rcade

I have trouble believing that Liberty would have paid UNT a staggering amount of money to come to their house. Old Dominion is worth a lot more to them because it's a school in their state. As we've seen at UNT, fans want home games against in-state opponents.

This is the 60th anniversary of when UNT's football team was integrated under Odus Mitchell, so this is an obvious moment to honor his legacy and that of Abner Haynes and Leon King. Mitchell comes across pretty well in this 1987 article on the event: http://library.la84.org/SportsLibrary/JSH/JSH1987/JSH1403/jsh1403c.pdf

FIU is in the Miami area. That city just lost one of its biggest sports stars (and a Cuban one no less) at age 24. I think it would've been a good idea for FIU to wait on the announcement a few days.

I can't get it to let me purchase a day pass. An orange box appears for a millisecond and disappears and I'm asked to log in again.

Buc-ee's has a Twitter account at @bucees. That's a good place to give them some grief for not carrying UNT gear. A lot of companies and organizations make addressing social media pressure a priority. (Including President Smatresk. He gets a regular report emailed to him about what people are saying about UNT on social media.)

This was the most memorable game I attended as a UNT student. We were fired up in the crowd for the rest of the game. A rumor went around that Corky Nelson was in the middle of that throwing punches. Hating SMU was more fun than hating any other team we played. Here's some little-seen footage from the stands of that game at halftime.

I was kidding about this part, you negative nancies. I contributed to our banner.

The conspiracy goes much deeper than that, my friend. There was a second tripper.

I'm feeling like you need a hug. I'm not offering one. Just making an observation.

He was tripped. People who get tripped go low because that's how gravity works.

Del Rio was being tended to on the field. McElwain came out all the way past the gator at midfield and was screaming at the UNT sideline. This caused players on both teams to surge onto the field as refs tried to keep them back. Littrell came out onto the field maybe 20 feet alongside his players and yelled something back at him. It looked to me like he thought McElwain was being an idiot. After the game the coaches shook hands and embraced, and McElwain held the hug a long time while he talked in Littrell's ear. Littrell didn't say much back. It looked like McElwain was doing all the explaining. Or asking him out. It was an uncomfortably long hug. I had flashbacks to slow dancing with Laura Dumais to Journey's "Open Arms" at Apollo Junior High School in 1982. Shuffle, step, shuffle, step, shuffle, step. There should be a punishment for a coach who comes so far onto the field and nearly incites a bench-clearing brawl.

A 32-0 loss to Florida doesn't say much about our team. We'll know how Littrell is doing in year one when we play our conference. I predicted 3 wins this year and felt like I was being optimistic.

You know things are bad when you can't fly a "Fire the AD" banner during a game because few people will be there to see it. Flying banners is wrong. All criticism must be kept within the family. The next frontier in banners is to fly a "Fire" banner over your school, then fly a "Hire" banner for that same AD over your hated rival school.

This. We talk endlessly about the need to fill our house. It's discouraging that we couldn't handle this turnout better. Some fans will give up and stop coming.

UNT has a women's golf program. Maybe we could find another way to dismiss her opinion without denigrating one of our own sports.

We got a little video before the game broadcast began. This exchange occurred: Announcer 1: Do we have a spotter? Announcer 2: I don't think we even have a statistics person.

3-9, and I feel like that makes me an optimist.

Hank's excuse is Exhibit A in why we must not hire an AD who worked in our athletics department under RV. If all you know is an AD who made excuses for failure and never held himself accountable for anything, you aren't the person to turn it around. UNT needs somebody who freaks out like Jimmy Johnson whenever someone in the department makes an excuse. "You have asthma? Get your [bleep] over to the asthma field and have some asthma! The asthma field is over there!"

I was talking about where we were overall in the 1980s, not just in athletics. UNT has grown up. It has a name that better fits its stature today than NTSU did. I do think it would be cool to be able to pick up retro NTSU gear the next time I'm on campus. The Flying Worm will never be topped. You just did. That would be an epic chant against us.

UNT's a fine name. North Texas is home to the fourth biggest metropolitan area in the U.S. with over 7 million people. If it was a state it would be the 14th largest in the U.S. Our name establishes our status as the preeminent public university for this region. Even though football and basketball have been weak for too long, when you look at where the school is today compared to where it was in the 1980s, a UNT graduate has a lot to be proud of.

This is the second greatest UNT sports story of the year. May the road rise up to meet you. May the wind be always at your back. May the sun shine warm upon your face; And may your flapping access panel always be closed.

It would be nice if George Dunham recognized that an internal hire like Hank is the wrong choice for UNT athletics. But I can't fault him too much for championing a longtime friend. I might do the same thing in his situation.

THANKS BUT NO HANKS.

I don't care how much money fans spend to make Hank AD as long as they fail. Hiring someone from inside UNT to run athletics is like expecting Steak-umm to taste like a Ruth's Chris ribeye. No one who spent an entire career under RV has any idea what makes a winning program. They've never experienced one.

Promoting the reputation of Rick Villarreal right after he was ousted doesn't help UNT in any way. It only helps him.