PlummMeanGreen

Very entertaining and very professionally produced, too Tulane was a game we so-oooooooooooo should have won but that was yesterday and yesterday's gone. I still think the CUSA refs got confused on which team was leaving CUSA for the AAC, though. Can our team get a quick start out of the starting blocks on one of these conference games? Tomorrow night would be a good start to have such a start. On this week's episode of 'Beyond the Green' North Texas line Coach Symmond's wife can 'shore 'nuf cook up a mess of food! Looks like our Mean Green linemen and guests at their home went thru what would have fed a Roman army pretty quick, too. BEAT THE HELL OUT OF THE MUTS &... TAKE NO PRISONERS!

Had a chance to meet your "Uncle Charn" back during a Spring Awards Banquet several years ago. He is a very nice and most humble guy. He gave UNT $22 MM about 3 years ago and I hear there will be more to come. North Texas Myth #222 is...that we don't have a serious number of wealthy alums out there.....trust me, we do. Another one of our alums came within a gnat's whisker of out- bidding Drayton MClane for ownership of the Houston Astros MLB club. Since McClane sold the Astros, he has been busy of late helping Baylor build its new football stadium; also............the CEO of Interstate Batteries (name escapes me) is a UNT alum as well. As many of you know, this list could go on and on and on.... Back To The Most Charming Charn: Charn said North Texas football gave him and his friends a social outlet when they were UNT students. He has a very warm spot for Mean Green football because of it. On Another Front: One post above mentioned our "live" ABC-TV televised game vs ULM here in the DFW area back in the day. Well, SUMG cut out and sent me a Dallas Morning News blurb that sportswriter Cathy Harasta wrote reporting that North Texas more than won its ratings time slot for that game and this "blurb" from me for those who don't think we have local TV ratings pulling power. Funny thing is how so much larger all our UNT constituencies are now present day than we were back in 1983 when that game was televised. Wonder what those TV ratings would be today because of it? GMG PS: Many of us who were around hated our 12 years in NCAA D1-AA. It made us feel like 2'nd rate NCAA citizens and I assure you we lost many alums who literally said "enough is enough" the day we announced we would dip down to that level.

Even if it were to rain its not like it will be a 45 degrees cold weather rain. Hows' 'bout more like 80 degrees? So on October 12'th we will still have a warm weather game beginning tomorrow night @ 6:00 PM, Apogee Stadium! Be There, Danno' (and book em' if they aren't in the stadium for the pre-game). GMG!

Just saw this on "The Dish."

Now this kind of stuff seen on that poster gets my adrenalin flowing! I've even got my rain gear ready. HINT: For you who don't and if your Walmart has sold out of what you need, uh THIS............. a 39 gallon Hefty outside yard back with a hole cut at the top for your cranium will work just fine:. Question? Are they still saying "no umbrellas" inside Apogee? If so, some need to know that, especially all the newbies. So yes, we just have to reach out and touch someone to get all the new fans who we all know will love their "Apogee Experience" once we get them thru the turnstiles for their first visit. I believe we have the staff to make this all work, but I still think we need to make this a campus wide/alumnus wide project (or challenge) beginning with (I repeat).........the Office of the Presidency (Rawlins) and his BOR's. IMO, this is just how important this is for our entire school. GMG!

We seemed way too hesitant to pull out all the stops in the first quarter for the Ohio U game and the Tulane game, too. We are having to climb our way out of 1'st quarter deficits as well as 1'st quarter "psyche outs" because of it, too, it seems to me. IMHO............This team has to play with reckless (controlled) abandon (you know what I mean) in the first quarter against MUTS and the rest of our schedule for that matter to keep the 1'st quarter from being Mean Green Public Enemy #1. Just my .02 PS: MUTS speedy RB and their QB/Receiver tandem should concern us all. They barely got beat by a pretty good East Carolina football team; one that will probalbly win our league's football championship for that matter. And I hope we will still have some QB sacks by our DL to balance things out a bit, too. We are asking way too much of our secondary when we can't pressure the QB.

