PlummMeanGreen

Jack, I can only remember that it was Darrell Royal who seemed to be the only name you ever read about back then who supported us. I can remember following all this closely (as we all did) all the way to the meeting that the SWC would have most likely had us on their agenda except for one small detail....they did not have us on their agenda for that meeting. I had also heard one rumor after Fry left for Iowa that all this SWC business for North Texas was done mostly for publicity and that Fry knew we were not going to get into the SWC but as I said....that was a rumor. Well, whether that particular rumor was true or not the results were still the same for our school. Although the SWC would implode later on, it still would have raised our athletic program's pedigree and as you said, Jack, we probably would have come into CUSA with UH. GMG!

Green P1, you and and handful of your pals are real smart asses now arent' you? (Did you like that tricked-up sarcasm, Emmitt)? I like this board more and more....with all the subtlety and all. Makes me think we have some real intellectuals among our crowd. I know it has its share of smart asses who don't like to talk about any North Texas athletic era other than their own. And I don't take very lightly any insinuation that I'm out to kill anyone. Are you just plain assed dumb or stupid for suggesting such, Green P1? I don't find any humor in that--tricked up sarcasm or not. I might want to put a boot in their ass, but that would just about do it. Harry, please tell the Romper Room section of GMG.com to change their diapers because they're beginnning to really stink it up on this board and they have already caused another group of true fans and supporters who used to be regulars on this board for years to basically leave for another message board quite frankly; or even if still a member of this board to not post as much as they used to and that because of this little clique on this board. And you have here a clique who seem to want to remind all just how awfully smart they are and how god'awful lucky North Texas is to have them, yet hijacking a thread most of which are informative or turning a thread that was going along quite smoothly with positive posts from several respondents into something negative because it just didn't suit them (or their era as UNT students) is a most unusual way for this little group to get get noticed which i guess is a main priority for them. GMG!

You are so right about every bit of what you've posted, Emmitt. I really should have respected the Sun Belt Conference more than I did. GMG!

Just checking out Phil Steele's 2012 College Football this is the number of starters who are seniors from CUSA and future CUSA schools who will be gone after Fall, 2012. North Texas: 9 La Tech........15 FIU...............12 USM.............12 ECU...............6 Marshall.........4 UAB...............7 Tulsa............12 UTEP...........13 Rice...............5 Tulane...........8 NOTE: UTSA not in the above group because of their being an upstart program. GMG!

You are 100% correct and don't forget what you have just said when you hit retirement age, too, if your lucky enough to make it to retirement age. Many of us have numerous friends and acquaintainces who didn't. I will never forget actor Michael Landon on the Johnny Carson show weeks before he died looking straight into the TV camera telling America just how short life can be and would be for him. I remember seeing Ron Shanklin at Fouts and a few months before he died pulling for his Mean Green and looking too thin and frail. It was an unsettling scene for the many of us who loved that guy. He was family. GMG!

From ECU blogger Denny OBrien: "LOUISIANA TECH: Ruston is far from major market status, but Tech has the most football history of any of the C-USA additions." (Road rage over such a short-sighted IMO statement that shows there are some bloggers who need to use their Google or Wikopedia a little more before they post something they perceive to be true). The rainbow colored signature at the bottom with all the schools we've beaten since the 50's there are none (I repeat.......NONE) of our fellow CUSA newcomers that can duplicate such wins. Check out some of the All Time wins of our fellow newcomers and just observe who they've padded their wins with. It's almost laughable. That above quote from CUSA blogger Denny O'Brien was part of the inspiration for this thread because I think that blogger didn't do his research, but I bet he knows some of our history and legacy by now. Obviously, we have many CUSA visitors and readers of Harry's board who may have come away from this thread most likely a bit surprised. And for the most part some of those visitors are the same ones' who make fun of our SBC membership and our 4 appearances in the NO's Bowl from 2001-2004. I thought back then as I do now that that was one of the best of times in UNT football history. I also thought at the time that Dickey should have gotten a higher echelon HFC's job for it, too, truth be told. Still.............can we get back to agreeing to disagree without some of this what almost seems to be generational warfare (which is probably too strong a word for it)? Like Colin Powell said on a program touting his new autobiography last week, "when Ronald Reagan and Tip O'Neil spent an entire day at each other's throats, many times they'd still get together in the evening have a few drinks and a whole bunch of laughs." That is what this whole nations needs to get back to once again.....IMO. Folks, we have more in common than not because we are UNT alums and/or Mean Green fans. We should try to always remember that before we crucify or eat one of our own over what amounts to silly or petty things in the broad scheme of things . Will we always agree? Hell no we won't and we know we won't--like I didn't always agree with my own late parents, but I didn't throw em' under the bus when I didn't agree with them, either. And if we did agree all the time, what use would this and thousands of other message boards be since they are forums for fans to express opinions? GMG and.......this!

