PlummMeanGreen

Jeez, I hope if this is a Todd Dodge hire, that he'd have an assistant coaches staff in place in 2 weeks instead of announcing him as HFC in 2 weeks! Oh well.......

I keep reading about all this talent we have, but talent to reach which plateau? More of the DD Ball-type plateau which strangely enough seems to satisfy some on this board? Sorry, but that's not what most would call going to the next level. Boise State has set the new standard for schools like North Texas and there is nothing that can stop us from being the next, uh, Boise State. For those of us who saw such high profile successes as we saw in the mid-70's specifically in the 1975 season, Mean Green football must get back to those days (bare minimum) before many of us would think this program is back on the foundation many of us thought that era would serve as a springboard for Mean Green football for years (decades) to come. With that in mind, any of you young gun alums have a better understanding with some of us older nestor's last 25 years of frustration at the levels we've been? Our next HFC's hire needs to add to the talent we already have and get us beyond just winning the SBC, going to the NO's Bowl and playing the 3'rd or 4'th place ( ) CUSA team. Again, if we are in NCAA D1-A and we mean bu$ine$$ about playing at this level, then we need a coach who will take us to Top 25 and that coach needs a comittment from those who are resposible for setting the course of our alma mater's athletic program at any time. 5 year contract with stipulations: 2 years and gets hired away: $500,000 buyout clause to school who hires him (Won't such a school who wants our guy that bad probably be able to afford that)? 3 years and gets hired away: $250,000 buyout clause to school who hires him 4 years and gets hired away: $150,000 buyout clause to school who hires him 5 years and gets hired away: $100,000 buyout clause to school who hires him 6 years and over? "Hey, job well done, we'll miss you and good luck!" Of course, getting said UNT hire to agree with all the above is another thing.

Well................ In this case, the 3'rd time (for the name of the MG Athletic Village football practice field) would most definitely be the charm. It's tough to lose any family member to the many of us who have lost both parents and even a brother or a sister, but still the loss of the young Andrew Smith, Jr., still hurts all who cannot forget that smile. God Bless The Andrew Smith, Sr. Family of Bay City, Texas

TRUTH SERUM SOMETIMES TASTES BAD TO SOME One alum I spoke to this weekend told me this: "One of UNT's past glaring weaknesses has been its attempt to persevere its athletic program with those on its payroll who were part of an unsuccussful program; or at least one that had no higher profile aspirations." It was also our fellow alum who came from the "any new AD at UNT should all but clean house and bring in mostly all his people if those on payroll before his arrival were found to be part of a clique that was part of a not so successful clique that were part of a not so successful athletic program." Who could not diagree with that alum? I wholeheartedly agree with that alum. After all, don't we need to change almost 2 1/2 decades of what we've mostly been getting? Before Rick Villarreal came to town and UNT had (what was reported as "50" total members in the Mean Green Club) well.......................whose job had it been prior to Rick V's arrival in bringing in that whopping total of 50 MG Club members and whose job was it to do all the fundraising BRV (before Rick Villarreal)? Whoever that person is, I would hope he/she is no longer on the UNT payroll and if he or she is on the payroll then there might be some who would want to ask the question.............................WHY? FWIW, we are still not the Mean Green Retirement Center for those who were part of a low expectation "operating in a lower profile" UNT athletic department. We are (hopefully) leaving all that kind of modus operendi in the past soon. Sorta' hard to hide behind numbers that show failure now isn't it? So......................should we strap a new Mean Green HFC with even more pressures than he is already going to have? <>*<> Let the new man hire "HIS" folks...............folks; after all, if you were in his shoes wouldn't you want to be able to do the same?

We are going to need a big(ger) boat full of money from a Big Donor. Hellsbells, folks, Oklahoma State wouldn't have what they have unless T. Boone Pickens hadn't stepped forward and we're talking about a Big 12 school that needed the, uh, Big Donor? I hope Rick V now has the UNT fundraising "A" list in hand because we need to take care of this (long overdue) football stadium thing in Denton so we can get back to academics. ................................................................... A MUST READ AND MUST GMG.COM LINK ON A NEW THREAD? Anyone else read in USA Today's weekend edition on its front page what Boise State's football program has done for their entire campus fundraising? There are some (academians) on our campus who will not want to read that its a successful NCAA D1-A football program (not Bottom 25) that has created this scenario and success. Can someone link that article on BSU in a whole new GMG.com thread so many more will see it and read it? Thanks in advance.