Good one, UNT90!

Have no idea what we draw this Saturday but.............23 years ago this very weekend in a dump of a football stadium called Fouts Field we drew close to 23,000 (in a 20K seat stadium) for a game that didn't have "gotta win this one to have a real chance for a minimum .500 season and/or a bowl game" ramifications written all over it as our game with the MUTS has now . Hmmm.............23 years ago this weekend? Really haven't grown our fan base too much in 23 years now have we? (And none of that Coach McCarney's fault, either). I'd offer one major reason as to why we haven't but I think we've covered that subject quite thoroughly most all this week on GMG.com. LOL! And of course, 23 years ago we were still classified NCAA D1-AA, too. GMG!

Coach Mac is a good fit for our program and I wish all these barbs aimed at him for wanting a good North Texas crowd for "OUR's and "HIS" football team would stop. If he becomes a success at UNT (which I believe he will) don't think for a moment that he like any other NCAA FBS level coach would want to go where people support their team--win or lose. Hopefully, that school will be us after we tweak a few things to increase our attendance. As most on this board know, Coach Mac took over an Iowa State job that only Kansas State pre-Bill Snyder could have been considered worse. Still, he beat Iowa U 4 x's in a row and took the Cyclones to 6(?) bowl games. Some call what he did for the perennially losing ISU football program a near miracle. Even many of their fans have visited this board wishing him well with their still having good thoughts about what he did for their school. While Coach Mac was at Iowa State, they still had those 5K to 10K traveling fans from other Big 12 schools coming to their home games; that is, such fans that we don't get at North Texas with our opponents fans so guess what..............we need to do something that will most likely take much planning to get that shortfall and same number of new fans coupled with who we have already to Game Days at Apogee but in our case...all those extra new fans would all be wearing green--not our opponent's colors. Coach Mac is not responsible for our culture at North Texas...he inherited it. Why make him feel bad for wanting large croweds at that North Texas. Don't we have that in common? Why we hesitate in admitting our problem with small crowds using every excuse under the sun as to why yet with no attempts to fix any of this is why we (basically) outside of each years new freshmen class have the same old group we had when we watched our teams across the Interstate. Still, no reason to hold Coach Mac responsible for things that were already long set in place the same day North Texas announced him as our HFC. Game Day This Weekend? Coach Mac's team has its work cut out against Middle Tennessee as far as the Blue Raider team I saw last week against East Carolina. You can begin with a Blue Raider speed merchant of a RB who can score any time he touches the football. Couple that with a pretty good MTSU QB/Receiver tandem will give us a pretty big challenge. I marvel that the oddsmakers are making us the favorite in this game. Hopefully they know something we don't. North Texas is on the verge of being a good football team whose W/L record at this juncture could easily go north or south. . So it's tme to get our game faces (and raincoats) on, folks, because none of us are going to change 30 years of culture (created by too many losing seasons) just because we wish we could. What we need to do for new fans takes more than an overnight idea the week of the game. GMG!

I sorta like those new mirror'ed effect helmets I've seen of late Is there a proper name for those?

You are a great Mean Green fan, NewUNTFan8!

If that's all you read, UNT90. then that means you missed the best part..................the last sentence! :D GMG! PS: I will add that SMU's Mustang Mania promotions worked best with large numbers of fans when the Stangs were still losing. It was not SMU AD Russ Potts fault that SMU Slickity Doo Dog HFC Ron Meyer went rogue and on a buying binge for HS talent across the Lone Star State.

