PlummMeanGreen

BLASPHEMY! (Just kiddin' Judge Joe)! }:>) 2 Rules In Play Here: Rule #1: Stay on the good side of a Judge) Rule #2: See Rule # 1 Urban tale said Hayden had gotten wind that others were leaving the Mo' Valley, too. All those who left are now in the AAC with 1 (maybe 2) in consideration for the Big 12. To reiterate....urban tale said. But yes, in deed, "if if's & but's...... GMG! PS: Basketball? Didn't we all love Denny Crum & the Louisville Cardinals coming to the fabulous Super Pit for a conference matchup?

Wonder how many North Texas Exes reside in the Greater Houston area? GMG!

That one talking about North Texas & the Big 8 was national sportscaster Merle Harmon. (SMU alum Alan Stone was his color guy who kept calling us NorTexSt) . Matter a fact, Rick Spears & I went to Mr. Harmon's memorial at "The Ballpark" after he passed. (God rest his soul but still not sure how Spears talked me into going to that since I really had no affiliation with the media). I met DMN sports columnist Randy Galloway after that memorial & asked him about his student days at North Texas which was one of his many collegiate stops. He said something about too much Jose Cuervo to remember? LOL!

Video vignette taken from my UNT football DVD library of the game & from my IPhone. It was the last play of the 1'st half and then..... this play happened: (By the way: North Texas 14.....SMU 7) Note: Harry, if video doesn't play just remove this thread if you want. Thanks in advance.? Addendum: For the video go several posts below. Thanks NorthTexan95! IMG_0132.MOV

Of course, we can count on the Rice Owls to play picture perfect this Saturday. North Texas just has to play better. Again: MEAN GREEN WIN! 24-21 GMG!

Top 26-50 ranked programs might be OK for now.

Down on the Golden Gulf Coast of Texas we who worked on rice farms as youth helped to inspire a bumper sticker for that industry you'd see on many chrome bumpers (remember those?) that said: EAT MORE RICE TODAY! Well, not sure if we "eat em' up" like the UH Coogs yell would say it but I think North Texas will have an important 24-21 win. Right now, I'd even take a 3-2 win! GMG!

Short steps for now, but then this program will take---GIANT STEPS! (Mark it)! Everyone from UNT President Smatresk, the BOR's, a proven trio of NCAA Athletic administrators and a new Mean Green HFC plus his assistants all want this thing to take off at North Texas. Truly, older nestors, when is the last time we had all that working together? Jitter Nolen, Jitter's BOR's, Hayden Fry, Bill Blakely, etc,? The SEC U of Florida Gators have (or will have) a Top 5 ranked defense this season from all accounts. If the Mean Green offensive line develops this season this offense could be mighty OK. I was going to say Fine, of course, so.......is OK, uh, OK? As an admitted novice, I still say until we get the kind of offensive line that we had when we won a bowl game just 2 years ago, I'd still put a shadow RB in the backfield to give Mason Fine some additional protection. Not sure Coach Littrell's offense would do such, but for now that might be a good idea. GMG!

Well, Fine has only been part of 3 NCAA games since his graduation from HS & his offense line is not yet of the same quality we all saw at the Cotton Bowl Stadium's HOD Bowl game on January 1, 2014. We have not recruited well almost since they opened Apogee Stadium and by now we've all heard all the stories why. With DT#7's MG offensive line Mason Fine would go on a slobber'knockin' gridiron tear! McCarney & gang used Todd Dodge's recruits to win a bowl game 2 years ago and then went into recruiting hibernation (hence, a Portland State would rear its ugly head at our place). We have some fine young players on this team and some veterans who may very well mesh before this season ends, but a 4 or 5 win season would be considered an outstanding coaching job by Coach Littrell & Company. Once again, we all have to be patient due to the prior staff enjoying the hell out of their last couple of years in Denton to feather all their 401-k's. They got their chicken $alad--we & our present football team get the chicken caca of their not hustling to put a string of good classes together to help the cause & our present players on scholarship. Its really not fair to those presently on the team that they weren't giving more help for this 2016 Mean Green football campaign. We're all biased, but for heaven's sake, North Texas should not be so difficult a sell to those kids we will eventually have & who will be the ones who will take us to higher places than any of us have seen. Look at the expanded athletic administrative support group we now have who are all in lock-step to see that Coach Littrell & his coaches get all they need to succeed? And you can begin with one the whose quote is my below signature.

Rice Stadium is a special place to me. As I've posted before, it was the site of my first ever college football game as kid. Our next door neighbor in Danbury (located between Alvin & Angleton) worked for Humble who were sponsors of Southwest Conference football, so he was always dumping tickets onto my dad and me. One memorable one was watching UT play Ole Miss in the Bluebonnet Bowl which was held in Rice Stadium before moving to the Astrodome. Super Bill Bradley was a UT QB and Houston Spring Branch great Chris Gilbert was the star RB for the Horns. DKR's Longhorns beat Johnny Vaught's Rebels that day. GMG!

I went to 3 of these games, but was this one they recognized Bud Wilkinson at half time? GMG! PS: untcampbell, several of us rode with you but was that the night you got a speeding ticket from an OK DPS officer en route home?

If we can get any offensive line blocking, Mason Fine will have a breakout game. I hope for all of us it happens this Saturday at Rice Stadium. GMG!

It begins with a verbal. Some kids keep their promise. (Ask OU & OSU about an OK'ee who kept his). Sometimes having your cupboard left almost bare by a prior staff has its percs? Just not many for sure but....you can play now? We need to do a bunch of recruiting just to get to the scholly' minimum from all accounts. I've not given up on this Fall's North Texas football team, though. They could very well jell. GMG!

Rice Stadium: Rice Owls versus Baylor, circa 1961? My first college football game to attend. I was hooked! GMG!