Other than the first few days of this HFC's search with the USM assistant (and do we really know what happened with all that?); anyway, I think Rick V has handled this about as good as any AD possibly could have. He has kept it (most admirably) close to the vest with this forum and the media. I think this is a positive. And FWIW.............I think RV has handled this about 110% better than Helwig's self-appointed one man committee did with his last hire at UNT. To bring the UNT president in on this was a very smart move (no matter how that came to be). Seems the BOR's (and one in particular ) are giving RV more flexibility than ever and I think we as NT Exes/MG fans will be the beneficiary of that. It's got to be one helluva' tough job to be under the microscope(GoMeanGreen.com for starters) most all the time but.................maybe that's why they get paid the big bucks, too?

Bump...

Bump...

I am getting one of those funny feelings that most always turn out to be true and it is that the 6 headlights on the red "DODGE" in Stan R's post is a most definite sign that Todd Dodge will be signed to a 6 year contract at UNT and there will be bonuses for T.D. tied to (dramatic) increases of attendance at Fouts and even more very nice bonuses for getting Mean Green football into Top 25 rankings a la Boise State. Wait a minute..................................another funny feeling is on the way ........................Oh, (sorry) I think this one is saying that I have to get to the bathroom and quick. All signs and indicators point to the former UT QB, the former offense coordinator at UNT and the present HFC at SLC.

IMHO.................worth repeating. Start talking to most non-UNT'ers and they will look at you in disbelief when you start talking about many of the above rich and famous fellow North Texas Exes of ours and the fact that they attended North Texas. Sitting in 'Fessor Floyd Graham's Music Appreciation class the first semester (Spring, 1972) I was at UNT and when he started talking about the time he put NT students Roy Orbision and Pat Boone in some quartet surely got my undivided attention. Then years after Roy Orbison had passed away, one of his best friends from Wink (TX) described in a Dallas Morning New feature this: "Roy didn't start all that high "falsetto" style of singing that made him famous until he went to that school in Denton, Texas." NOTE: The late Roy Orbison's son lives here in Parker County.

Is the mass choir warming up to sing Handel's famous Christmas piece which moved the the King of England so that he stood up (with the congregation following suit, of course)? HEY HEY, WHADDA' YA SAY, D1-A (top 25?) SUCCESS IS ON THE WAY!

Welcome! Pretty darn good assessment, charlie nt73. Good to have another astute and knowledgable follower of D1-A college football on this board. Don't be shy to use all the letter size features and color ammenities on this board. I don't think Harry mean't them only for my usage. Writing long posts will increase your keyboarding WPM, but might cause carpetunnel (sp?) syndrome. Use lose when you should use "loose" and use loose when you should use "lose" and you'll be just fine and universally accepted. Try to avoid lose women, though, as they can cause any man to loose much. GMG! (whoops, wrong color)

Reminds me of the movie "Tommy Boy" when they hit a deer and it ends up in the back seat staring back at Tommy and his friend in their rear view mirror! That scene in the movie just has an unusual comedic affect on me. I am laughing as I post thinking about poor ol' Bambi staring at the guys in that damn mirror! LOL! Excuse me before I soil myself! Shit, where are the adult diapers when you need them. PS: Hey, Rick, no chicken feathers in your back seat, right?

Other... Those whose posts are way too short and to the point. :

I'm writing in December 9'th as it was one of my favorite lady friend's birthday! Happy Birthday, ______________! And............Merry Christmas, Darling. GMG!

Fish Sticks Friday!

