Green to the Bone

That's General Sir Doctor Pepper Diet Coke Boy to you plebians. I always figured that Dr Pepper was the one with enough drive to finish his PhD, while Mr Pibb quit school as an ABD (all but dissertation) to pull beers at The Tomato.

The odd thing is, everybody's right. It turns out the TO didn't work. A slight change in a chance occurance, however, and it might have worked. So everybody's right. The one predictable factor, however, was their stellar junior in the No. 1 jersey. If you let the ball get to the fourth-highest average scorer in the country with enough time to launch one, he'll launch one. Kinda sucked the air out of the Pit. But let's lay off the "starting a spiral" business. I think we still want the team to go out there believing they can beat anybody they're playing, not moping around about being losers. Oh, and I don't think McCaleb actually is the devil. He just sold his soul to Beelzebub in exchange for a hot hand.

I agree that it was out of line for anybody to suggest some collusion (such as the young man's father working at the Abilene paper) behind the story. Complain about facts; don't make up facts so you can complain. However, since Insall did sign with a WT A&M yesterday, it was incumbent on the reporter to mention that. As it is, the story left the impression that a talented young man's dream of playing college ball was over. Furthermore, as soon as DD was fired, Insall's coach should have realized what might happen. For one thing, if Insall doesn't have enough experience snapping for the shotgun (and I'm not making up facts; I have no idea what offense he's been working in), as soon as TD was hired, Insall's coach should have seen that he might not fit in the spread. He needed to get proactive and work with the kid to get him to UTEP or anywhere else. This is why oral commitments aren't binding. Even with an oral agreement with DD, Insall was still completely free to keep shopping. His coach needed to make sure he understood that. That said, everybody here wishes him every possible success.

There's no apparent copyright notice anywhere on the site, and I think I figured out why. I listened to several of the fight songs on the site. They all sound like they were recorded at a football game by somebody unofficial, so the quality is not so good. It's along the lines of 60s bootleg albums, many of which didn't have anything going for them except for the exciting outlaw feeling and hearing conversations from people in nearby seats. The Green Brigade CDs are studio quality, done in the Murchison (the " 'Dillo Dome"). Much better quality and infinitely more pleasing to the ear.

Earlier I tried to discourage sharing unlicensed mp3s that yield no income to the musician. I did my duty, but I acknowledge that most people feel that copyright is an outdated concept. But the band does make a little money off the CDs, so consider buying them.

Listening to the fight song is truly better than lots of things people use as pick-me-ups, and completely legal. Sending the mp3, however, isn't legal. It's copyrighted. However, you can get the CD legit at the campus bookstore, the non-academic branch across the hall. Here's the contact info. Call and see if you can mail-order it. Your U.N.T. Bookstore Store Manager is Rodney Davison Phone: (940) 565-2592 Fax: (940) 565-4042 Email: unt@bkstr.com Address: University Union 1155 Union Circle PO Box 311130 Denton, TX 76203-1130 US

Thanks, Raider!

I just read those posts and some others on their board. Not only do many of them seem to hate their own team; they hate Scrappy! Good grief, who could hate Scrappy? Next they'll be complaining that the other team's fans yell too much. Or, more to the point, that the other team's players score too often.

Great point. And why not get it formalized somehow that everybody in the Pit holds up the talon during our free throws, and everybody sticks around for the alma mater? Maybe with a pregame announcement. After all, the Green is what we're doing it all for. For that matter, I'd like to see the words to the 'mater up on the jumbotron, with everybody singing it. Ritual breeds success! Success should also breed ritual. We've got something going here.

For UNT, it's proof that we've got students worth recruiting. For the Daily, it's advertising dollars. If they want to send their money to UNT, I'm OK with that.

Amen to that! Those CDs are on my iPod. If I'm up, there's nothing like the fight song or "Fly Like an Eagle" to make me want to throw a tortilla. And "Glory to the Green" can make me absolutely weepy. And if I'm feeling down, both arrangements of "You'll Never Walk Alone," the instrumental and the vocal, well, they just turn me into a tower of resolution. Yessir, that is potent stuff indeed.

As the dad of two Green Brigade members, one current and one former, I can tell you that the excitement level's going to be very high in light of the greater success on the field and the bigger crowds I expect. It's always more fun to perform in front of lots of people. People don't always understand how hard the band kids and the directors work. All the music is arranged specifically for the GB, and all the marching shows are custom, too. In high school, band kids work all season to develop a single marching show for competition. The Green Brigade learns and masters about three shows each season. The whole band puts in 14-hour days for the entire week before fall semester begins. This includes indoor rehearsals, sectionals, and marching practice. It's frequently 100-plus degrees out there, but there they are. The leadership team is there even before that. Then during the semester, they've got rehearsals Monday, Wednesday, and Friday evenings, plus game days, of course. On at least one or two away days, they spend all Saturday traveling to a regional high school marching contest to perform as the exhibition band -- a tremendous UNT recruiting device. Last year, they went to perform at the state marching championship in San Antonio -- all the way there and back by bus in one day. And that homecoming parade can seem mighty long when they're marching and playing the whole way. Major props to RV for recognizing this. During pre-semester practice, he comes by and thanks the band and makes sure they know they're part of the team. He's also had DD and football players come with him and hand out drinks during a break; my guess is that TD will also put in an appearance this year. And I've often seen RV stand at the entrance to Fouts and applaud them as they enter for a game. This is not to confuse playing in the band with getting smashed into by a 300-pound lineman, of course. But the band kids really do put their hearts into it. And the musicianship of this group swamps that of the vast majority of other marching bands across the country, including the one with the cowboy hats and fringed jackets. This year, I encourage everybody to stay during halftime and carefully watch the marching routine and carefully listen to the playing. It really is a phenomenon. For this, they get no pay; in fact, since they have to register for one semester hour of course work to be in the band, they pay for the privilege.