GMG1999, I defer back to McCarney's original concerns on UNT having a much too low attendance no matter what the hell our culture has been. Cultures can change; you know...ask former half century loser Kansas State about that. Ask former truck driving school and ex conference mate Boise State about that; ask lowly TCU of the 60's and 70's and much of the 80's about that. (Had the Frogs not had traveling fans coming to ACS during that span of years, they would have had to start lying about their real butts in seats numbers because having gone to a few of their OOC games with some "free" TCU tickets I can tell you that firsthand and few Froggies from that era would deny it). This: We are competing against schools (one whose program is now only 3 years old) who are kicking our butts at the turnstiles. This is hardly a new thing at UNT. Sure we've had some great past crowds at Fouts and now Apogee so it hasn't always been futile, but like any NCAA FBS level HFC would tell you that low attendance can help you lose the kind of recruits that will get Mean Green football out of this malaise we've been in for way too many years--and I'm not just talking about the last 8 losing seasons, either. IMHO, we have some pretty bright, creative minds on our campus, but they just need to direct all that creativity and energy toward solving our #1 problem with Mean Green football (other than too few wins) and we need to solve this attendance thing once and for all. Why we don't attack this head-on campus-wide beats the hell out of me. Some will say.......... "but GMG.com posters, UNT alums and MG fans, our staff are working their butts off every day up there now on this attendance thing." One response: Probably and rightfully so, but when we see the Wing Zone half filled or /3/4 filled or 100% filled, then we will know they are working their butts off every day on this matter. When for most of 25 years I was a sales director in the tech school industry, all I could base our department's success on was...........sales--not woulda's or coulda's or almost sales. (I still contend that solving our football attendance deficiencies needs to be a campus wide project beginning in the Office of the President (Rawlins) with full support from our BOR's). What I highlighted of former UNT promotions director "drex's" post above I believe is the kind of thing UTSA did with Kentucky Fried Chicken and others on a much grander scale down in San Antonio. It has paid off remarkably for the Road Runners. What? 30K per game averages of late? How many of us would think we had died and gone to Mean Green heaven with those kind of numbers at Apogee? What drex and UTSA did was use popular fast food franchise and or businesses to (basically) be the distributors of pre-purchased "free" tickets. Seems a pretty smart way to get tickets in the hands of more fans to me without having to have your entire department trying to do it. To get 2,500 butts in seats, you'd probaby have to distribute at least 4 or 5 X's that total for a given Game Day. No, not everyone is going to use their "free" ticket, but what you put on that ticket can even help for future games like.............some kind of food discount when you bring one of the North Texas Game Day mini-football program pages from within that program back to said store for their discount for starters? Any number of things you could put on that "free" Mean Green football ticket to help you keep promoting your product whether that ticket was used or not. PLUS...........It's hardly that North Texas is some school with an under 10K enrollment out in the middle of nowhere that has very sparse population, either; matter a fact, our situation is the complete opposite of that. What we lack now with Big Donors, we need to overcome by using something just as important, ie, our enormous population resource and to start using that (even more important resource) much better than we ever have. In sales, we always said "it's a numbers game" well..........we need to get into the NCAA FBS attendance game with the numbers we already have. We'll all feel better with its eventual results. GMG!

Lets break this idea of drex's down a bit more as he posted: "Here is my take on 'free ticket.' When we played SMU in '89 (I think it was), there was a sellout. Know why it was a sellout? (drex, that game was played on October 6, 1990) (1) "Because I got with Albertson's and Pizza Hut and had them commit to ads in the Record-Chronicle and NT Daily for 10 days consistently up to game time publicizing the game. They already had ad buys in the paper anyway, and just added the game information to the ad." (2) "For their free advertising for the game, we gave them about 3,000 tickets to distribute free to the public. Every time someone walked into Pizza Hut or Albertson's they got a free ticket if they asked. The pizza delivery guys also gave free tickets with their deliveries." (3) "Now, were those 'free tickets?'....no, they were purchased by Albertson's and Pizza Hut for their advertising commitment. Anyway, it worked and everyone marveled how we sold out the game. If we had not done that promotion, we would have had a good crowd, but not a sellout crowd." "Have you ever seen an empty seat buy a coke or a t-shirt?" ___________________________________________ On Another Post: UNTJim1995, you are undoubtedly a great alum and loyal Mean Green fan but I retort your earlier comments with this: "If we truly had over 4,000 UNT freshmen who were that much into the Bama/TAMU game (and I don't think that group of UNT first year students really were) but "IF" they were........... I think they would all need to meet and have a group conversation with that UNT professor who made one of his students wearing a TAMU t-shirt in his class make a wardrobe change. I sat by an Aggie at the Ball State game who did keep going back and forth to the club to watch that game on the giant screen TV but (again) she had a vested interest in the game...she was a Former Student of TAMU. The Denton Chamber of Commerce had more at that Fouts Field game against Baylor than showed for our debut game at brand, spanking new Apogee Stadium versus U of Houston. For a 3 months Summer time push of ticket sales, I think they would have done well to have a larger crowd than actually showed for the Idaho game. With more Denton C of C produced fans at the Idaho home season opener, might it be easy to say that many of those same new faces/new fans who had a good time with our "lots of offense" season opening win would have showed for the Ball State game out of further curiosity about all this Mean Green football business? We have to get them started coming to our games somehow, don't we? I know we can point/counter-point all of this till the cows come home, that is, with everything done (or not done) with our present promotions efforts, but fact remains that you still have to have large group promotions for our annual Mean Green football product (winning season or not) whether we want to or not. The are just too many other entertainment choices for our 200,000 plus UNT alums in DFW who have obviously chosen other things to do than show up for a first time Apogee experience with many of that group. If we somehow got 5,000 fans out of that group, I think we would have many who would get hooked into the UNT football program just like all of us got hooked at one time, Just my .02 on the subject.

