PlummMeanGreen

I think he may have been talking more about our W/L records in football the last umpteen years more than anything else. And like it or not, it will always be football that is the engine that drives our Mean Green train. And................building Apogee Stadium was not a choice, it was a must and as Coach McCarney even said and I will liberally paraphrase him............"it really should have been built years ago" and that statement by Coach Mac many of us Old Gun Alums would say is one enormous understatement. Things look good for our future, though, that is if we don't Texas 2 step it backwards like has been our tradition after we've made previous gains. GMG!

This! And in 3 inch headlines to boot! GMG

It's Really Too Long.....I Advise That You Don't Read It. As I surfed the web in the direction of the ACC the last few days, I read that if the ACC lost 2 schools that they may not even expand, but who the hell knows anymore? The FSU president just days ago was blowing smoke about all the advantages of staying in the ACC, ie, better academics and I suppose one damn lie after another. I tell you what folks, our entire country starting with Washington D.C (and on on both sides of the aisle) have made lying a new art form and for all the powers that be in the NCAA....seemedly a new non-contact sport. It is a sad statement about our society; about how far down this country has gone but you can start with the home but that's another show......................................... (and end of sermon). I don't know if non-market teams move up as quickly as some say especially if the geography doesn't fit. OK, North Texas, we are in this huge metro market and never-mind we're only about 25 years behind where we should be, but in spite of that just look how quickly some of the Florida schools have leap-frogged from total non-existance & now to the Big East. Look at even how UTSA has come from nothing football-wise and are now are a full-fledged CUSA member. Yes, UNT chose the 100 year plan to get here but it it what it is and that was yesterday and yesterday's gone. Yet for the schools in Florida who zoomed upward it seemed to happen with consistent winning teams and their having real major college attendance numbers. Hmmmmm? GET MY DRIFT, CONGREGATION:::::Please........ we don't need anymore preaching to all the parishioners and banging the congregation on the head about their need to tithe when they are already tithing,ie............. (attending games). Maybe the preacher and his entire staff need to get out of their offices more than ever now and into the commumity where all the non-tithers are if they want new tithers? (And here I am a back-slid Methodist using Baptist who are oft' preached at about tithing as an illustration for what most on this board know the reason why). Moral of Story: We don't need to sit around on our collective North Texas butts as we've done forever and go............. "duh.....just look at what's happened around us and before our very eyes?" Granted, our leaders got us a new stadium of which the alternative of not getting one would have been catostrophic-- we had to have Apogee Stadium or we were going to basically be out of the NCAA FBS football business with dropping down a level or dropping football as our only other choices Nevertheless, a sincere thanks to our students who voted for the referendum and our UNT leaders for Apogee Stadium. The timing of Apogee Stadium was spot on plus we really did get one helluva' stadium for the price from what a few experts on construction costs have said in their quotes about Apogee. Then we got us a real NCAA FBS level HFC with major conference (Big12) experience so there we go.....2 huge longtime obstacles out of the way, but IMO our leaders must now go outside the usual box and put a new marketing plan together with its main goal of getting many more new fans and faces out to reach our 32,000 (SRO) Mean Green fans from the almost 7 million population in the North Texas Metroplex. Never understood why that has been such a problem but I have a few ideas why, but for certain the attendance things needs to soon be a problem of our past if we are going to compete in CUSA. Can you imagine a Road-Runner going Beep! Beep! right past the University of North Texas football program in 2 or 3 years? Some of you predicted something like that could happen even as far back as a year or 2 and you stated such on this very message board. I was one who who said "no way" could that happen, but I don't doubt that possibility any more. And just look at the role models UCF and USF have been for start-ups? What We Have and .............Don't Have: (1) We have Apogee Stadium: A stadium that is as good as it gets according to the Cowboys ex Super Scout Gil Brandt (2) We have a true NCAA FBS Head Football Coach in Dan McCarney. We saw in one year what could be the beginning of something special. (3) Marketing? That is, marketing aimed to get many more new fans & new faces out on Game Day. Is Parents Weekend doing the job anymore? And all the other traditional set in stone Game Day promos we've have for years? Apparently not.....try something new for a change to complement all those traditional Game Day promos. And to do that a new, vibrant marketing plan to fill Apogee every game with people we've never ever seen before because now that we will be in CUSA in another year, we really have no choice on this subject of dramatically improving our per game attendance numbers. Others for damn sure will show us how its done starting with one school over in San Antonio, Texas. GMG! PS: Thanks for the red number, O wise (most transparent) ingenious and most profound one with your posts. Here's a pacifier for ya'. You know, as in to the one who revised one of my words saying that I now, uh, "hate'" kids? (not that what I like or dislike should really be of concern to you)

