrators into renaming a practice field after Dickey. He told NT administrators he would request the $1 million he donated for the field to go to the One O'Clock Lab Band if they do not carry out his wish. But what really is the icing on the Darrell Dickey month celebration cake, was the Mean green football team's stunt in its match against Florida Atlantic Nov. 18, the football team debuted its new uniform, which the team wore for the first and last time. Nothing looks better on a university than its football team rejecting school colors. Instead of playing harder at every game and maybe even winning the remaining ones, they opted to just mock the school they play for. A goal that was easier to accomplish. They embarrassed the school, something the football team should leave to experts like us.

I watched Whitten play while an incoming freshman at Stephen F. Austin (my road to Denton passed through Nacogdoches, Richland Junior College and UTA). If I recall correctly, he threw down a pretty fierce mullet.

I'm wondering whether the total offensive disappearance the last two games has anything to do with Flanagan's anger about being fired causing him to stop putting time into prep. The losses don't mean much in the greater scheme of things, but it would've been nice to send out the Mighty Quinn and the rest of his graduating class with wins over two beatable teams.

Sorry to hear of his passing. I had the chance to take courses from Rogers in the late '80s and may have been one of the first students who got a chance to take advantage of that layout software he introduced. He was a walking history lesson about North Texas and had a huge amount of pride in the school.

An assistant coach from UNT participated in this week's Sun Belt coach conference call. Here's what a reporter who covers FAU wrote about it: "Fired coach Darrell Dickey was not sitting in for the call, and the assistant who sat in said they should know their fates soon. He said they had been told to stop recruiting efforts until a new coach is named, so that has to hurt the Greens." Link

You're right. Here's a story about Chambers and the other three short-term coaches who were between James and Allen Wilson. Link Chambers' teams lost in the first round of the playoffs, as did the next three successors. It appears from the story that if you didn't win a playoff game, the most you'd get at Carter is two seasons.

I stand behind what I've said here and on my weblog. I was a newspaper reporter for 10 years. I heard about the fight from several parents and checked it out with other sources. That "someone like you" crack is funny. Someone like me is a 1991 UNT alumnus and 18-year UNT fanatic. I dress my kids in UNT gear, joined the Mean Green Club and talk up the program and the Sun Belt all the time. I respect the fact that you've got a son playing for us. Perhaps you should afford a little respect for fans on GoMeanGreen.Com, many of whom have stuck with the program through Division I-AA purgatory when other schools like UT-Arlington were dumping their team. How does showing respect for the players mean shutting up about the clown show put on by their fired coaches? I don't follow that reasoning.

He climbed the ladder at Carter for 12 years before becoming top dog. Leaving after just two seasons makes me wonder whether he quit, they soured on him or he soured on them.

Chambers looks really impressive, especially given the UNT and Dallas Carter ties. Looking at his gigs, I'm curious about why he left the head coaching position at Carter after only two seasons in 1997. Anyone recall what Carter was like in those years?

Link TUSCALOOSA, Ala. - Alabama has fired coach Mike Shula a year after the Crimson Tide had a 10-2 season, a newspaper reported. Shula told his assistant coaches late Sunday night that Alabama athletic director Mal Moore had dismissed him, The Tuscaloosa News reported on its Web site. Reached at home, Moore declined comment Monday morning but said he would hold a news conference later in the day. The Crimson Tide went 6-6 this season, finishing with three straight losses.

Saying that the fight story is "embellished" acknowledges that some kind of altercation took place.

← You're now the third player parent who backs up the claim that Coach Flanagan got into a fight with another coach during halftime of the FAU game. Maybe the story doesn't get out without my help, but I think it needed to get out. I love UNT football, but I'm not going to hide bad news about the program in an effort to protect it. This year's seniors deserved better than to have their final games disrupted by Dickey and Flanagan's juvenile behavior. The university should be investigating this incident and taking a hard look at Flanagan's actions the entire time he was at UNT, not allowing Dickey to deny to the press that the fight took place, as he did in Sunday's Star-Telegram. This story got out because of parents like yourself who were disgusted with what was happening. If your son's coming back next season and a new coach pulls stunts like these, do you really want people to clam up and protect him? Wouldn't it be better for it to come out so the problem can be dealt with?

Dickey's main motivational tool appears to have been "us against them," treating the players as if lack of respect for UNT's football program translated to lack of respect for them. When he was fired, he allegedly responded by telling his players that he was fired because "he couldn't recruit," asking them, "How does that make you feel?" During the conference championship run, he spoke often of the way it began, with the team 1-5 and hosting a Middle Tennessee State team that was expected to win the conference. UNT upset them 24-21. If there was any passion left in the Mean Green last night, it wasn't evident on the radio broadcast, aside from Johnny Quinn.

He looks like a frontrunner to me, considering the years he and RV were both at Southern Miss and the report he's been contacted. Nix's Bio

George Dunham and Hank Dickinson tried their best to say goodbye to Coach Dickey without taking a position on whether it was right to get rid of him. I thought they handled it well, especially after a game that was horrendously poor on UNT's part aside from the Mighty Quinn.

I think it was a sideline violation, where a coach or player is on the edge of the field during a snap. It wasn't necessarily Dickey or Flanagan.

23-3 with a couple minutes left. UNT's getting killed.

The broadcast's radio connection is completely wheels off tonight and has gone dead a half-dozen times. Is Coach Dickey standing on the cord?

This is like saying that winning the Southland Conference was worthless when we were in Division I-AA. You don't always get to choose the caliber of your opponents, and the Sun Belt wasn't as easy to beat as memory suggests. Winning the weakest conference in Division I-A football four straight years is still an accomplishment worth taking pride in. As we've seen the past two seasons, it's a hell of a lot better than getting our ass beat in the same conference. I'm proud of what Dickey and UNT accomplished in the Belt. The next coach inherits a program in demonstrably stronger shape than Dickey did.

Brutal. But funny. What programs do they root for?

It kills me that Dickey thinks the scrutiny he's received at North Texas is the toughest fan scrutiny in Division I-A football. He should've been around Jacksonville (where I live) when Ron Zook was coaching Florida or hear how Jeff Bowden has been talked about at FSU. We're a bunch of sweethearts compared to the fans of programs with perennial national championship expectations.

Full Story Link I'm disappointed that the Star-Telegram has only gotten one side of the story here: Dickey's. The claims aren't anonymous -- I put this reporter in touch with people in a position to substantiate them. But in a couple hours, Dickey's program will have a bunch of seniors who have finished their football careers and can speak on the record without retribution. So we'll see if he really went out "with class," as he told the Star-Telegram. The best part of the article is where he quotes himself third person: