PlummMeanGreen

I was 12 years old on 11/22/63 and it still seems like yesterday to me. Went home from school & my mother was on the sofa sobbing as we watched that day's tragedy in Dallas. A cousin, ie, Jackie Oliver went to school with J.D. Tippits son...she told me at a family reunion near Fort Parker how Dallas police came to her school to tell Tippetts son about his daddy then Jackiie told me...."Jimmy, as long as I'll live I will never forget that boy's loud sobs for his daddy as they led him out of the school.." We were all glued to our black & white TV's for 3-4 days. Stayed home from church on 11/24 and saw L.H. Oswald get shot on live TV. Today has been a sad day because it made me think about JFK, Jackie, LBJ, then my mother, then my father.............all no longer among the living. Baby boomers remember 11/22/63 and will till the day we die, too. Question: Isn't the UNT Law School headquartered in the same building where Oswald was killed in its basement?

Rick: Was just talking to a fellow friend of ours and told him the same thing. Almost ice skated down my ramp deck attached to my back door area matter of fact. I think 40 plus degrees at kick-off tomorrow will take care of what's going on now. GMG!

How many were loyal at the Air Force versus UNLV game last night at Colorado Springs? And amazingly, there are many more fans who show up at Apogee who don't even know this website (or any other UNT-oriented sites) even exists. North Texas doesn't own attendance problems in the G5, either. Last 2 Game Day crowds at Apogee have been pretty good for a program whose casuals and borderline fans will still need 2 or 3 winning seasons before they believe all this is for real. Having had losing football seasons most of the last 10 or so years tends to create those kind of fans is what my 42 years of following all this has taught me. GMG! PS: On Halloween Night, North Texas outdrew the Houston Coogs and the Washington State(?) games at the turnstiles. We still need a viable season tickets sales program accompanied by a real marketing program where we start seeing school buses filled with fans all over the place on our Game Days. When is the last time anyone saw more than 2 or 3 public school buses filled with kids for a Game Day at Apogee Stadium? Really...when was the last time anyone saw that? Some fans may be able to fill up their cars with friends and relatives on Game DAy...but we need those who have all the lists who will see that bus after bus filled with Mean Green fans show up at Apogee at our future Game Days. Obviously, that will make a difference in the attendance part of the Apogee Stadium boxscore.

Not this season for this football team and this game...if we'd had another losing football season your estimate of 8K would have probably been too high. (Good gosh---did anyone see how few fans there were in Colorado Springs as Air Force hosted UNLV last night)? If a dry day at Apogee tomorrow with what Big 10 fans would call a warm, balmy perfect Game Day keeps our fans away from a game which still has much riding on it then we almost need to start from scratch and develop a new fan base that would be much more mentally tougher. (Not really...we are all happy with our fan base who have stuck with this football program for almost a decade of losing seasons--it still just needs many more new faces is all). And isn't it times like these that we wish we would have sold 10K-15K season tickets last Spring/Summer? Wonder what the new UNT president will say when he sees way too many empty seats for our games no matter who we play? A man who raised almost a billion(?) at UNLV I would think will tend to be marketing (and football tickets selling) savvy and will probably listen no excuses. Change at the right time can be good for a university-- especially in a beaurocracy that can tend to get stale and set in its ways. GMG!

40 degrees, no rain and some wind for Game Day at Apogee tomorrow and you wanna stay warm on a budget? Then go to Walmart and buy those Fruit of the Loom (or Hanes) top and bottom sweats for $5.99 each(?), let those 2 articles be a glorified set of insulated undie's and then wear your usual cold weather garb over those. You will stay warm.

Great coaches/great players! Makes all this worthwhile.

Most of our past UNT presidents have had their strengths and high points, but good gosh have we ever had a hire as this who seems to hit most every area of need of which we have at this time in our history? I think reaching Tier 1 is now back in play for UNT when I didn't think that before. Congrats to all those responsible for this (apparent) great hire for the University of North Texas. GMG!

Some of us said Year 3 would be Coach Mac's break-through season and low and behold....but I refuse to worry about losing anyone right now as we have this "1 season winning streak" working for us right now. Posted it earlier elsewhere, but coach's come-coach's go but if we lose a good one like Coach Mac, lets only hope we can copy the Boise State model and merely replace him with someone who gets us to a "2'nd winning season in row" and so on--so forth.. Boise lost 3-4 HFC's in the space of about 10 years and kept replacing their lost HFC with new ones who still kept the Broncos in Top 25 polls------go figure? GMG!