foutsrouts, TCU would not schedule any school in the years you mentioned if they didn't think they would dominate or win against those schools (although I think Northwestern State out of Natchitoches, LA, and the Southland Conference almost put a goose egg on the Horned Frogs one particular Game Day) Still and as always........it's just more of the Texas intercollegiate pecking order M.O. of scheduling that has frustrated us all at one time or another thru the years but still.......it is what it is and no matter what we have thought about it, we are not going to change it any time soon. TCU would never schedule North Texas during the Mean Joe Greene era (the 60's) and the Hayden Fry era (most of the 70's) because they know they would not have beaten any of those Mean Green FB teams especially with the losing cycle the Horned Frogs had been in for most of those 2 decades. Mean Joe's Greene's North Texas football teams had numerous NFL draft choices (including two 1'st rounders) and you all know what Fry did in Denton with my and a few others who witnessed that era mentioning it here every once in a blue moon.. Yet (IMO) North Texas does not presently have the luxury of scheduling schools that some might say are a rung below the CUSA or MWC level because on any given Game Day we could get beat by such schools now. As a Sun Belt member we might just shrug off such losses to lessers as just one of those things, but I think we have a brand new wrinkle at this time of our athletic history that I don't think we've ever had ever; that is, we now have far more watchful eyes and critics watching every thing North Texas does with our new critics headquartered at the CUSA offices in Las Colinas coupled with several other critics and that being every present CUSA school. We don't have to be reminded that many from that group fought our admission based on our recent history in football the last 2 or so decades. We who follow the Mean Green almost to the person on this fourm have full confidence that Coach McCarney will get us above our recent past with warp speed and hopefully higher than we've ever been in our entire football history. It is no secret that CUSA fell in our lap because SMU left and went to the Big East. It doesn't take a rocket scientis to understand that had UNT been located at an outpost such as Ruston, Monroe or Lake Charles, we would have not been invited to CUSA based on our W/L records of the last (almost) 3 decades now. La Tech was quite timely with their recent football resurgence of success and I think even many of their fans would call that an understatement. But finally for the first time in our history UNT's location became our new best friend--our ally, but now the stakes are so much higher for us to perform at a higher level that most have not seen in a long time. I really do think that North Texas will far exceed many expectations out there which will probably even surprise many from the present CUSA. I think CUSA officials really need that to happen at UNT for all concerned, quite frankly. We are not an upstart in Denton because our history and legacy proves we aren't; we've actually been there and done that before and at even a higher level than some present CUSA schools with our legacy-making beginning in the 1950's with the Abner Haynes/Sun Bowl team.. It still just boils down to the fact that we've been in a hibernation mode much longer than many of us thought we'd ever be.. GMG!

Coach Patterson 'busted a gasket after their SMU loss over some shenanigans and I think that was a threat from him to not "help SMU" anymore by playing them, but I don't know what the TCU AD has decided on that series. TCU And Their Road Less Traveled: TCU played it smart, became exclusive (to a great extent) in their scheduling and didn't get bogged down by playing schools that had those lesser schools beat the Horned Frogs it would have probably delayed any kind of BCS buster kind of bowl and subsequently a better conference scenario like the Big 12. TCU didn't get in the Big 12 on their potential. Just like SMU and UNT, TCU's DFW location played a part in their getting in the Big 12, but not as big a part as it did for SMU for the B.E. (3 winning seasons in about a quarter of a century) and UNT for CUSA (we all know the road that we have travelled quite well for several decades now). TCU has my admiration because they have some most astute thinkers among their group who had a plan; had a formula even in their scheduling; who they wanted to be associated with schedule-wise and conference-wise; TCU officials didn't pussy foot with their alums and fans, either, preaching at the regulars to fiill Amon Carter Stadium as if if were their responsibility; but most of all, TCU knew where they wanted to go and had a short and long range plan to get there. They do have a nice bank account (endowment) that has helped, but sometimes having all the money in the world is not going to help if you don't have a plan....TCU had a plan and that plan landed them into the Big 12. Not a bad landing spot for a Texas private university most would agree in these parts. UNT and SBC? As a new CUSA member, North Texas will be going to new, exciting locales that will make "most" forget the SBC. FWIW, if you have divorced yourself from a conference or anything for that matter, why keep going back to a past relationship because I assure you post-UNT's SBC divorce--things will never be the same. .02 GMG!