I was a HS senior when that North Texas/Arkansas game was played in Little Rock. Yes, this is the past and I'd think the kind that North Texas would want to learn and maybe even build from especially compared to all the under-achievement we've seen in most of the last 30 years. Most of those years have become quite forgettable for most except I suppose the ones that thats all they've seen for the most part. Still makes me proud as a UNT alum when an AD from an ACC school who played on that Razorback team said that North Texas was 1 of the 2 best football teams he saw in his 4 years at the University of Arkansas. I'm trying very hard to understand why that would suddenly be a negative with a few who have yet as UNT students or alums ever seen a UNT MG HFC leave Denton above .500. in wins/losses. Hell, most of us Old Gun Alums have to go back decades for the last one we've seen Free advice: Don't like a thread................don't read the thread, but criticizing a thread that several have responded to with fond memories (because #1 they were there) and a thread about our North Texas legacy and history at its highest pinnacle of success just takes the cake. GMG!

Great stuff, Bill, simply great! I've never, ever seen those pics. And then from Graddean: "I was at the 68 game. No one left the game, including the Hog fans, that did not believe Shanklin had made the catch. The official must have been the only person at War Memorial that night thinking it was a trap." __________________________________________________________________________________________________ Yes, we obviously had the Razorback game stolen from us, too, much like the '88 UT-Austin affair, but once again, our University of North Texas Mean Green football program was playing at an NCAA Division 1 national championship level; that is, a level that few of our fellow conference-mates from the past, present or future can say they'd ever accomplished. Wonder if that CUSA blogger from the Carolinas was aware of this, ie, yet another chapter of Mean Green football history before he with one swath of his keyboard crowned another school with extremely short term NCAA D1 and merely a recent success as the cream of the crop of all the new schools coming into CUSA? The NCAA needs to keep in mind that there are Cinderella stories out there that need to be allowed to happen before they legislate such from ever happening again plus....they need to consider all the future Cinderella stories with whatever play-off plan they have in mind and for the very ones they still really need to put back at tje top of their Top Priorities List......the college football fans of America. GMG!

Speaking of DC's Texas Football magazine, I picked up a copy of Phil Steele's 2012 College FB :Preview today at my local Walmart. It is 344 pages long and $8.95. GMG!

Phil, didn't you attend that game up in Little Rock? If so, your take on Shanklin's catch and how did the Hog fans react when they realized that Ronnie had caught that Steve Ramsey pass? GMG!

...see quote in green. ..Below quote from former Frank Broyle's era Arkansas Razorback and now Clemson U AD Terry Don Phillips from Clemson's official athletic site: "I have told many people that the toughest team we played in my college career at Arkansas was Texas," said Phillips. "The second toughest team we played was North Texas." Arkansas beat North Texas 17-15 in 1968 when a last minute pass for a North Texas receiver in the end zone was ruled to be trapped." ______________________________________________________________________________________ Many on this boards friend the late Ron Shanklin who caught that pass for North Texas once told me at a Fort Worth Mexican restaurant several years ago that a number of Arkansas' players from that 1968 Razorback team had called him telling him they were embarrassed by the call because they knew he had not trapped that football. That TD would have won the football game for that North Texas Mean Green football team. Some of you on this board were at that game so......your take on that play? The next Fall most of that same Arkansas Razorback football team would play Darrell Royal's Texas Longhorns for the NCAA College Football National Championship that the national sports media back in that day would call "the Game of the Century." http://www.clemsonti...fo...10aaa.html (AD Phillips quote in last paragraph) GMG! In Closing: Yes, one really has to shake his head when you realize that the talent level of our Mean Joe Greene era North Texas football teams were of an NCAA Division 1 College Football National Championship level. Jeez, why couldn't we have just built on that? GMG ! ! .

Anyone have a link to the Bill Mercer dedication ceremony? GMG!