We will not get the true barometer on Mason Fine until we get at least 1 or 2 All-CUSA quality offensive linemen starters. DT#7 had that & he came back from a broken leg at Army to lead the Mean Green to a Heart of Dallas Bowl win before the largest contingent of North Texas fans in history & that was on January 1, 2014--a mere 2 years ago. Concerning the quality of our present offensive line? Who knows, we may already have 1 or 2 future All-CUSA lineman on this team but (like Fine) just need time to develop at the college level. Last year at this time many of our kids were playing on Friday nights. GMG! BEAT THE RICE OWLS!

Bill, the thing that strikes me about the largest College of Music in America (Indiana U) Band Day is that most of their HS band participants have IU graduates as their HS band directors & they seem to want to participate out of respect & loyalty for their alma mater & its present Indiana U Marching Band staff. Yada, Yada, Yada!? North Texas could probably more than fill our entire Apogee Stadium with HS bands located here in our area who have North Texas Exes as their band directors; yet we know, Bill, that you & I will probably not live long enough to see such a cultural change at our alma mater. Things seem to always be set in stone up there for whatever the reason. Some of those things have kept our favorite school from moving up like most all our former Missouri Valley conference-mates have so visibly done. ?Band Day? What Good Is It? It's All Good--It's All Green--It's in the Black (and there's no red ink): (1) For MG football players they see a Wing Zone filled to capacity with enthusiastic & loud fan support (2) Apogee concessions run out of drinks & food by the beginning of the 4'th quarter, (3) Apogee's sports gear store has record sales and.......... (4) Last & Hardly Least: UNT Undergrad Admissions staff has 4K-6K impressionable HS students on campus many who will decide they want to enroll at North Texas largely because of a simple....Band......Day.......promotion. NOTE: Cerebus posted that the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board needs UNT's enrollment to be at 45,000 students---RIGHT NOW! UNT is about 7,000 short of that number looking at our Fall, 2016, official enrollment figures. _______________________________ A Little More History: University of Michigan Band Day On YouTube Then U of Michigan Athletic Director Don Canham was the "Father of the Modern Era of Game Day HS Band Days" promotion among many Big Time schools in the NCAA. (I'd wager Michigan's President of that era was a willing & enthusiastic supporter of AD Don Canham's HSBD promotion, too). AD Don Canham's widow said of her late husband: "He (Canham) used events like Band Day—when high school bands from around the region would all pack the stadium and play at halftime—and promotions targeting women and families to increase attendance at the Big House." THIS: “He never promoted the game itself because you can always lose,” she said. “He never promoted a winning football team. It was always the pageantry." _________________________ http://www.mlive.com/news/ann-arbor/index.ssf/2014/10/widow_of_former_michigan_ad_do.html

Yep!?

It's a culture thang', Bill! ??

✳️ Hellsbells, the year North Texas beat a 6 & 5 SEC school over in Knoxville we opened the season with a 60 something to 7 loss to Oklahoma State. College Football Hall of Famer Hayden Fry was the Mean Green coach back then. CACA HAPPENS! ? See y'all at Apogee Stadium on October 1'st! Me'thinks this journey will make this group's eventual destination point higher than any of us have seen--including the Fry era. Just a gut feeling.

Hey KRAM1! As I said.....I stand to be corrected & thanks for doing just that. I passed by the UNT Health Science Center at Fort Worth the other day and the growth of that campus continues to amaze me. I remember when all TCOM was was that main building on the corner of Camp Bowie & Montgomery.

Hey Stix! As a kid down in the Danbury ISD (between Alvin & Angleton) we took a field trip to your Imperial Sugar Company in your great city of Sugar Land, Texas. The group that first backed Elvis in Las Vegas its founder Jake Hess named "the Imperials' after the Imperial Sugar Company. AND.....I stand to be corrected, but I don't think the Frisco campus would be counted toward those numbers any more than UNTHSC, Fort Worth, UNT-Dallas or UNT Law School would be but.....I stand to always be corrected. GMG!

We had a string of record-breaking Freshmen classes. Has that continued?

Easy to see this young man will be successful in or out of football. You just can't help but want to see him & his MG team be a success story the next 4 years. I look for his HS teammate Jason Pirtle to enter the scene at some point. He's not that fast but neither were Tulsa U greats Howard Twilley & Steve Largent. GMG!

Gaining on that 40,000 UNT student enrollment each Fall.

Mason 'So' Fine! With a few word changes, of course. My older sisters bought this kind of music & when they were gone on dates....I snuck back to their bedroom & played them! I played like I was a DJ. :( Indian heritage? I told my late brother-in-law who was half Sioux/half French & from South Dakota (yes, from the tribe who gave Custer a whole new hair style); anyway, I told him he should be proud as heck of his Indian heritage when we were on the subject one day. Told his son (my UNT alum nephew) the same thing. Mason Fine after watching a documentary on he and Jason Pirtle are both extremely (well grounded in their families) mature kids who I think would get a kick out of all this. All their Mean Green teammates need to know we are equally pulling for all of them to be raging successes, too. The 1975 Mean Green football season is & has always been mine & others bell weather for where this program should be nationally. Watching Houston & Cincy on ESPN tonight gives me quite an empty feeling because of all the time we've lost but......this new group on our entire staff looks pretty good to many of us. Maybe they will get us back to where we should be. I do like Smatresk quote as seen on my below signature. He is where this all has to start. ____________________________________________________ MASON FINE SAID THIS DURING HIGH SCHOOL: “I just came out here, and I was just gonna have fun and enjoy the game of football,” Fine said. “You never know when the game’s going to be taken away from you, so I’m gonna take this all in. Football’s not always gonna be there. I really had fun tonight. Probably the most fun I’ve had in a while.”