TheWestie

I still don't want to play for them, for any amount of money.

Garbage school with garbage academics, trying to buy their way into D1 sports and hiring garbage people with no regard for consequences. 

As much as we all hate SMU, at least it's a real university with real academic credentials and issues real degrees.

Updating the electrical system in the Super Pit shouldn't be too bad. It's built as a giant shell over a block of concrete, most of the wiring is in conduit that's easy to access. Hell we were told for years that it would be too difficult and too costly to install new arena lights because they'd have to upgrade all the wiring in the catwalk area. And don't forget the line we were fed by RV for years about the superstructure of the building not being able to hold up a center court video board. 

There are a ton of things in the Super Pit that are holdovers from bygone eras that can be and should be done away with. The spotlight cages that hang down from the catwalk that have 30 year old spotlights covered in dust and trashcans with 20 year old soda cups in them, the massive stage light flying array that probably hasn't been used since Pearl Jam played in the Pit in 1993, (http://www.setlist.fm/setlist/pearl-jam/1993/university-of-north-texas-coliseum-denton-tx-23d65cf7.html Hot Damn that musta been a badass show!), the control room at the top of the seating section on the east side of the arena is full of obsolete equipment that isn't used, the decorative features of the concourse are super dated looking, the bathrooms on the concourse need a huge makeover: lots of stuff. But nothing that means the place needs to be replaced. 

We have a 10,500 seat arena that we can renovate in any number of ways. It's bigger than the Allen Events Center, Verizon Theater in Grand Prairie, Dr Pepper Arena in Frisco, The Arena at the Dallas Convention Center, Moody Coliseum at SMU (which hosts concerts), College Park Center at UTA (which hosts concerts), Music Hall at Fair Park, Schollmaier Arena (formerly Daniel–Meyer Coliseum). It's bigger than Hofheinz Arena in Houston. The only college basketball arenas in Texas that are bigger are UT, A&M and UTEP. 

I've been in, behind, on, above and under nearly ever inch of the Super Pit. 
 
Updated and renovated for 21st Century facility technology and current college basketball arena standards? Yes. Lots that can be done.
Need to tear it down and start all over? Hell no. The Pit ain't Fouts. 
And given the way the Pit was built, demolition is gonna cost many millions of dollar. Can't just tear it down like Fouts. Soooooo much reinforced concrete and steal beams in there.


 

And there lies Benford's biggest failure as a coach. He can't coach 5 guys into a team. It's just been 5 dudes out there in the same uniform.

Immediately upon his arrival we saw a group of players who meshed incredibly well under a different coach begin to look lost and disinterested. The same players who only a few months before had been making no-look passes to each other and selflessly setting each other up for plays began to be ball hogs and taking really dumb, selfish shots when half of the team was wide open. A really visible symptom of his bad coaching was the relentless and constant substitutions, which always served to kill any kind of scoring momentum we would get and the merry-go-round of guys in the lineup kept any group of players from getting comfortable with each other. (He's also been really bad about clock management). 
 
Every college coach, and every NBA coach for that matter, has the task of taking a group of players who don't know each other, some who may have even played against each other before, and getting them to trust and believe in each other and play as a cohesive unit. Benford has not done that. I'll even argue that his shortcomings as a coach are what drove Tony Mitchell to declare for the draft when he did, which was too early. Mitchell was two completely different players under Johnny and under Benford. 

Wife got an awesome job in Tempe. We couldn't say no. And since @golfingomezmoved to Tennessee I wasn't tied down anymore. :)
So I'll be freelancing and driving an Uber unless the Arizona Republic decides they can't live without me. 
 
I've been on the sidelines for every UNT home game, except for the black jersey Dickey Finale, since the 2004 season. When I get back home I'm gonna make a count of just how many pictures I've taken in that time. No idea what it'll be but it's gonna be a big ass number.

But don't fret: My final assignment for the DRC will be a football game in Denton, at Apogee Stadium on September 3rd!
 