Congrats to Emmitt, wife, and family!

Always said that drex did more with less than most any other staffer we've had up there. He, too, had many losing teams he had to promote as well.. Simply amazing how he cannot get a response from those up there now who need to respond if just out of respect if nothing else. Matter of fact, they might want to listen to some of his ideas since he's been there-done that, too. You know, if your attitude indicates that you really don't like or have much use for your most loyal fans then your chances to pulling in many more significant new faces will be about slim and none in Denton, Texas. We won't fill Apogee Stadium with a few good ol' boys and large money contributors, either; that is, those who have close UNT Athletic Dept. connections--it simply won't happen--maybe they'd fill the Apogee Stadium pre-game buffett line instead. I have a DVD of that SMU/North Texas game. (The game was televised "live" in DFW and still was SRO at ol' Fouts Field) There were actually more than 22,000 fans in a 20,000 seat stadium that night as I recall. One actually told me many more UNT students were turned away. (That might be an urban tale but I wouldn't doubt that as I recall that game). How many of all our gang would be happy with 22,000 plus fans at the MUTS game this Saturday evening? I did hear that the Denton Fire Marshall was said to have gotten a bit nervous over the number who did not have seats and were standing in the concourses or sitting in the aisles. And then there was the matter of a certain condescending (to UNT fans/students) letter to the NT Daily from SMU alum Lawrence Perkins. Did anyone ever chase that dude down? If so, please let me be the first to know. All in all, I still think many of us will still live long enough to see our attendance woes addressed and then solved. Folks, our overall various UNT constituencies numbers are just too large for us to keep having these attendance problems at this point in our athletics history and as we now possess one of the best NCAA FBS football stadiums in the USA....bar none. GMG! .

Pre-game you say? Well, one can only dream for one like this someday. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P2cvTkw9rZ0

So this poster was on what page of the Denton Record/Chronicle and even its online edition? How early was this Halloween mini-poster put out for public consumption?

I will be there, too, but it just makes me feel good about my school when the stadium is full with those who feel about North Texas the way that most of us on the message board feel about it. If they gave free tickets to every school kid in Denton County for the Wing Zone and they filled it, does anyone still say......those little rug rats should have had to buy a ticket, too? No, I really think most would say............doesn't our Wing Zone look so much nicer when its filled to the brim? GMG! PS: 40 years later and with a UNT constituency of which each (enrollment, city, county, DFW alum numbers) are about 4 X's larger than when I was a UNT student, I still think this attendance thing at Apogee Stadium can be solved with the right plan and with many more foots (feet) to put those plans in action--I really do feel this way.