Come on now, at least Alvin, Texas>>>>>>>>Nolan Ryan's hometown. I had a biology class with him at Alvin Community College post-dinosaur era. GMG! PS: Well......Texas is quite a large state with a bunch of one horse towns that even at one time they talked about dividing our state into 5 or 6 separate states. I think those who did the talking about that are now buried somewhere near Jimmy Hoffa.

I was young, but I remember buying a copy of the first DCTFM at Griffins General Store in Danbury, Texas (located between Alvin and Angleton). If any of you have never been there, a trip to Waco to tour the TSHOF as well as the Texas Rangers Hall of Fame at Fort Fisher is worth it. DT 90, do you actually work at the Texas Sports Hall of Fame and if so, did you ever know one whose last name was Sikes who worked there a few years ago? (Some of his pioneer family ancestors are buried at our family cemetary located between Mexia and Groesbeck on what was an original Mexical land grant of which several acres was given to my pioneer family back in 1833). GMG!

As most on this forum know, UNT just named its Apogee Stadium media area as "The Bill Mercer Press Club. The video talks about Bill Mercer's numerous caps he has worn since the the late 1950's here in the DFW Metroplex starting with his even being downtown at the Dallas police station covering the Kennedy assasination, his being the "Voice of....the Mean Green, the Dallas Cowboys, the Texas Rangers, Saturday Night Wresting, etc, etc, etc, and with Bill Mercer "etc", ie, the abbreviation for "so on and so on" could be written many more times. Great job for those who produced the above video of whom I'd bet would be the duo of George Dunham, ie, present Voice of the Mean Green and Dallas sports personality at the radio station we all know as KTCK 1310 "The Ticket." along with UNT AD associate and official Color Commentator of Mean Green football and basketball, Hank Dickenson. GMG! PS: Mr. Mercer, don't know if you frequent this board or not, but if you do it was a great honor for many of us on this forum who did get to meet you. I'll never forget being with you, Craig Way and Ron Shanklin for one quarter of a MG football game back in the mid 80's because of a silent auction bid I won at one of Jim Hobdy's Dallas Mean Green get-togethers. I still have pics of all that back in the day as a keepsake. May you have many, many more sunsets. Mr. Mercer, and I know many on this board who've met you over the decades may want to express their own thoughts, too. God bless... Jim Plummer Weatherford, Texas North Texas grad, 1976 Mean Green & Proud of It! This post has been promoted to an article

I like North Texas on our helmet, but I still think 10 letters on one side of a helmet is too much. Worm, a tweaked worm or SOW would still be IMHO a good choice for our inaugural CUSA season. GMG! PS: Wouldn't hurt if the end of our chin straps didn't partially cover one of our present helmets 10 letters, too.

This whole thread makes me tense if our guy has been reading it or that he might read it. None of us have any idea why he has the timeline that he has and it could be one of a 100 things non-related to his school choice. Harry, I'd wipe this thread clean if I were you but I am not you. GMG!

I'm not completely sure about the "efficiently" part, Bill! LOL! GMG!