So you want to celebrate what during your era that was as national a story as our biggest win in North Texas football history? It is what it is and no one can revise that out of our athletic history since we are on the topic of revising things the last hour or so.. I will add much of what I've seen the last 2 or 3 decades I am trying to forget. We have hardly been what one would call a college athletic program juggernaut during that time. And to shaft: I did not say I "hated" kids but that I didn't ever want kids. Sue me! Millions more just like me out there. Can you understand the difference, though, of what you have said I said versus what I really said? (Isn't this getting utterly silly) LOL! I am beginning to detect that you seem to add things or words that were never said and your own interpretation to things that are not even close to its intended meaning suddenly become " a revising of history" ? I'll try to post at a 3'rd grade level so you can start understanding what is being said....better yet, don't read what I post because then we would be even in that department. Comprende? .

What have I revised, shaft? Tell me one thing that I have revised? Do you even know what revise means? When did I say the Big West was anything good or bad for North Texas. I did mention we were once in that conference with Boise State and that they went high road post-Big West implosion and we went (where else) low road as far as football programs were concerned. Shaft, would you have preferred we modeled our program after Boise or modeled it after football programs in a conference that has not had 1 Top 25 ranking like...............sorry, but I just will not genuflect like some of you will when I say it but.............the almight Sun Belt Conference.? We have a bad name because of our association with the SBC. We were the mighty North Texas who once almost beat Texas who would dominate the SBC, but we no more dominated it than we did the Southland Conference. Yeah, there were a few bright spots in an other-wise poorly run UNT athlletic dept that was always slow to hire the right ones and damn slow to fire all the wrong ones who had life time jobs at UNT because quite frankly, no one higher would hire them. You're Known By The Company You Keep?: Just check it out from some of the CUSAbbs board members, especially before we were asked to join. Suck Belt, Sun Belch, etc, etc, etc, Am I still revising, shaft? Remember how those 4 bowl games did not even get Darrell Dickey one interview at a school at the next level? Is that just more revisionist history going on with that statement, too one, too, or is is just more of the raw, blatant truth about another kick in the ass for North Texas and its HFC? The Big West was just another stop for an athletic program that rarely has had any positive direction for most of many of us older alums adult lives. SUMG and I even sat down with ex UNT AD Craig Helwig at Fouts one evening and heard him tell us how much better UNT joining the Big West would be for our football program while at the same time we were (unsuccessfully) trying to suggest to him that he should make a few well placed calls to the powers of a consortium of schools that was first called the Metro Conference (now called, uh, CUSA) as we thought that would be a far better short and long range deal for North Texas athletics. Hell, UH was even going to join that league. Well, taker another detour North Texas athletics--we joined the Big West and how long did that last? Yet like all the good ideas that have come from alums even on this board, just how many has UNT athletic officials ever listened to since they've been the leaders of such a dynamo of a program their last 15 years in Denton? Am I Revising This Too>>>>>> Mean Green basketball even with its improvements (because how much further down could it have gone) still has never in its history made it past the 1'st round of the NCAA Big Dance. Is that revising our MG basketball history or is that just telling it like it is? The only revising going on on this board is the revising you are doing with a post or 2, shaft.. Take another one of your smart pills to get out of this latest on the far side stupor of yours of making something out of something that is not there. GMG! I

The Florida State U president seems to think the ACC is a much better academic conference than the Big 12 and has listed many positives of staying in the ACC. Now watch him announce tomorrow that they're going to the Big 12! This is total insanity.

We have no control of what SMU or UH wants or what they do. There are other schools we can play if they don't play us. But at which point did Boise St draw the line of whom they would schedule that would enable them to rise well above their former Big West conference mate located in northern Texas? We have to get out of this malaise (which Coach Mac intends to do) performing at a much higher than level we were even in those 4 bowl years as an unranked team playing an unranked team that will cause SMU and UH to want to schedule North Texas. Would they want to schedule a North Texas that got ranked most every year like Boise State does? BTW, in our FB serieswith Boise State U, UNT has 3 wins and BSU has 2 but..........BSU set their sights much higher than the Big West and now look at em'? And North Texas? We gravitated the other direction as in status quo, just keep the program alive, deal with Fouts Field, build a few venues for minor sports, etc, etc, etc, And then Lane Rawlins came to town................. GMG!

