PlummMeanGreen

the green rokekmi, I have to ask the question as to what part of DD's career at NT did he say the quote you have placed in your signature area? The reason I ask is because at one time DD probably worked at a NORTH TEXAS that very well did have the worse facilities in the Sun Belt; still the most ironic part of that is how he recruited his best NT class during that era before we even knew a 400 plus acre golf course would be available to us for our future new football related venues AND one of his first recruited classes that took us to 4 bowl games. I can't make much sense anymore with what is going on all the time up there with all the apparent politics taking place at NT related to athletics (and not that I ever did). I don't think that he can say that today as far as our facilities are concerned with all that is now completed at Eagle Point Campus and from what I've been hearing lately a new stadium will be on our horizon sooner than some think OR what I even think some want (if one can believe that or not). GMG!

As of right now, that bowl line-up looks pretty close to accurate, but its still just mid season. Some teams have been known to improve very nicely from the 1'st half of a season into the balance of a season. Most conspiculously misssing from any CFN bowl line-up are the La Tech Bulldogs of whom some on their Bulldog, Barks & Bytes forum have posted that they could possibly get the minimum of 6 wins to become bowl-elgible yet still stay home in Ruston during bowl season. Hasn't that already happened to them before in the recent past? GMG!

Come on Rick, catch up man, I have a new signature statement IN BIG & BOLD LETTERS, OF COURSE! On the subject of winning, I'm beginning to wonder if that is even enough with some on this board? GMG!

To respond to the highlighted in red part: What happened was we lost T. J. Raymond to grades and some of you had compared him to Booger Kennedy. We still don't have Isaac Thomas (another DL) operating full force since his near heat stroke this summer (and some of you said he would be a solid "stopper" which we don't have as of yet) AND 8 ouf of 11 on the Mean Green "D" are all new starters. Offensively? That is the $60,000 question, but lets wait and see because in 2001 we were 0 & 5 at this juncture and we had a team that finally meshed and became our first bowl team since 1959 and the Abner Hayenes-led Mean Green team who went to the Sun Bowl. Undoubtedly, many of our younger fans/alums are of the the micro-wave generation, but right now we are just going to be forced to turn on the oven, put it on low heat and just take time to see this thing cook and develop in Mean Green Country.

Live with Dan Meager, folks, we don't have any Joe Namaths sitting on our bench. I think Meager with last year's NT football team would surprise many on this board. He is taking his knocks now (and no injury as many on this forum forecasted and I knock on wood saying that); but he is taking his knocks this year much like Troy Aikman did his 1'st year with the Cowboys and, no, I am not comparing the 2 talents, but sometimes your football team is just in a rebuilding mode whether our best fans want to accept that or not. GMG!

Funny how Belo owns Channel 8, the DMN AND the Denton Record/Chronicle, yet the Dallas Morning News people have yet to this day figure out that the NORTH TEXAS constituency probably buys their daily paper at a clip of 10 X's more than the much smaller SMU constituency. They will never figure that out and my 4 decades in the DFW market has convinced me of that BUT..............keep plugging on all this, guys, because who knows, maybe one day their light will finally turn on.

Never-minding our QB position, but the thing that has surprised me the most about our 2005 Mean Green offense is the lack of scoring from our running back position no matter who is in the backfield. Last year, our bread and butter was the play of the running back position, ie, Jamario Thomas and company. Yet this season in key times that our offense needs to step it up a knotch (like in the Red Zone) we have no running game to speak of that can score. Now if that is Meager's fault I tend to doubt it, but this part of our team confuses me more than anything. I think things on our 2005 offense can still be adjusted and even become effective (and doing that in Ruston for La Tech's homecoming would be a good start) but for the moment, I'm totally baffled with this most strategic problem on our team. Will someone please remind me who we lost on last year's offensive line whose absence on this years Mean Green football team is making so dramatic a difference? GMG!

Want to put some money on the final score, AV?!?! Albeit an ugly win, we all needed this "W" and can only hope that it or a future "W" will be the one that gets this football program jump-started in a positive direction again.

They build the new stadium and I don't care if they have Friday afternoon mud-wrestling tag matches over at the athletic department & beyond. Yet here it is a time in our school's history that all should be on the same page. Maybe all this alleged dissension in the athletic department is just what the doctor ordered for Chancellor Jackson so he can come in on his white horse (and budget axe)? SPEAKING OF JACKSON: I do hope that he will take on a chancellor's usual role as figure-head for all 3 campuses in the UNT System and not try to be president of each. Also, I hope we have a Board of Regents who will remind him of that fact often if he needs such reminders. In hindsight, Jackson probably should have been hired in the capacity that Walt Parker held all those years as our chief campus ambassador (and lobbyist) to the state of Texas legislature. How we end up with a non-doctoral degreed chancellor is still beyond me and even something that may need to be explained to many of our tax-paying constituency someday.

Just weeks ago and during the summer I said the opposite would happen inasmuch that we would hammer La Tech. Well........... Anyone want to pass it on to our Mean Green football players that La Techsters are making jokes about our school and our school's football team? GMG!

