ragpicker

Good points.UNT is probably above average for a school our size in the number of famous or celebrity alumni we have produced - from Larry Mc Murtry to Meatloaf, (or is it Meatball?). Whatever, I wonder if the administration is really reaching out to them. Perhaps we should begin highlighting them on our half time promotions during televised games as UT did with theirs last football season. We have so much to be proud of, but we have never seemed to beat our own drum as effectively as other schools.

For some reason church schools and cow colleges have been able to rise above their humble origins more successfully than teachers colleges. Our administrators have tended to be stuffy old pedagogues with no vision and an inability to understand what is going on around them. Our first president with a PHD in an academic field was Dr. Kamerick from Kent State who arrived in the late 60's and did not stay long.I do not believe we even had a real athletic director until Hayden Fry as our athletic programs were being run by the PE Department as if we were a glorified high school. We have allowed successful programs to slide (men and women's golf) and have not taken of advantage of the opportunities that have come our way either athletically and,in many cases, academically. So much of our success in the past has been in spite of ourselves rather than through intelligent planning. But cheer up! I am really enthusiastic about our future. We just have to win.

Good post PLUMM.I am not as anti-SMU as some on this board, but I cannot understand their decisions. Their number one priority should be fan support which, as you point out, is not going to improve around here with a Big East schedule. SMU football is looking more and more like a small private club with a few wealthy donors rather than an intercollegiate program. Surely it can't continue this way forever.

Poor old North Texas. I have begun to feel that we are the ugly girl at the prom with whom no one wants to dance. NT was established at least a generation before either Texas Tech or The University of Houston, and we still have very good football records against those schools. We played our first intercollegiate football game (TCU) the year before SMU came into being. We were successful in D1 football (Missouri Valley) when many schools that have passed us by were junior colleges and, in many cases, did not yet even exist. What incredibly foolish decisions, what myopic policies and what mindless planning were conjured up down the corridor of years that would have us, well into our third century, loveless, forlorn and near the bottom of the athletic barrel? My heart goes out to you, Scrappy (...bird thou never wert"!). You don't deserve this crap.

Poor old North Texas. I am beginning to feel like we are the ugly girl at the prom with whom nobody wants to dance. We were established years before there were such schools as Houston and Texas Tech and played our first intercollegiate football game a year before there was an SMU. We were competing in and winning in a D! conference (Missouri Valley) when some schools that are way ahead of today were still junior colleges or did not exist at all. What incredibly goofy decisions, careless missed opportunities and half-witted mistakes have we committed down the corridor of years to finally find ourselves in such a loveless and forlorn bottom of the barrel position.

One more disappointment after another. Being snake bit is one thing, people generally get over snake bites, but there seems to be something in our DNA that works against us. Perhaps our fate is in the stars and not in ourselves for there is something truly tragic about North Texas athletics. God bless poor old Scrappy anyway.

I would take one square block of New Orleans over the entire state of Tennessee-its north, east, south, west or middle.

How appropriate that an observation and prediction about tonight's game should take place in a public restroom over a urinal. Our team is apparently a pisser along with our coaching staff and those responsible for bringing them here. No reasonable fan should have expected miracles from this team regardless of its potential, but there is something almost surreal about its pathetic performances. We have become a shameful joke and have every right to be very, very pissed along with those teams that go back two or three generations and played their hearts out against great odds against some of the best college basketball teams in the country. Win or lose, and in whatever conference or division, I cannot recall North Texas basketball being so shamefully inept. Vic Trilli's tenure not withstanding.

I really want Tulane because they are in New Orleans and are building a new stadium on campus. It was extremely disappoin-ting when they decided on the big waste. Let us hope they return like the prodigal son, or better yet, never really leave. The streetcar to campus from downtown is a treat.

Women's sports. God bless them for their athletic abilities and their GPA's. (All non-revenue sports for that matter).

SMU winning a national championship in 1939 is news to me.

Bring back the original Scrappy and everything will fall in to place.