Oh at @Cerebus, that was my first and only New Orleans Bowl but the fourth overall. The "we"s in that sentence all know you are.
 
 

We've never gone from forest green, to lime to kelly in a three year span.

We used the same dark shade of Forest Green from 1983 when we abandoned the Hayden Fry era Flying Worm uniforms until 2007 when the Todd Dodge era coincided with the University as a whole changing to a new shade of green as part of the same new branding campaign that introduced the SOW. Dodge didn't pick the green that he used on those hideous Under Armour uniforms, that was the new official UNT green. Pantone 356. https://identityguide.unt.edu/create-our-look/color

When Dodge got canned and RV hire Mac, the shade of green didn't change. What DID change was the uniform supplier. Under Armour's uniforms and the 2011 Nike uniforms were made of totally different materials and THAT had an effect on the perceived color of the jerseys. The material on those Nike jerseys made the color look weird in all but perfect lightning. I've had trouble since 2011 making them look right in my photos. The 2015 jerseys were made from a different material that had less of an iridescent quality to it and therefore the color look closer to the official UNT green. Look at basketball, track, volleyball, soccer, softball etc: They've all had the same shade of emerald green since the rebranding in 2006. The green around the floor of the Super Pit has been he same shade of green since then. 

On a personal note, it's been a struggle to get the green to look right since 2011. I had crappy cameras from 2011 until the 2014 season but even then it was hard. The iridescent material reflects what's around it, and that could mean blue sky, or the color of the jersey of a guy on the other team while he's trying to tackle one of our players. If you look at a lot of photos you'll see that the jerseys and the helmets look like different colors and that's why. Bright open sunlight made them look great, but shade, like when the sun had gone behind the pressbox but it was still bright enough out that the sky lit up the field and not the stadium lights, made them look horrible. 
 
Kelly Green during late 60s.

1994 Forest Green, white Eagle head silhouette on helmet.

1995 Forest Green, Cartoon Scrappy head on helmet
 
2002 Forest Green with white facemask, script North Texas on helmet - Looks brighter because of good lighting in Super Dome. Looks black in the middle of the chest from sweat soaking in.

2003 Forest Green with black facemasks, script North Texas. Note how black it looks from the sweat on Booger. 
 
2004 Forest Green with black facemask, script North Texas on helmet - Same jerseys, but looks darker because it's under the lights at Fouts.

2005-2006 forest green with block letter North Texas on helmet

Todd Dodge Southlake Carroll uniforms from 2006

And then 2007 -2010 Dodge era Under Armour uniforms - note how many shades of green the fan apparel is. Guy with a hat and shirt that are different shades.

2010 Vs K State : Fouts Finale


 
2011-2015
In this spring game photo the color is awful because it was mid-day and the green looks too blue. Our eyes don't see it but everything looks bluer to a camera in mid-day because of how much blue sky everything reflects. Especially the shadow areas on white pants. Canon cameras don't make the shadows look blue but Nikons, which I use, do.
Here they look too Kelly Green because the whole photo has too much yellow in it. My laptop screen wasn't calibrated right back then.
This photo makes them look too blue because of the camera's white balance (not my photo)

These next two photos they look better, but still not great under the lights at Apogee. Not an Apogee problem, a fabric problem.


Finally a day game shot, with a newer camera, showing the true jersey color in full sunlight.

2015: New uniform design with a different fabric because Nike stopped making the previous material. Nowhere near as iridescent as before, and the color looks more accurate under most lightning conditions. Also I had a better camera and laptop for these. 
2015 jerseys shot with a studio flash, most accurate representation of the actual color.
They looked accurate in the daytime


But still picked up a lot of yellow color while shooting at night under the stadium lights.