What a collective kick to all our butts if this weather forecast holds out. I will hesitate from using the 2 words........snake bit. GMG

What does have a long lasting result is when you do nothing concerning a "large groups promotions program." We've seen annual results of that. After all, aren't we going to fill empty seats quicker with large group promotions? Will We Be Talking About This Same Subject October, 2014, Too? I feel bad for Coach McCarney and worse....our Mean Green football team and even worse...................we the alums and fans. We would like to change our culture of low attendance up there but.apparently even recent ideas from many of you Young Gun Alums who want to give all this the good ol' college try (along with your voluntary manpower hours) are met with............................................ (can you hear the sound of crickets)? Our Game Day product is one of a thousand other things people can choose to do any given Game Day. Seems our officials would grow tired of this annual shortfall and now with our empty seats being seen regularly on region wide TV broadcasts from Apogee Stadium. We can no longer hide that fact. Seems UTSA is not doing much hiding of late and their HFC's job will be considered a better job than the North Texas job because of their attendance...... sooner than later. (Do yall know how much that pains me to say such)? We've done things that worked in the past but for whatever reason we seem hesitant of doing the ones that have succeeded 2 years in a row lest they (God help us)............. work again? Denton Chamber of Commerce did a superb job one summer,selling tickets for a home season opener against Baylor and doing all that (get this).............3 months before a Game Day ! WALA! With their help UNT almost sold out the darn stadium! That Denton C of C project worked so well that we dropped the ball and chose not repeat doing it once again 2 years in a row. Makes sense to me. Ad nausem time, but Bands Over Texas was (according to some who were there) a success back when we did it but it takes those who want to work beyond their pay scale to have made a "2'nd Annual Bands Over Texas" a 2 years in a row success; rather, it ended after Year 1. The HS bands who attended that day had a blast! Highland Park HS won their marching contest that Game Day morning and stayed for a Mean Green football game to get their trophy presented had half time. When I was in high school back in the 60's (post Texas Indian Wars), Univ. of Houston had annual Band Days...........amazingly.............they still do to this day. Def. of annual: One year after another................. It was an annual crowd-pleaser at UH back in the 60's and even apparently still is today. (Could we have used about 2,000 or more area bandsmen for the Ball State game all sitting where about 100 Ball State fans sat). Again, as many of you know, I've been to more than a few of these Mean Green rodeos (so to speak) and I will repeat this (till I'm blue in the face) that we of North Texas avoid real butts in seats promotion type programs like they are the bubonic plague. Still, it is our woeful annual attendance numbers that keeps this program down and from advancing to the next level (other than the obvious lack of consecutive winning seasons). Sadly, we will have "1" well attended home game at Apogee this season and the subject of a real "get out the masses" athletics promotions program will once again go back on the back-burner and that based on the fact that just "1" well attended home game will simply do it for many and magically make them forget all the home games that were not well-attended this or any other Fall. Our problem at North Texas is that we don't understand our own geographical culture; that is, we have to do more to get peoples attention about Game Days and to make them interesting because the regular Metroplex Joe Q Sports Fan can opt for about 1,000 other things to do if we of North Texas do not get their undivided attention and why our product would be so much more entertaining than the others that they (in massive numbers) choose instead. Give AD Rick Villarreal Some Credit: Still........why we don't want to attack this year in and year out attendance problem head-on is beyond many of us and has been for about the last 4 AD's for this alum....Rick Villarreal has probably been our most pro-active AD to try to change this part of our campus culture (especially with the Freshmen class focus) but just that group alone is not enough for our fabulous 31,000 seat football palace and....................once again........ ........AD/RV does not have the staff or manpower to pull off a Mustang Mania kind of get out the masses (and many more new faces) athletic promotions program. This kind of humongous project will IMHHO have to come from the very top, ie, President Rawlins and his BOR's for any of this to really have a chance to make any hay. They, too, have to understand the fact that other schools are passing us by even in the attendance wars. Sure we have a new football stadium built about 25 years later than it should have, but it just can't stop with that. If we stand still and do nothing we will have this annual subject of low attendance on GMG.com this time next year and then the next year and then the next year.......... GMG!