Not selling out the UH game even with their 4,000 traveling fans still hurts--not so much as to not selling out that stadium debut game but what that continued to say about our school still not doing all the right things to catch the imagination of Denton County/DFW area newcomers all but living in the shadows of Apogee Stadium. Still staying the same with attendance with no significant season ticket sales from one year to the next; no significant large groups promotions as in (where are rows after rows of parked school buses near Apogee with groups of all ages in them on our Game Days)? We seem content annually hanging in there with standard promotions after Summer Orientations are done like Parents Weekend, Homecoming, Senior Day, etc, etc, etc,--doesn't take much to put those promos on mailers now does it? And then you have a similar scenario and attitude of "just accept it--this is where we will always be" with the darn fleas as described in the link below as they keep on.............well, uh, read the link is all I can recommend. It's not very long; maybe about a minute (+/-) max? http://goal-setting-for-success.com/how-high-can-you-jump.html GMG! If we don't fix this attendance thing next year (since this one is all but done), it will cost us a good Mean Green Head Football Coach or 2 or 3 in due time. Also, when conference re-alignment or re-shuffling rears its head again (and it will) and we still find ourselves sucking hind teat with annual low season ticket sales and still too low attendance averages---some even now in the new CUSA will move up but we'll stay the same as many on this very forum will (once again) wonder----------why them--not us (but we'll all know "why them--not us) ?" Coach Mac has spoken about this attendance thing at UNT quite often so there really must be something to it when it comes to season ticket sales, having sellouts at Apogee and all of their importance to a coach, his staff and theirs/our's team, ya' think?

Tell us about your UTSA marching band as in how long they've been in operation. How many members? Kind of music they like to play? Any YouTube stuff on them? GMG!

Rubbing alcohol, Judge Joe? GMG!

We probably should not speculate on Coach Mac's behalf based on his health or age. He may be healthier than a horse--stroke or no stroke; by pass or no by pass. Age 60 with many is still considered young enough. Young enough with us, right? The model many of us will probably always defer to if we find ourselves looking for a HFC is our former conference-mate, ie, Boise State. In a little over a decade, Boise had about 3 or 4 HFC's hired away from their emerging program yet the Broncos didn't lose a beat with each of those new hires and continued as a Top 25 ranked program throughout. It was an amazing feat to watch this all materialize in Bronco Country, too. GMG!

For most of the last 15 or so years, North Texas has had twice the combined enrollments of SMU and TCU living on or within blocks of our main campus. I think the whole idea of UNT as a commuter school needs to really all but disappear quite frankly, and furthermore because it has become so darn retro as a message board subject and irrevelant to who our school is now and has been for almost 2 plus decades. GMG!

FM 156 off FW's Loop 820 also makes for a good alternative route if I-35W is clogged up. FM 156 goes thru Saginaw, Justin, Ponder, etc, and you also go behind Alliance as well as Texas Motor Speedway off that FM road. Most likely I-35W will be fine but it does tend to stack up for a few extra minutes at I-35W and Western Center.

We will not fall for the "our best this or that position will not be traveling with the team" narrative....not at all. Do hope the young man heals properly, though. GMG!

Since all this started "selfie" has been named word of the year. Say it and spell it...then you'll have it. GMG!

We better hurry up and beat them before the Big 12 snatches them away from CUSA.............. Time is of essence! Wonder how soon it'll be before they feel Notre Dame isn't good enough to play them? JEEZ...LOUISE!

Is he the one who fired 'Tark?" Has he already had his coronation?

24, 800 (just the potential of bad weather will keep some of our wusses' home). Then I think about all those up in Iowa (and beyond) who will remove a foot of snow from their stadium seats as they cheer their teams on with below freezing temps. GMG!

Are these people mentally challenged and have been drinking way too much water out of the San Antonio river or what? Will they say just about anything on a smack board to try to create an instant rivalry, too? Hey UTSA! You've done well with Coker in the same timeline we've had McCarney--ie, Year 3. Yall could get NCAA FCS transfers who could play immediately and we could not. We've been around playing football 100 years and yall have not. So what? Let's just enjoy a college football game this Saturday and whoever wins lets merely shake hands, part friends and then yall can watch North Texas in a bowl game on national TV in just a matter of mere weeks. GMG! PS: Thank you UNT students (past and present) for all you've done! Fact is, UT-Austin or TAMU's Board of Regents would not have even brought such an important campus construction to a student vote or referendum, but North Texas did...FWIW.