IMO, Meager is just not the main problem on this football team and I think most all who have seen this team play this year know that by now. He did not have a good game tonight, but what else are we going to do with this offense at this point of the season? A few answers would be nice because we all know what the problems are. We are drastically missing academic casualty T. J. Raymond on this defensive line and it seems Isaac Thomas does not yet have his strength back from his near heat stroke last summer. Both of those guys were being counted on heaveily to being the "stoppers' that we just don't have on this defensive line. Texas Tech fans get to watch Big 12 football every Fall. NT fans get to watch SBC football every Fall. Not sure that we should even compare anything we ever do to Texas Tech because they are light years ahead of us. I think most of us would love to see NT borrow their offensive play book, though. GMG!

We had a bee-line on an outstanding JUCO QB last recruiting season and he was very, very close to signing with the Mean Green until Nebraska moved in on him at the last minute. NT had for quite a while done all the right nurturing with this kid from all accounts, too, but what can anyone in the non BCS do when the Cornhuskers come into the picture? GMG!

If any of us could set back the hands of time as to where the great Drew Smith would not have had such a terrible and tragic accident and Drew with that million dollar smile still gracing us on this good earth, any of us would set back the clock if we only could; but the thing is as you all know by now, this was to be Andrew Smith's team this Fall--not Daniel Meager or Byerlys. If it were a perfect world (and we all know that it isn't) RS frosh Dan Meager would be on the bench this year seeing spot duty (just like Drew did under Scott Hall) continuing to learn the system and probably would have come in the Fall of 2006 as one of our top 2 QB's in Denton. Texas Tech will find out next week against UT if they are for real or will it be just another Red Raider football team that finishes somewhere in the middle of the pack of their conference race which is the norm for them. FWIW, I am 54 years old and to my recollection, Texas Tech has never won an outright conference football championship in my lifetime. Not entirely sure what they did before ex NT Hayden Fry staff member DeWitt Weaver led the way to get them in the SWC in 1956, but one year they tied for an SWC football championship with about 3 other schools (but not an outright football championship). I am sure TTechsters everywhere wonder if their school will ever win a football championship exclusive to them and now in a much tougher Big 12 where several other schools dwarf the Red Raiders athletic budget. The Red Raiders do seem to have taken it to a higher level this year, but again, the UT game next week will give us all a big clue as to what level they are. Texas Tech also just happen to run the kind of offense I love to watch (as do our casual/borderline football fans I think we'd all agree). After all, NCAA football is in the entertainment and ticket-selling business and any college in the Metroplex who doesn't understand that better take a quick course in Entertainment 101 so they will. GMG!

Most definitely a big, big problem that is going to have to be addressed in a very big way once and for all. Back at my Texas 2A HS, we had to run bleachers if we caused a penalty, jumped off sides, etc, etc, etc. Thank God the bleachers at that small Texas HS weren't that steep. Silly as it sounds, though, it cut back on our penalties (especially my own as a safety).

Truly, the FIU team we played tonight only lost to Kansas State by 14? Guess that one slipped thru the cracks on me. GMG!

THEY CALL IT THE STREAK! ETHEL, DONCHA' DARE LOOK NOW! (Funny, FFR)! And to El Paso Eagle, I know you jest about the DD thing and enjoyed reading your email earlier this week. In all honesty and being totally candid, Coach Dickey really needs to do some serious and intense tweaking of his player's penalty situations at the most inopportune times, I feel Coach Dickey needs to evaluate his entire assistant coaching staff and determine the ones he thinks really want to be in Denton and which ones really don't (and each of their recruiting skills and results might be the determining factor of that) AND I finally have to say it, but IMHO, Coach Dickey probably needs to change out our offensive coordinator. Other than all that, AINT' IT GREAT TO WIN A FOOTBALL GAME?!?!?!?

Keep your eyes on the prize, young Mean Green football team! We were 0 & 5 one year and hadn't had an above .500 season in more years than we could count before we started an incredible streak that began with.........ONE WIN! Many NCAA D1-A schools and their fans will wake up on Sunday morning knowing their team lost on Game Day Saturday! NORTH TEXAS AND ITS FANS WILL NOT BE ONE OF THOSE! GMG!

Lets not forget that any of our polls can be voted on by non-NT alums/fans that represent a large portion of those registered on GMG.com. I voted "YES" because today we will start seeing improvement that will continue thru the rest of this season and into next Fall. Lets support our young football team just like we all did when they were winning and going to bowl games. Sort of the way fans should be anyway, right? GMG!

2 rules if you are an NT "paid" photographer who has his/her photos placed in NT publications or websites. Rule #1: Seek out and take photos of NT students who are not wearing green (although at the Tulsa U and Troy U games, kelly green was quite prominent in the NT student section). Rule #2: Read rule #1 again Hopefully, NT video photograhers doing of all our football games this season that will be used in our annual football highlights video will take lessons from ESPN TV camera operators and try to get crowd shots rather than empty seat shots. They are quite adept at doing that at ESPN IMO. Anyone see the Tulane/UTEP game at Ruston, LA. and from the La Tech campus stadium last night? Well, I thought the ESPN camera folks did as good a job with an empty stadium as could possibly be done. Anyone else think CUSA will be busting their britches to get Ruston into their league anytime soon after last night's game on ESPN? I'm sure La Tech officials weren't expecting a very good local crowd last evening, but jumpin' jehosophats?!?!

