rcade

Thanks. I thought there was something we could have done to avoid our fate.

UNT is a much bigger school than all of the ones you mention that would have wanted to be in the SWC, except for New Mexico. But New Mexico never wanted to be in the SWC -- it belonged to the WAC and then the MWC. The reason that UNT fans are bitter about being excluded from the SWC is that our school had the best argument for being included, out of all the possible schools that could have been added back in the day. Our enrollment, geography and football success under Hayden Fry justified it. Yet for whatever reason, we got screwed over. Because of that snub and the disastrous decision of our leadership to drop to I-AA, North Texas has been a football nobody for decades. We're hoping that has finally ended forever with the new stadium and the McCarney hire.

We can keep putting -1s on people who point it out, but SMU outranks UNT as an educational institution. U.S. News has SMU ranked at 56 and doesn't rank UNT at all. But when you look at the cost of going to SMU ($37,000) vs UNT ($7,600 in state), UNT does pretty well. For those of us who paid our own way, paying 20% as much to get a degree made a lot of sense. For those who don't pay their own way (such as scholarship athletes), SMU is going to look pretty good in comparison to us. It's a fact of life.

Denton is only five hours drive to Monroe and seven to Lafayette and Jonesboro. Isn't that close enough to work up a healthy dislike for those schools?

We should consider ourselves rivals against New Mexico State. Because we've shared several conferences with them, we've played them more than any other team. In 32 games, we are 21-9-2. We even met them in the Sun Bowl in 1959 (a 28-8 loss).

Though there are 35 bowls, in the past decade only four of them have invited a Sun Belt team: New Orleans, Motor City, GMAC (now GoDaddy) and the defunct Silicon Valley Classic. Now that we have two bowl affiliations, since the GoDaddy will pit a MAC team against a Belt team, I think we should expect to reach a bowl most years we belong to the Belt. We have the most resources of any team in our conference and a history of success here.

Riley's own dad didn't start this season with him at quarterback because of his injuries. I think McCarney should go into next season with no preconception of who should start.

I agree completely. Leach is costing himself another job at a BCS school with his litigiousness. He should smarten up and settle.

You can't ask for a better endorsement for Mean Green coach than Hayden Fry.

You complain about stupid things. There's nothing creepy about the head of an athletic department calling a cheerleading captain who criticized the department in a public forum.

Why would you be mad that the AD called the cheerleading captain to address a complaint that she made in a public place about the department? It shows that he took the complaint seriously and wanted to address it.

I wish people would stop saying this, because it isn't true. McCarney's agent is Bryan Harlan, not Neinas. http://blogs.desmoin...-the-isu-mayor/

Canales doesn't have head coaching experience, and because of that I will be surprised if he gets the Louisiana-Lafayette job or another head job this off-season. UNT was his best chance because the tryout opened the door for him. But other schools are not going to look at his UNT experience as a plus. He went 2-3 and one of those wins was to Western Kentucky. I'd love to be proven wrong, though.

Normally I hate uniform changes at UNT, since we've done so many of them, but we need to get rid of the Southlake Carroll-looking design and go back to having lots of green in the Mean Green.

A bowl bid in year one? Why are you badgering him to expect more wins from McCarney in one season than most fans here expected from Dodge in four? I'd like to see UNT compete for the Sun Belt championship in year one. I think it's ridiculous to expect it, however.

As a student and Daily editor during the days of President Hurley, I think he gets too much of a bad rap for our athletic travails. He started at UNT the same month that we were dropped to I-AA. It wasn't his doing that got us there. Though Hurley was not pro-athletics, he did manage to save football from a push to shut down the program. We could've been another UTA.

If DD had a better attitude, he would've had longer to right the ship. The four straight bowls and winning streak had bought him some goodwill. But what he did at UNT isn't as good as what McCarney did at Iowa State. Them beating Iowa was huge for that program.

He ended Iowa State's 22-year bowl drought, beat their most important rival Iowa five times, won a divisional conference co-championship and took them to five bowl games. That's how.

The Florida Gators were national champions when they hired McCarney in 2008 to be assistant head coach and defensive line coach. Do you think programs of that stature hire top assistants who are over the hill?

I'll grant you Fran, but Leach was never going to come here and never going to be hired anyway. He's suing another Texas school and the drop from the Big 12 to Sun Belt would be too steep. I can understand why UNT fans wanted him -- it would have changed the program overnight -- but I can't understand why people thought it was possible.

The way he keeps getting hurt, I almost don't want Riley to be the QB again.

I think you're overstating the fan dissent if McCarney gets off to a slow start. That new stadium is going to fire people up. If I was living in DFW I'd be bringing friends and family in to show it off.

No kidding. It's like we all had Justin Bieber tickets and he cancelled the concert at the last minute.

You wanted Canales because he wanted us? Dude. I hate to break this to you, but Canales said all of those things to get a head coaching job. He will say them to the fans at the next university that considers him for its vacancy. He didn't want us. He wanted a job!

Why wait? Here's your new team's message board: http://www.raginpagin.com/