Lets see now...Schools Who've Passed Us By? Former conference mates of UNT: Louisville Memphis Houston Cincinatti Boise State Not Former Conference Mates of North Texas Who've Moved Up: South Florida Central Florida UConn Oh no, what you are suggesting will never happen at North Texas (again). Our leaders are top shelf with other NCAA FBS outposts tripping all over themselves trying to get to Denton to hire them all away from us. They are using our "lights out' season ticket sales and annual attendance successes as their reasons for wanting to steal them away, too. Fact is, based on someone elses success, ie, Coach Mac and the Mean Green; nevertheless, their (most admirable) success this Fall has probably saved a whole bunch of slacker's jobs for another 5, 10 or so years so we will keep getting the same ol' song but just another tired verse because of it but................... .................we will also keep getting annual low season ticket sales of which we never get this simple question answered: "How many season tickets have we sold this summer?" (The Sound of Silence soon begins)..................... along with less than stellar football attendance averages for a school with a constituency our size, too. (The next sound you hear now is the circling of "WE ANSWER TO NO ONE" beaurocratic wagons to protect those who have proven year in and year out how they cannot make it happen at UNT and how do we know? How's 'bout Season Ticket Sales Totals + football attendance. Moral of Post I : If we do the usual at North Texas, your chances of passing us by are very do-able AND.... ...what I've just posted more UNT alums on this board (many I've known for just about forever) have thought the very same more than once but have UNT-related personal agendas or maybe even (yuk! yuk!) UNT employment aspirations and simply cannot afford to say how they feel. Yet.............. their silence thru the decades have given us a program that has created the very scenarios as to allow all the aforementioned schools to pass us by---Beep! Beep! Sadly, we have been a very gullible alumnus base to allow all this to keep happening to us. Uh.........................just sayin'. GMG! THIS > > > > With the right leadership in place or an AD who will stop protecting those who have annually proven they cannot produce in the main areas that we need production and one who is open minded enough as to hire such an ancillary staff so that we can finally begin to move ahead of most every one of the schools I've listed (in red) above. Moral of Post II: Coach Mac should not have to be begging fans to come fill a 31,000 seat football stadium in a population center of almost 8 million. There is nothing that makes sense about that and all the excuses we've heard in the past are no longer acceptable.

I like your brevity of complete thought--no ambiguity with what you have posted whatsover. It would have taken me another paragraph or 10 to say it any better (if I could have at all). GMG!

And SMU will be a sellout next Fall at Apogee? Only if there are 31,000 green-clad fans in the stadium (which I hope there are) will that happen. SMU should rehire Mustang Maniac promo guy Brad Thomas (if he's not retired) to show them how you can actually get bodies attached to all those free tickets inside the stadium on a Game Day. For North Texas to get 2,500 kids in the Wing Zone each game next Fall (?) (HINT! HINT!) we would need to for each game (as I recall the Mustang Mania formula on such things) get 10,000 free tickets (or pre-purchased by a corporation so called "free tickets") out into Denton County middle/elementary schools, peewee football, kids soccer teams, scouts, etc, etc, etc, and then you have a real chance for 2,500 kids (along with a parent or 2 who have to buy a full priced end zone ticket to accompany their kids). Rule #1: You cannot leave such free tickets in an athletic department office drawer to collect dust). Like Russ Potts and Drex have always said: An empty seat cannot buy a coke, hot dog, T-shirt, etc, etc, etc,... (Hey! We can still dream that something like this might actually happen in some of our's fading into the sunset lifetimes, right)? GMG!

Agree... The only thing we have to fear is... ...doing what we've mostly done many of our adult lives and that is going 3 giant steps forward and then.............5 giant steps backwards. Upon further review & thought concerning Tim Cowlishaw's remarks, the go forward then go backwards M.O. at UNT probably the main reason as to why we have so many doubting Thomases among the DFW media along with those on our campus, our enormous DFW alumnus base, Denton and Denton County for that matter. Might a string of winning seasons and then some get us in the ball game with the DFW media? I think it would in a big way. Then add a MAC'esque Top 25 ranked Mean Green program with Apogee sellouts and we'd be on our way. And just like untjim1995 posted, we have to beat a few AQ's (preferably Top 25 ranked) along the way, too. Most times won't we have to actually beat a Top 25 ranked school to be able to warp speed our football program into the Top 25? GMG! PS: The Apogee Experience: Anyone else think that had Tim Cowlishaw been with fellow DMN sportswriter Gosselin when he was at Apogee and in the MGRN booth few games back extolling the virtues of all that he was seeing that Tim would have even bothered to so needlessly kick us in the family jewels with his seemedly intended to be condescending one sentence remark?