Drex, I'm sure you would remember even without reading the DMagazine article when SMU drew 6,000 against the Rice Owls at the Cotton Bowl stadium before Russ Potts was hired at SMU and immmediately instituted the Mustang Mania promotions program. Then (as the article says) 2 years later the 'Stangs drew 60,000 plus fans at Texas Stadium against those same Rice Owls. Present day SMU football dropped the ball (so to speak) when they quit having UTSA type promotions and seem to not care anymore about what they draw at Ford Stadium. Guess they thought winning would do it for them? Well, I don't think it has. Have anyone else read that at some NCAA outposts that AD's and coaches have nice bonuses tied to noticeable attendance increases? It is still the opinion of many of us that our North Texas attendance woes is a most solve-able problem, but there has to be a master plan for it to be solved. GMG! .

The ones who need to know all this (and can make a difference) don't even know this or the UNT official athletic websites even exist. It is a good start, though. Is the Wing Zone Family Plan with drinks/eats still in play? If so, what are the particulars with that and who do they call to get those tickets? (The week of a game is not the time to promote that game for significant butts in seats, but again..............it's a start and better than doing nothing). GMG! PS: Wanna get serious about Apogee football promotions? Then read and do some of the things talked about in the article: http://www.dmagazine...sefeathers.aspx

On The Record: Coach Dan McCarney and our ever-improving Mean Green football team deserve the support of so many more fans than just those of us on GMG.com and those of us who show up at Apogee most every game. Coach McCarney: If we the alums and fans of North Texas could wave the magic wand to make this happen....we would---yet all of this is for the most part out of our hands--always has been matter a fact. We defer this annual attendance dilemma to President Lane Rawlins, his BOR's and AD/Rick V. They are the key players in every bit of this & always have been. So give us more time, Coach Mac, our entire UNT constituency will get this thing solved hook or crook and the best part of all this is for the first time in a long time I personally like the focus being given this problem because I think a viable plan will now soon follow--probably too late for this Fall but not for 2014. And..............for the first time in this my 40'th year of following Mean Green football, we have more numbers as listed below with all the various population counts to make things happen at the Apogee Stadium turnstiles so much quicker than any time in our past. _____________________________________________________________ So What Do You Do With This, Fellow MG fans: You have 5,000 free tickets to give away "2" weeks or even "2" months before an Apogee Game Day this:. How do you get started? How do you get the word out to the masses that there are even 5,000 free tickets available in the first place? Can you really expect if you got all 5,000 tickets in the hands of those who say they would use these (probably) pre-purchased tickets that all 5,000 would all show? (That answer is.............no) So if you want 5,000 fans (lets say) in the Wing Zone, just how many total tickets would you really need to distribute across Denton and Denton County to get an actual 5,000 butts in seats? SMU's Mustang Mania formula and answer to this question might shock a few.http://www.dmagazine.com/Home/1978/10/01/SPORTS_Is_Mustang_Mania_Horsefeathers.aspx In all fairness to the UNT Athletic Department (who still don't have the personnel or in-house machinery to pull this kind of free tickets give-away off) it's just not easy to get 5K free tickets out to the general public 2 weeks (or 2 months) before a Game Day and expect any semblance of return. In the Wedding DJ business, I will ask a Bride-to-be how many invitations were sent out for their wedding. She says 150 and I tell her from my experience in this industry that she will be lucky to get 75 to 80 at best to her Wedding Day. If 150 RSVP''ed then that number could go up 90 to 100. (I don't think that high or percentage a return could be expected for 5,000 free tickets for a college football game). Again,even a 5,000 "free tickets" give away for 1 game at Apogee should all be planned in the Spring with tickets being distributed to interested groups in the Summer. How do you know they're interested? Well, use your imagination on that one. Still...one has to ask why we still chokin' on this attendance gnat during this Fall, 2013, football season? So we will have (maybe) one great crowd this football season and let this discussion be forgotten until the next year? This (one more time): Denton County: 800,000 City of Denton....130,000 UNT Enrollment...37,000 DFW UNT alums..Over 200,000 according on one UNT publication. So Isn't it easy to see why so many of our UNT athletic regimes in decades past have not really wanted to tackle our Last Frontier; that is, the solving of UNT's annual attendance shortfalls with viable planning and much footwork to git'er done? Chances of failure with this venture are high, now aren't they; but the one(s) who solves this annual problem could in the annals of North Texas athletics history very well reach folk hero status among many of us. .