Granted, but for those who are (I suppose) seemedly forced at gun point to read my epistles even you'd have to admit, greenminer, that his message and my message are just a tad different? He has a non-stop vendetta against North Texas. Not sure why he spends the time on this board that he does and equally surprised that he has not been removed from this board to tell the truth, because he is obviously not one of our alums or fans. Yet, I've been around all this for "only" about 40 years thru the good, the bad and helluva' lot of ugly (with many who stayed way too long on our payroll based on what)?. I'm running out of years, a little pissed that my alma mater didn't do much significantly in athletics during most of my adult years and I still just have a lotta to say and if anyone hasn't noticed--red number response from some posters (both from UNT and I think many unconnected to UNT) mostly inspire me to say even more, especially if I think some of those posts have hit a raw nerve and may have been fairly close to a little spot on truth that some wuss'es cannot handle for whatever their reason or agenda? (Funny how some of us were right about the kind of new HFC UNT should hire right before we hired Dan McCarney, but strange how some responded to that opinion over a popular UNT (yet obviously) talented) assistant coach, but one (unfortunately) from a perennial losing UNT FB program that they preferred, instead). Hell, back in my 25 years in the tech school recruiting business I wouldn't have even hired a family member if I didn't they they would be the right hire for the job and that's a fact, Jack. I realize a few up there in Denton don't want to hear what I have to say because sometimes the obvious truth (from cumulative wins/losses results) rings out loud & clear--and there is no ambiguity whatsoever when you look at W/L results. It's like a salesperson who has no positive sales results over a given fair amount of time. In a normal business world they don't get to stay on the payroll till retirement, but for some of our Texas public universities they are are almost deified for even just longevity on the payroll albeit not much was really accomplished during their tenureship comparatively to other schools of our scope and size. . I am just not one of those Big Southern Dummified "yessuh, yall are just fabulously great up there in little ol' Denton" sorta' guys if I don't really believe it; that is, if they are not doing great things as we look at their W/L results over a more than generous period of time. Many of us Old Gun Alums just got plain tired of watching schools we used to be on the same level in our old Missouri Valley Conference days passing us by one right after the other for decades. We got tired of every new UNT AD or HFC newly hired changing our logos (even over the ones that worked out pretty well on our helmets and maybe should even still be on our UNT helmets today like "worm" or SOW). We've run out of every conceivable shade of green for any future new regime change so I guess that cycle has to start over. LOL! I have given praise when I felt like we were acting like the 4'th largest university in the almighty state of Texas should be acting (and performing athletically, too). And here I am starting another one of these long diatribes but I will stop this one...............right now. GMG!

With all seriousness and no SMU/UNT lagniape or silliness here, but do you have any idea, Comet7745, what SMU would feel their TV revenue needs to be to actually justify sending all their men and women's varsity sports to the east coast for intercollegiate competition? I feel a handful of SMU alums would foot the bill no matter what, but if the TV revenues become so ridiculously low, would it have really been worth leaving CUSA to play non-traditional out of the SW region non-rivals with not as much Game Day interest as you know a more regionalized home schedule would offer the Mustangs? Quite frankly, a UNT/UConn or Temple or Rutgers, etc, etc, etc, football matchup would be one tough sell to our UNT constituency for an Apogee Stadium Game Day. We are not going to hold our breath knowing our past histories with each other, but it would be in the best interest for SMU and UNT to play each as often as possible in all sports--both men and women's varsity level sports. We know that attendance would almost never be a problem with such matchups, but it still takes 2 to Tango. GMG!

Drex, we go a long ways back. What the late, great Bill Blakely used to say about childbirth is so true as far all that we have seen in Mean Green Country. Happy Birthday, Jim, You used to do so much with absolutely no budget for Mean Green promotions. I won't ask how many candles on your cake, though. I stopped counting mine after age 50. GMG!

Seriously, who has any idea what the future has for CUSA TV revenues, but for North Texas anything will be an improvement from what we have had in the SBC. As far as the Big East is concerned their soap opera'esque instability has to be a matter of concern for whichever TV group would commit Big Time Conference revenues. Too many schools still thinking about leaving the Big East because (among other reasons) they don't seem that excited with their new additions from non-Big East regions of the USA to read comments from their various B.E. message boards. And then you have the Big East basketball schools which is another story entirely. It's really a potential problem for the football schools and could implode and thwart any semblance of stability for the Big East' future existence. And then...............you have UCONN which has gone on record with present Big East officials that they, too, would like to leave and will if an opportunity presents itself. How could that make a TV network want to commit serious monies if they don't even know which schools will be in the Big East in 4 years? Sure I'm biased, but I like the new CUSA's upside with all the new TV markets recently added with some schools in CUSA TV markets with dramatically more constituencies in some cases and truthfully, isn't that what TV advertisers like in today's NCAA? Plus now you have schools in CUSA who really want to be contributing members to this new CUSA venture and won't have one foot in and one foot out in the sweet by and by dreaming for things that just might not materialize or even be a positive longterm. GMG!

Still such a tragedy for that family to have gone through. Some of us met Drew's dad and his brother at the North Texas/Rice U game at Fouts Field 2 years ago and what a nice family they are. Good find, Harry.

2011 TV Revenues Per Conference http://collegesports...-by-conference/ _____________________________________________________ And this, too. http://www.sportsbus...ights-Fees.aspx GMG! Addendum: I know we all really hope the upcoming CUSA TV rights negotiations go well for us all and maybe even exceed our greatest expectations for each of our schools, but lest we forget whatever North Texas receives in the CUSA package will be about 100% improvement than what we ever received from the SBC. It's a start.