While in the SBC, we thought like the SBC, we raised our barometer to an SBC level (Bottom 25 for the most part) with not one Top 25 football team the whole time we will have been in the SBC; North Texas got lazy in the SBC as in all we need to do is win the SBC and that will do it for this group of fans we have in Denton who don't expect much else because they haven't seen much else. UNT won in the SBC's first 4 years of football operation before the rest of the SBC some just out of 1-AA not only caught up with us....they passed us. Beep! Beep! If North Texas plays the SBC game in CUSA, we will be just where we've been in football the last (how many years now) in the SBC? The SBC was good for a place to land until our leaders got their heads out of their asses and finally decided a large metro university should probably aim higher than the SBC and WALA! CUSA landed in our laps because SMU went east and we were the only school left standing in DFW who played FBS football; but CUSA will be a challenge none like we've had in in a long time--like a time when there were not 30 plus bowls to reward some pretty damn good football teams from other eras and for North Texas that could be starting with the Mean Joe Greene era. There comes a time you just have to leave the past behind unless you can learn from it's pit falls and not repeat them. I think CUSA powers expect North Texas to think much higher than we have in a long, long time. .02 GMG!

I think we need to schedule up because scheduling laterally does nothing to help our conference rating. Scheduling any or all of the military service academys and MWC schools might be a good OOC scheduling beginning. North Texas (I believe) is expected from the CUSA higher echelon to fairly quickly perform where SMU and UH left off and both those schools were bowl teams last Fall. If you schedule down, you tend to play down and we don't need to do that at North Texas anymore. Just my .02 on the subject. GMG!

SMU will want the Philadelphia lawyer look for their next AD.

And they're going to have all that finished by August 31'st? GMG!

http://collegesports...-by-conference/ I think these figure for CUSA do not reflect its lost members plus new members but it is a good reference list to go by to see the gap between what used to be non AQ's versus AQ's I think CUSA's and the MWC's will be much higher once they re-negotiate. NOTE: The Big Easts projected revenues will surprise you; but they also will be re-negotiating as I recall. GMG!

Is this just the first of more possible bad news for SMU? Wonder why he got fired? GMG!

More for your eyes, golfinggomez! ______________________________________________ DFW Metroplex: Almost 7,000,000 population Denton County: Over 700,000 population City of Denton: Approx. 120,000 population 2012 Expected Fall UNT Enrollment: Approx. 37,000 student DFW North Texas Alumnus and Graduates Numbers: Over 200,000 according to one campus publication. With the above numbers, will someone please tell the rest of us: What the hell we doing wrong at North Texas with our Game Day promotions with the only real new faces we see from year to year are the new faces we see from our record-breaking UNT Freshmen Class? (BTW, if UNT Athletics haven't already had meetings, ie planning sessions on major Game Day promotions designed to get more of the masses out to Apogee for our 2012 season, then might be too late and may as well start on the 2013 season and please, please, please.............don't fall back on the old notion that "we don't have to promote 2013 at all because our new membership in CUSA will do all that..................uh, NOT (and especially not in DFW where you will not be able to count on a large part of our demographics of young parents who are doing their kids Soccer Day most all day on UNT's Game Days). Proof of the Pudding With CUSA membership not filling Apogee? Just look at pics of our first game at Apogee and just how many red colored shirts were in the stands--then take all those red shirts out of the pic and see what I mean about how you have to complement all the good things happening at UNT with "get out the masses" promotions. Our fellow Metroplexer's have a thousand other things they can do on Game Day in the Metroplex and FWIW, most of them in DFW will have no idea our team is even playing at Apogee that same day since Game Day promotions seemed only reserved for the Denton Record-Chronicle or NT Daily. Look at the bright side: Of all the numbers listed at the top of this post, North Texas "only" needs approx, 32,000 out of all those numbers combined to get our stadium filled. GMG!

I all but said the same thing about a week or so ago on the new conference formation part, so I suppose we really just need Boise and San Diego St to go Big East. Some will just not want to come back to CUSA not neccessarilly because of the new members, but the schools who would come back will feel like they are losing some face on this whole re-alignement ordeal if they came back and had to face CUSA members who've been in CUSA a few years. ADDENDUM: North Texas just needs to bloom where planted, try not to worry what other schools are doing, too, because we only have control of what we can do but..................UNT Athletics needs to hire a fully staffed promotions department of proven performers elsewhere (and pleeezzzzzz------not another recycled department employee who has not one promotions clue what-so-ever) to get dramatically more numbers of new faces out to Apogee Stadium instead of preaching to the choir at various city gatherings putting that responsibility on and almost shaming the fans and alums who attended those meetings inasmuch that it was their fault for past attendance problems for crissakes'. Anyone with half a brain would know just how long that theme is going to play. Then...........North Texas officials should take a rather quick trip to San Antonio (UTSA) for starters since they in one year schooled our entire UNT community on how to get a crowd out to a college football game---free tickets or no free tickets. For that to have happened as it did for UTSA, they had to have an athletic department juggernaut of a machine (if you will) to be able to get out whatever free tickets UTSA distriubuted to get 35K out to their games. In other words, they did much better in the ticket distribution part than our group did in our last game at Apogee Stadium last November when free tickets were "supposedly" being distributed (and most of you on this board know exactly what I mean on that one). ________________________________________________________________

We really do need the football gods to smile on us with this QB. GMG!