That is what I call classy marketing. Of course, we can't compete with Colorado's geography, but we could highlight some of the things we do have around here which certainly compare favorably with most other Texas schools and beat some of them all to hell. We are located in a very attractive medium sized city that looks like a real college town rather than either a slum or a suburb. We are very close to Dallas and Ft. Worth and even have a modern transit system that runs regularly to Dallas and all around town. I could go on, but for all the effective promoting we do, there are still those who think we are little teacher's college somewhere in the panhandle.

Even trolls love rock and roll, this guy is more of a trash talking toad.

I do not watch "Bourne" movies as they are juvenile,formulaic and all too digital. I just thought that a school with a reputation in fine arts as exceptional as UNT's could come up with something a bit more original and creative. (And, no, I did not live in Bruce). By the way, thanks for the "Picker", that was,indeed, my moniker in college.

I don't know what beating the crap out people in hallways or blowing up buildings has to do with recruiting unless we are going after sociopaths and and common criminals. (The vertical and horizontal lines do conjure up an image of prison.) I do know that in the top one hundred commitments in the DMN today, SMU, Louisiana Tech, Rice, and even UTSA among other so-called mid -level schools are represented. Not a sign of UNT.

Why are you trying to disillusion meangreener? With our luck lately, a UNT shirt in Connecticut may be a small thing, but it is a nice thing, especially following our disappointing football season and what appears to be a disastrous basketball season. I am cynic by nature but I know what to be cynical about. Keep those sightings coming meangreener, we need a little Christmas right this very minute.

It is always fun to play SMU and we always have a good crowd here and travel well there. As a UNT fan since Odus Mitchell was Marshall Maverick, (well, almost) I have put up with our, let us say, "inconsistent" program far too long to bail out now. If SMU beats us each year in the upcoming series, however, it may be time to adopt another school just to have a team to cheer for in basketball and football, my own alma mater notwithstanding. The Mustangs might be a good choice, although I will remain loyal to our non-revenue sports as those kids seem to be great kids who are generally well coached and reasonably successful. I will miss our cheerleaders.

I remember that night well. I was in deep East Texas by a tiny town called Minden with my car antenna connected to a clothes hanger which was in turn wrapped around an outside basketball hoop. KNTU would very weakly come in and out, but I still recall Bill Mercer's excitement when Tech failed to complete a final desperation pass to the end zone, thus insuring our victory. Fortunately, a few years later we began broadcasting on 100.7 (The Word?) and our football and basketball games came in loud and clear throughout that part of the state. Alas, we are no longer with that station and the one that replaced it is no more than a foolish redundancy of the weak KNTU signal when it comes to broadcasting games. I don't know why that change was made, but unless it was somehow unavoidable, it was a foolish decision. I have often thought that because it was a religious station that God was punishing us for dropping it. He does seem to be a bit peeved with us of late.

I wish I knew enough about basketball to know which of these arguments is valid, and I do not pretend to know. It sure seems to me, however, that for such an unprecedented abundance of talent, we seem to have a most peculiar lack of success.

I don't know what SMU and Houston will do either, but going to the Big Lost is not it.

I should have included all athletics instead of just football. It is outrageous, for example, for the four D1 schools in basketball. which are in thirty mile radius of each other, not to play each other every year regardless of conference affiliation. With recent and future advancement in public transportation in this area (DART, TRE, DCTA ) there is no reason college basketball could not become very popular for alumni and basketball fans in general throughout this metropolitan area.

I am afraid that the success of TCU and Baylor has given SMU and Houston a sense of false hope, SMU needs to realize that their first priority should be putting fans in their stadium and that can only happen with local rivalries. Dallas is not Ft Worth or Waco. Our local news channels barely cover college sports these days. As for Houston, well, it is still Cougar High in the minds of many. Salvation for those schools will eventually depend on a conference that offers some of the advantages of the old SWC, (travel, local rivalries etc.) As long as each school remains self centered in its own self interest, rather than putting first what is good for college football as a whole in this area, nothing will change.

There is an article in the current "New Yorker" about radio personality Paul Finebaum and Alabama/SEC football that some of you might find interesting. Mean Green fans will never be as outrageously fanatic as SEC fans, perhaps, but after reading this article, I think that is probably a good thing. In a word, those people are nuts.

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