Nothing profound here, but recruiting is the lifeblood of any successful D1-A football program. If you miss a year, you can many times make up for that; if you miss 2 years of quality recruting, look out JUCO's because here comes UNT asssistant coaches, but I'm afraid DD missed more than 2 years of quality recruiting just seeing how non-competitive we had been against schools like Tulsa, La Tech, Akron, etc, etc, etc... But lets speculate (if you will) that Todd Dodge would become our #1 choice, but even he were not, most of us will fall in line to support whoever the hire is but lets look at what I feel would be some of Dodge's positives for our alma mater. Strengths of Todd Dodge: (1) Doesn't TD open up a whole new DFW pipeline (not just South Lake Carroll either) that has not been available to UNT before and a DFW area that we have mostly been ignoring for way too long? In fact, with Dodge, maybe a whole new quality level of DFW area HS talent (although we've had a several from DFW with much talent in the past years/decades); but maybe not in the volume we could have had from our own backyard? (2) For those who think he's been a HS coach only; Todd Dodge has had 2 years as a NCAA D1 offensive coordinator at some other school whose colors just also happened to be green and white. He is no stranger to the college football scene. (3) He has those University of Texas and old SWC ties, ie, name ID (if you will) because when you've been the starting QB at the University of Texas then you're just going to have immediate name ID in our state--simple as that. Ask former UT QB James Street about that even today because he played for DKR in Austin in the late 1960's. (4) I like the fact that because TD's been in Texas all his life coupled with his UT and UNT connections that he is just going automatically know a whole bunch of assistant coach "possibles" for his new staff at UNT (if he were hired, that is). TD may want to even retain 1 or 2 UNT assistants that you who have hung around up there longer than most have had nothing but high praise. Really nothing wrong with that, either, if they can adjust to the TD style. (5) His son (Riley) may (in deed) go to the Big 12 or the Big 10 or wherever, but, hellsbells, folks, I like a father's chance to recruit his own son (and some other fine players in and outside South Lake Carroll's district as well). Did LSU fans complain back in the day when Coach Press Maravich recruited his own son, ie, Pistol Pete Maravich to play for him and the LSU Tigers? (6) Todd Dodge's South Lake Carroll team have been playing some of the best HS teams filled with talent in the entire USA (and that's because the green and white SLC Dragons have been playing HS teams located here in the Lone Star State). No Texas braggin' goin' on there--but just the cold, stark Lone Star State facts! (7) The Dallas Cowboys made an inquiry toward Todd Dodge about a possible job out at Valley Ranch? Jeez, folks, just like many of you, I, too, played Texas HS football (Class AA), have followed our Texas HS/Friday Night Heros most of my adult life, but I've never heard of any Texas HS football coach who had officials from America's Team ask about the possiblility of going to work for the Dallas Cowboys. If Harbaugh were to becomme our #1 guy, then so be it and he will have all our complete support and encouragement (which many of us BTW, gave Darrell Dickey for most of his 9 years in Denton), but I think Todd Dodge brings much more to the table simply based his long time Texas ties and name ID because of it.

My other criteria, FFR? They have to know what year the Battle of the Alamo and the Battle of San Jacinto took place! And they would have learned that in the 7'th grade of any Texas public school; albeit, a couple of our candidates for governor of Texas just recently did not know which year the Battle of the Alamo took place. Seriously (and IMHO) UNT should be focussed on 3 strategic goals: (1) Hire the right man for the job who can recruit DFW and the rest of Texas (2) Get the rest of the funding for our new football stadium and then get it built (3) A Mean Green Top 25 co-existance on an annual basis a la Boise State ; this is what will separate us from those other Texas D1-A (non-BCS/maybe 2 BCS) schools that we really need to separate ourselves from (in more ways than one)

Revised to accomodate what I think is the theme of this thread... I still do defer to the signature below this post; and thats whether UNT hires the great Todd Dodge, former NFL'er Harbaugh, Jerry Glanville or Elvis "The King" himself (who Glanville if he were HFC would always make sure always has a ticket waiting for him at Fouts or at our future new UNT football stadium (palace) out on that prime interstate real estate, located between those 2 Texas interstates that run thru the western part of our campus and evey bit of that on that rolling Texas prairie land we now call the Mean Green Village. GUARANTEED GOOD TIMES AHEAD FOR ALL WHO JOIN OUR GROWING MEAN GREEN NATION! PS: LongJim, is it you I can thank for the Chief Quanah Parker icon under my moniker?

Bump... Nice photo, eh?