Brent Musbeger has said on a recent ESPN telecast he thought it would go to a 16 team play-off eventually which still allows for a Cinderella type team IMO. The 4 game play-off really doesn't change much from what the NCAA already has, but I guess its a good start to eventually get more teams involved. Wonder why they don't see March Madness as a model for college football? . GMG!

It's also for the years 2006 thru 2011. We had losing seasons in football each of those years. Also keep in mind that North Texas was (still is) in the Sun Belt which means we probably spent much of our budget in transportation expenses all over the Deep South and flying all our varsity sports to 2 schools in Florida as well. Winning and filling Apogee Stadium (yes, filling Apogee Stadium--why aim for less?) will goe a long ways in stabilizing our financial future. GMG!

He would be one of our 2 most celebrated QB's in Mean Green Country if he transfers. Former OU HFC Barry Switzer said in his autobiography (Bootlegger's Boy) that if he'd had another offense other than the Wishbone, he would have loved to have signed Joe's little brother Kenny Washington out of P.A. Lincoln. Well, Hayden Fry is glad OU had the wishbone because we signed Kenny Washington to an L.O.I and he would have a very nice career at North Texas. For Newbies: Amazingly, our 1'st string QB (K. Washington) and 2'nd string QB (Ken Smith) were both hurt the day Fry took his team to Knoxville, TN, to play the Volunteers at their Homecoming Game in our 1975 season. It would be 3'rd string QB Glen Ray who would lead the Mean Green to what is still probably our biggest win in history versus a Tennessee Vols 6 & 5 team. Nevertheless: Brock Berglund would probably attain folk hero status if he transferred to North Texas and performed like so many know him to be capable of performing. GMG!

I am mostly Impressed with Stony Brook U's numbers of over $24 million total revenues. Ladies and Gentlemen: I am 61 years old, have been a reasonably close follower of NCAA sports but for the life of me I never knew there was a school out there named.......Stony Brook University. Maybe Stony Brook U is worth a look by the Big East? GMG! PS: Another reason North Texas has wanted membership in CUSA for over 20 years now is to increase our revenues. With 3 other Texas schools in our CUSA West Division and the others in our division within 4 to 5 hours driving distance it is easy to see why this is going to be such a great new era for North Texas athletics UNT was a Lone Star State island unto ourselves with no Texas-based conference rivals in NCAA Division One since our Mo' Valley days, but now a couple thousand or more ticket-buying traveling fans for our CUSA opponents who'll be coming to Apogee will be such a welcome for all of us who like to see fans from other school at our home games. Is there anything that adds more spice to a college Game Day than when our opponent has a good representation of their fans who come to Denton? And because of the full package CUSA offers our UNT athletic dept., they will be counting significantly more benjamin$ in our future revenue statements. This CUSA membership is going to be such a win-win for all in Mean Green Country. GMG!

Let me go on record by saying....I am not a fan of the sticker. I have nightmares with Ohio State helmets all over the place with buckeyes non-stop. I can't tell you how many times I've woke up in the middle of the night in a cold sweat, too; sometimes even a fever. GMG!

Smack board fodder. What else? This one is also getting lots of play on other conference boards. If CUSA were really looking at App. State then there are are a dozen others (give/take) with much larger markets they should look at before ASU. I know the east division of CUSA needs some more teams but for heaven's sake, we have our FCS additions already. Come on folks, we just left a conference whose motto seemed like one so familiar to us all as in "give us your poor, your tired, your huddled masses longing to............(slight alteration here) be in a conference that rather they might need to start out in the same darn "starter kit" conference North Texas had to join post-Big West implosion and our still coming out of those 12 most forgettable years in NCAA D1-AA." What some of these school are doing would be tantamount to North Texas leaving the Sun Belt with a senseless entitlement or expectation that we should jump immediately to the Big 12. Sorry, but rare are the UTSA's and USF's and the UCF's who get to jump over a conference that in a normal situation they'd be in like the Sun Belt and/or CUSA to land in much higher profile conferences. North Texas had to pay its dues and more............everyone else should have to do the same. Just sayin'... GMG ! !

I believe it was OU and Georgia who started this whole damn TV nightmare back post ice-age. GMG!