 
I get it, I don't like that we've been all the hell over the place as far as our identity as a program in the last 15 years. From week to week when I wear my green on Fridays, my favorite thing to wear is still my forest green 2003 football shirt with a white facemask script logo helmet on the back from my Freshman year. That's what we wore when we beat Baylor in 2003 and my favorite Mean Green memory of Booger running that fumble in for a TD. Other weeks I'll wear my favorite SOW shirt or something else. Of all the Mean Green stuff I own that I've amassed in the past 13 years most of it doesn't match. 

The giveaway Pit Crew shirt I wear to bed most nights is Flying Worm era Kelly Green. My Fouts Field Finale shirt and my super rare Mean Green Stadium shirt are both made by Gildan and are the same shade, but my Heart of Dallas Bowl game shirt is a Jansport and is darker. This has less to do with someone in the AD being a moron and the clothing suppliers having umpteen different takes on what Emerald Green is. But this isn't new: I saw Kelly Green shit for sale in 2005 and I've seen forest green Son of work stuff in the past few years. 


I'll admit though, the licensed apparel and gear problem has gotten WAY better since we started using CLC instead of going at it by ourselves. The rainbow of different shades of green has narrowed quite a bit. But even on the University's own brand licensing web site, they use a photo that shows how many different shades ofgreen our officially licensed products can come in.

They're not bad, when compared to what we had at Fouts. 
Player lockers: 

Player lounge area:
Weight room:

Sports Medicine center:

They were great and on the same level as Big Time power conference schools in 2004 when the Athletic Center was built. But, and it's a big but, that was 2004. Starting just a couple years later big power schools started to pour insane money into locker rooms, creating places that rivaled a lot of NFL facilities. 

Example: Here's Oklahoma's locker room a few years ago.

And here's what the Sooners have now.

There's been a huge player facilities arms race the past few years, and we built locker rooms right before it started. We were looking at what bigger school had at the time, while those bigger schools were looking at Oregon, who kicked it all off with their Nike $$$.

Here are our peers:

Ponies

Houston

Boise State

Here's what Southern Mississippi is building

 
LA Tech

Charlotte

ODU

Tulsa (ok not too different from what we currently have)

FAU

UTSA:
Here's what they have on campus at their football facility

And here's what they got installed in the Alamodome since they're now the primary tenant.

Western Kentucky

And then there's how the other half live.
Texas A&M

Baylor

Ohio State

Oklahoma State 

Florida State went from this

To this

So yeah what we have now was nice but not amazing when it was built and it looks impressive if you played high school football at Pilot Point, but is a turnoff for a lot of kids from bigger schools who will make recruiting decisions based on how much they feel a school will cater to their needs and make them feel special.

"Benford promoted to AD position..."

Also let's not steal my photo and photoshop it to oblivion and post it on Twitter...

PHOTO BY DAVID MINTON/DENTON RECORD-CHRONICLE

Should have started with the more important news Harry.

Photographers TheWestie and Al Key won first place place in sports photography. Key was recognized for a photo of Burleson Centennial High School base runner Nate Menchaca being forced out at home plate by Denton High School catcher Dylan Tekell during a game last year at Bronco Field. TheWestie’s shot featured University of North Texas linebacker Zach Orr blocking a field goal attempt by Middle Tennessee State University kicker Cody Clark in October at Apogee Stadium.

The hotels don't book up because when anybody has a conference in DFW it's in Grapevine/Dallas/Fort Worth/Arlington/Addison, and Denton is too far to drive.

The Mayborn Conference every summer, which isn't a particularly large conference, has to be held in Grapevine because there is NOWHERE in Denton that has the meeting space to host a conference/convention where you have break-out sessions and large group meetings. The Gateway Center is nice, but it is not a conference/convention center.

Think about this for a sec too: Mac has the team stay at the Marriott across from Texas Motor Speedway because A: it's away from the distractions of campus and B: because it has the conference space needed for all the team meetings before games. Where in Denton, right now, has that kind of space for the visiting team to stay, and to keep the money they're spending, in Denton?