I have a native Texan and Texas history buff's appreciation for TAMU; just like many of you. 2 of my first cousins were Aggies and in the old cadet corps (before it got modernized). One of those cousins is a a CPA who has done nothing but brag to me thru the years about UNT grads from our Accounting Department. He has always been duly impressed with the entire UNT College of Business. (And I told that Former Student cousin of mine, "yeah, and if only UNT had gotten in on some of that Permanent University Fund (PUF) monies just how much greater UNT would be even moreso today)." Like I'm sure many of you, I've had several relatives attend (and graduate) from Texas A & M University, many of whom still live down in the Houston/Galveston area. A few down in the Mexia/Groesbeck area, too. Going way, way back... Texas A & M's s very 1'st president, one of the first Texas Rangers named Lawrence Sullivan (Sul) Ross and some of his fellow Rangers recaptured Cynthia Ann Parker (she of my family's early Texas roots fame) from the Commanches at the Battle of the Pease River near present day Crowell, Texas. Hers was a very sad story once she came back to Birdville and Weatherford, Texas. The Fort Worth Star Telegram's Bud Kennedy had a nice feature on C.A. Parker just last week with new info I was even unaware. As a young kid when with my parents visiting friends of theirs who was going to Texas A & M College where he was studying to become an TAMU Extension and Experiement Farm agent, I recall seeing a statue of Sul Ross in front of one of their older buildings many years ago. If fact, I think my late sainted mother had her Brownie camera and took a photo of Captain Sul Ross with me standing in front of the statue on that visit (of which that photo I cannot seem to locate to this day). OK, enuf..........already. BUT.................I like those gol' darned Texas Aggies. BUT I HATE AGGIE FOOTBALL! (just kiddin, Objective Aggie and other Aggies, only just kiddin')

So if we hire Todd Dodge and he recommends some of SLC's mover and shakers and those of the "gitter done" dept. who deal with business and promotions do we listen? Do we have more that needs to be accomplished in all those areas written about above even at the collegiate level? I'd bet Rick V would be open to interviewing some of those kind of athletic employees, too. Might it be that Todd Dodge could bring more to the table than we could ever expect? Can't we assume that with such a successful program as Dragon football and the part Dodge had with all that, that there'd be a lot of SLC fans (who also wear green and white) who would want to come to Fouts Field as curiou$ity $eeker$ ? ? ? Interesting days ahead to say the least....

Come on, gang, get ahold of yourselves. We've only had one interview. Harbaugh is impressive, but others have interviewed him, too, and didn't hire him. We just need to be out kicking more tires before we focus on one new car, don't we?

Caris you are making all the following SBC schools very proud because if you prove to be the winner and make the giant Athlon College Football summer magazine's very popular cheerleader photo colllage section, it will be a first for the Sun Belt Conference: Arkansas State University Florida Atlantic University Florida International University Middle Tennessee Troy University University of Louisiana University of Louisiana-Monroe ................................................................................................ * * Caris will still need more votes not knowing what the SEC folks might come up with next: I defer to ADLER's "VOTE NOW, VOTE OFTEN" link at the top of this page.

Hellsbells, NT03, I look forward to the day when I don't feel compelled to write those long epistles no matter whose reading them; although I do have a little fun making letters get real big in a sentence and coloring inside the lines of those letters. BUT.........................a good "upwardly bound toward Top 25" football program at our alma mater will probably cause me to get real brief with future posts. A fellow alum emailed me about my below signature asking me what I mean't with us having the "best" job in the DFW Metroplex. Well....IMHO, we do have the best "down the road" HFC's job in the DFW Metroplex because of our enormous constituency upside. And a constituency of which we all know is still virtually untapped to get on board an NCAA D1-A football program because of what we've had of late (at a lower profile) and the present stadium we have. TCU has had the best HFC's job with their Coach Fran and then Coach Gary Patterson, but even the Horned Frog faithful know their limitations are much more defined as a "non SWC" football program than when they had a better and more "theoretical" chance of becoming a national championship type program when they were in bed with the Longhorns and Aggies (among all their other former SWC brethren). As many of you have said (of which I do read all of your "much shorter" posts and I paraphrase you): "the break-up of the SWC was nothing but a positive for UNT." With a new bonafide "no corners cut" NCAA D1-A football stadium in Denton, Texas, America( as Matt Simon most always called Denton), we will all but be on equal footing with any non BCS school not only in Texas, but also in, uh, Idaho, where a former conference foe of ours is now in the BCS Championship Series).