I understand what you're saying, but I don't think any win is only semi important. To continue my admitted labored baseball analogy about the importance of every single effort on its own merits, somebody asked Ted Williams why he still tried so hard to get a hit when the Red Sox were safely ahead or hopelessly behind. He said he imagined there were only two people in the park watching him that day: A young kid seeing him for the first time, and an old man seeing him for the last time. What kind of memory did he want to leave? Nineteen seasons, .344 career batting average, .482 career on-base percentage. One World Series appearance -- a loss.

Ask any coach or player if it's true that only playoff games matter and if it's OK to write off regular season games as meaningless. I don't think any coach tells his players before the game that tonight we're just scrimmaging to play in the tourney a month from now, so winning tonight will mean nothing. That's obviously not an acceptable attitude. Besides, the ability to compete day in and day out has enormous bearing on playoff success. Compounding the error, you're saying that for a team to have a great regular season, winning time after time at home, is a worthless endeavor -- that is has no value on its own. Ask any baseball fan if Bobby Cox is a miserable failure as a manager because the Braves won a dozen consecutive division titles with brilliant regular season play but only won one World Series before the team was dismantled. No one on Earth doubts that Cox is a Hall of Famer on his first ballot. Nobody can deny that we've had some late-season collapses; the last nine games last year we went 2-7. But let's turn the psychology around. I want the coach and the fans to expect and encourage, not predict failure. If your C-student kid brings home an A or a B in a hard class, you don't say, "Yeah, but you still haven't shown me that you won't flunk next semester." You say, "Great job -- I'm proud of you. Now let's keep it up."

Vito didn't write the headline. The reporter never does; that's done by a copy editor after the story is submitted, and the reporter almost never sees the headline in advance. The copy editor probably just read between the lines.

I think a friendly conversation over different views of culture has suddenly degenerated into juvenile name-calling. You should learn some manners, along with some grammar. End of conversation.

Source?

Number of Starbucks currently in Denton: 5. Number within 50 miles of Denton: 264. Values of the comma and the correct use of its/it's: Priceless.

Hey, guys, what do you want to do tonight? I don't know -- wanna hit Lower Greenville? Or how about South Lamar? No, wait, I heard there's a new CVS up in Denton. They'll check our blood pressure for free.

Add my props. A very satisfying outing. I especially liked those very aggressive steals. S. Alabama on the road, and then back for a long home stand. Given our 9-1 home record (I think that's right after tonight), things are looking pretty good. And I forgot to add my own amen to the dance team uniform endorsement. As I said, a very satisfying outing.

I think it was Eleanor Roosevelt who said she would fear for the health of a college campus that had no hippies. Oh, wait, I think she said communists. But the point was pretty close. The dirty, funky, sleazy atmosphere of the Tomato has college town written all over it. There's better pizza and cleaner restrooms elsewhere, but you got into a restroom at at CVS drug store and the grafitti might say, "Ask your doctor if Cialis is right for you." At the Tomato, I recently saw bathroom grafitti that said: "Kill Whitey!" Among our favorite college bars in Athens, Ga., was Allen's Hamburgers, where the bathrooom graffiti said, "Iranians! Savak is watching you!" Edginess and irreverent humor are supposed to be a part of youth. With regard to the Tomato and its disreputable neighbors being disincentives to parents bringing their precious, impressionable babies to Denton, our oldest son took me to the Tom when he attended UNT, and our youngest does so now. After all, it's still cleaner than his dorm room. So here's to the unslick, the homegrown, the gloriously substandard, unforgettable places of youth.

I'm as confused as NT80,or maybe 80's as confused as me, about the second donation reference. The Goldfields are the donors announced weeks ago. This was the formal, big-check-prop, grip-and-grin presentation from that earlier annoucement. So it can't be the second recent seven-figure donation, can it? Like Buzz, I, too, wanted more people to stand and applaud, although a good many did, and I didn't think it took any of the shine off the moment. Al referred to Rick and Gretchen by first names, and everybody sat together at courtside to watch the rest of a very finely played and coached basketball game, and all seemed smiles and satisfaction. All in all, it was a very good evening.

MTSU hit their 3's all night and played about as aggressive a defensive game as I've seen. That said, I also thought our team was working hard against a top-notch opponent. Speaking of aggressive, one enjoyable thing was the MTSU fans who were there. They were loud and funny. Even got up and danced when the band played "Respect" and "Shining Star."

The cat won't touch them because cats never, ever admit they were wrong.

Not very hard to read between the lines. Looks like Dr. B has arranged for Johnson to be Jackson's special assistant in charge of pencils until he gets his exit visa. Utah State got any admin openings?