In the White bio we now have new meaning to the term "brief stint." Word got back to some alums that he thought he had bitten off more than he could chew as AD at UNT. Also heard there may have been some health issues (depression?) but don't quote me on that. Good to see that he is doing well now. BEAT THE HELL OUTTA' THAT FLA. AIRPORT ! (Hey! We could have a school in the SBC that had the name "textile" in it so things can always be worse).

The revenue producing aspects of our future new stadium is rarely talked about on GMG.com and that is one of the main reasons we need a new football stadium. In NT's future new football stadium, if you have 20 luxury suites such as the ones shown in the virtual video tour of which there seems to be no link these days (and I randomly picked the number 20); yet if a company leases those at a (modest by today's standards) $25,000 per year clip, our school will make $500,000.00 per year on luxury suites alone. We have never come close to raising $500,000.00 per year in the Mean Green Club best to my knowledge. Keep in mind, though, that the luxury suites at our new stadium will not be the only way our new football stadium can make money for NT Athletics and our school. (We have pretty well maxed out most of the ways we can produce revenue with Fouts Field). As I recall, it seems Troy U officials said they all but sold out their luxury suites almost from the time they started turning dirt for their new stadium. There I go again, talking about the SBC's version of "The Little Engine That Could" (and is most definitely doing).

If ever a football team, its coaches and alums/fans need a win it will be the one played tomorrow in Miami, Florida, at 5:00 PM. BEAT THE HELL OUT OF THAT MIAMI AIRPORT!

letsgiveacheer, your description (I outlined in gray) of how yall pulled off the "McAdow era" Band Days seems just too simple and too easy for it to ever have a chance to happen at today's NT because too many times today we try to make mountains out of mole hills at our alma mater. Pulling off a Band Day at the University of North Texas? Well...........they are pulling off this band oriented activity at the Super Pit, now arent' they? And in light of this very event, I hope we never hear again how a similar event can never happen on a Game Day at NORTH TEXAS. (Of course, it is easy to observe that the NT Athletic Department is hardly involved with this activity, too) I know our NT Athletic Department would love to see Band Days re-instated in Denton because I've spoken to an official over there who has said such, but they seem to get zero cooperation from the NT College of Music "elitists?" who make work out of creating reasons, excuses or whatever as to why we can't do such things at NT (but probably because the idea did not originate from them if truth be known). Anyone else notice how our new Green Brigade unis' are no more in line with what Chancellor Jackson and his Branding Committee had in mind with the (supposed) new shade of green NT is using now? Guess what? The life span of an NT Green Brigade uniform is usually about 10 years, so get used to their unis' (which I sorta' like, myself). Chancellor Jackson's un-timely announcement on all this branding business was probaby more the reason for this than anything as I suspect the NT College of Music had probably already ordered their new marching band unis' "after" the Branding Committee comes riding in on their white horses with their Big Branding Announcement for us all. Once again, though, a sad statement at NORTH TEXAS that the left hand doesn't always know what the right hand is doing on our campus which is nothing new for all of us NT alums who have observed this too many times in decade's past. Yet a little team work on our campus would be appropriate when it involves an activity that 99% of our North Texas Exes would really like to see re-instated in Denton, and that being an annual Game Day Band Day at the University of North Texas. Anyone who would vote in the negative for such an activity has never seen a successful Band Day. From my own personal experience of going to a few University of Houston football games as a youth and seeing their Band Days, it was truly a crowd-pleaser of an event that left an indellible impression with me.

A Best and worst AD's thread, right? GMG!

I think many need to remember (and give due credit) that it was during Helwig's AD watch that we all but averaged 20K per home game in 1994 to regain NCAA D1-A status and that is what I choose to remember most about Craig Helwig. He was not the perfect AD, but we have not always been the perfect alum$, either. RICK VILLARREAL: In the 5 years with the NT Athletic program under Rick V's watch and in my 4 decades of following all this Mean Green business, I've not seen as many positive things happening from our AD's office at one time as is happening in this present era at NORTH TEXAS. Surely all that is happening in Denton is not solely because of Rick V but FWIW, all this is happening under his watch. We've had some AD's at NT that would have even turned off a Mattress Mac from giving a 7 figure donation to NT athletics. Even former NT Athletic Director Hayden Fry never had as many things (projects) going on all at the same time as we do now albeit a completely different era at NT and the NCAA. There were only 40,000 living in Denton and 17,000 NT students when Fry was in Mean Green Country. Denton County had 99,000 citizens in the 1970's. It now has 560,000 citizens in our alma mater's home county. As I said, it was an entire different era when Hayden Fry was in Denton, Texas, America. Rick V is the man with the plan (and one with the "Type A" personality to attain many of his goals). I like our athletic program today because Rick Villarreal is a part of it and I hope he plans to stay awhile and finish "ALL" projects at the Mean Green Athletic Village.