For programs trying to build attendance (like us & most in the G5) I think the real ticket sales and large numbers of butts in seats promotions actually begin its planning in the Spring of every year prior to any Fall; that is, if you plan on having any semblance of success in the Fall. Other than having a few consecutive winnings seasons, I still feel our final Big Challenge or mountain to climb at North Texas is to have a real college football promotions program aimed to get thousands of new non-student fans (because ain't that what we're basically still missing at Apogee)? The UNT student body is another totally separate challenge or, uh, animal (if you will). I feel UNT athletics has put all their marbles into the UNT freshmen students summer orientations bag while seemedly ignoring the other areas,ie, the non UNT students of Denton & Denton County. Those are the new fans we need who just happen to live closest to Apogee Stadium. Any alums we get outside those 2 areas (DFW) could be icing on the cake. For sure compared to the past, we have improved with new student and transfers summer orientation as far as getting their attention of our Mean Green football program. We had almost 4,000 of those students at a pep rally on the same day of a Coach Mac Radio Show but where the hell were they for the Ball State game? So IMHO........ UNT athletics does a great job in the summer during orientations, but during the Fall we seem to drop the ball with the students thinking "we've won them over" in the summer. Ball State proved that we have not. UNT athletics does not have the staff or manpower to have an effective college football promotions program IMHO. This is why I do wish Prez Rollins would recognize that and make this a campus wide challenge. Being on TV more than ever brings even more focus on empty seats at Apogee. Right now we are at the mercy of our UNT students deciding if they want to show up or to not show up at our games. We have about the same season ticket sales every year so we are not going to see a dramatic difference of new fans on the east side of Apogee; that is, until we get a viable promotions program in place to change that. The Wing Zone? Right now it's our Pink Elephant of which all in the USA watching ESPN will see this Halloween because unless any of you have heard anything 23 days before the Rice game about changing that I for sure have not heard of any hint of a viable or significant real butts in seats promotions for our game against the Owls. Again, putting larger numbers of fans in the Wing Zone on Halloween Night should have already been planned and put in the can (so to speak) as far back as last Spring if I understand how successful college promotions timelines for planning are done. In spite of our W/L record the last 8 years, our UNT students have done a fairly decent job showing up in the past but they don't seem to understand that we have 5 or 6 home games every season of which their school needs them to show up for every home game; you know, we're only asking then to committ to 5 or 6 Game Days out of 52 weeks? We are also asking them to completely change our culture as to drop the games they attend attitude based on who we are playing or even the weather (which rain has been forecast for this weekend). Can you imagine Iowa Hawkeye fans saying "we ain't coming to Kinnick Stadium today because it's below freezing and there's a foot of snow on the ground?" This Just Did Not Make Any Sense: The UNT Frosh had a Pep Rally on a Monday night in 100 degree weather where about 4,000 plus showed at Apogee for a Pep Rally, but few of that group would be seen when we needed them the most for the Ball State game. Granted, it was hotter than expected that day , but students around the Southwest were at their Texas-college based home games the same day with the same weather. Again, no UNT students showing up on Game Day (or Night) at Apogee means we will have a bad day at the Apogee turnstiles; that is, until we diversify our present promotions modus operendis to become more than just a focus on the UNT freshmen class from one summer to the next. To Prez' Rollins and his BOR's: This is a campus wide problem that needs yall campus wide help; that is, this Game Day promotions dilemma at our alma mater which will be seen now more than ever before by more in the Southwest as more of our home games are televised. We cannot hide empty seats any longer (as if we ever did before) because of our newfound TV coverage fame at Apogee Stadium, too.