greenminer

From Vito's blog:

Where's our vote? I thought Vizza looked amazing.

Are you so sure? I vaguely recall the tone of this board at one point was "We actually get quite a few diamonds in the rough, but don't have a coach who develops them." We were quick to point the finger, torching the evil, singular presence who was responsible for blowing any chance of capitalizing on 4 NO Bowls. "He had lightning in a bottle!" someone once said. Then he just ran out of bolts. Now we're avoiding the untouchable by blaming the cards that he was dealt.

haha! If he's the true competitor we hope he is, that's him praying "Oh man I can't wait to come in and right this ship!"

This is a great example of someone trying to take too much from this OU game. let it be. Mendoza's, and any coach who loves his trade, is going to get the team to play his basic correctly before adding the wrinkles. Otherwise it's like putting lipstick on a pig. We got roasted. period. Lets see where we (including Mendoza) grow from this.

A little of both. You can thank the competitive nature of Texas football and entertainment for that. UNT Music Ed majors, when I was enrolled '99 - '03 were required to take 3 years of marching band. It's an education that is valuable and necessary because it is there at the high school level...not just at football games but also at UIL competitions. Over here in the Southwest there is a pretty esteemed competition hosted by NMSU (NMSU Tournament of Bands) every year. IIRC, the first 24 years were absolutely dominated by El Paso Coronado, a recipient of the prestigious Sudler Shield and Sudler Flag of Honor awards from the John Philip Sousa Foundation. If my memory serves me correctly, this is the 27th year of the competition, and Coronado has won it about 18 times. Playing Sousa marches? in block formations? nope...they won it doing Tchaikovsky, Debussy, etc...in extremely "amoeba" - or curvilinear - formations. The block formations got the cheers, but those at Coronado and the rest of us in Texas have to take it a step further! We have to prove that Tchaikovsky can be done on the field! Playing the same music every year and spelling out North Texas at every game all year isn't worth a dime when going on to teach high-level Texas competitive marching band. ***added in an edit: If you want to see what the highest level of competitors are doing, watch some DCI season DVDs. HINT: It doesn't spell out CAVALIERS between the 20s.*** It's really a trade-off, much like there are different schools of thought for offensive philosophies. Do you want to run the spread? the Wing-T? Well, do you want to high-step, do curves? Or write out the script for the fans year after year, and parade around in blocks? From a performer's perspective, asking them to learn the same old block formations and play the same tunes because it gives the fan a rise in your jorts is a catch-22. Rehearsals are flat out boring. The music gets old. So what do we do in this situation? The Green Brigade is supported by the athletic department and a fundamental aspect of college gameday, so we have to balance between what we owe to everyone involved at the games and its traditions, and also a priority to those that are being educated to handle everything that will be asked of them in the Texas educational system. The Mean Green Brigade has some great activities that are already wonderful traditions in the game day atmosphere: the march to Fouts being one of them. Fly Like an Eagle (which I know seems overplayed to some of you...but it's not as bad as it used to be). The march around the track. Those are great traditions! But we've just had the worst smacking in UNT history, following two straight disappointing seasons. So everything after this weekend is going to be wrong. I would encourage you to at least try to appreciate that our band does something different from anybody else, that that isn't necessarily a bad thing, and also realize after such a craptacular loss it's easy to find things to whine about. I, for one, am glad we don't conform to those boring traditionalist and play fantastic, unique music on the field. But again...that's just, like, my opinion man. I wish we could go back to the game, watch the summer unis, and then miraculously blast OU 79-0. Then we'd be brilliant for trying to stay cool, and the OU band would be going, "Why didn't we do that? The band remains cool in all this heat!" ...some of you would still complain about the style, but I'd bet my Pony Up T-shirt that someone would be so upbeat about everything after a huge win that they'd say that about the band. winning cures all. I want this marching band bickering to die on the open forums. And I think it's a reasonable request of Mr. Williams that all Green Brigade current members and alumni stop speaking for the band in these frigid waters that are gmg.com right now. If you have any suggestions or questions, I'm sure he would be happy to answer some emails. I'll be happy to, also.

Nice to see someone getting the football forum back on track.

Well, that's just, like, your opinion man.

You're misguided. They don't tailgate, they boulevard.

Things = angles and tackles. It maybe have been a poor showing, but I wouldn't label it a poor overall performance. There were some good things going on in there. I think everyone needs to read this.

No reason to think about that.

I'll add what I can remember: -Todge kept coming back to tackling. Definitely a high priority this week. -He doesn't give offensive/defensive MVP awards. They have a production point system and name the most productive players on each side: it was Fitz on offense and Weathers on D -Another defense comment: need to work on angles. Some of you already touched on this, that OU beat us to the outside a lot...specifically the bubble screen. He brought up a successful defensive series in the early 2nd quarter: OU ran up the middle for a two yard gain, did the bubble screen (which was defended correctly) that only got 3 yards, and then an incomplete pass on 3rd down to force a punt. They'll look at that and say this is what we need to do, now what can we do to correct the other times where we failed? -He played up SMU a lot about continuing a series with them. You could tell he sells the idea of "team of the metroplex". -He feels very confident in addressing and correcting things this week. The team is feeling very good, but not getting lazy. They want to improve and show that they believe in this system. Dodge explains to them his expectations, and 95% of the time up to this point they have met them. That's off the top of my head. I recognized Vito's voice a couple times. Let me answer some questions I know are floating around in some of your heads: -No, he did not address Meager or Vizza. Quarterbacks were not brought up at all. -He hates losing. It doesn't sit well with the team and that's the way he likes it. When you have true competitors, losing will put a sickness in your stomach and the only way to get it out is on the practice field the following Monday. back to work. hope that helps.

Please don't panic/get frustrated. No scheming/defensive brilliance is going to make a difference when your opposition is 50 - 100 lbs heavier than you, half a second faster, and leaps 24 inches higher into the air. Fundamentals aren't going to look so hot either. You can't easily square up on a guy that might be juking in the NFL one day. I have a feeling that Todge and Co are trying to implement a fundamental system and will get it to work based on attitude and execution. He'll play his cards against every opponent, but sometimes you go into a game and the other guy has flush or straight, and you are dealt NOTHING. Here's hoping next week he coaches up some full houses to SMU's two-pair. Meager should get the start against SMU. It would be against Todge's own words if he switched now. Thanks DD. We love you.

I hope Meager gets that first W under Dodge.

I saw it during the game and was like WTF? Whether or not Roman would have caught the guy, that's holding and that play should have been called back.

Roman has amazing cutback ability and east-west speed which is fantastic for returning punts and kick-offs. Covering Superman on a deep route....not so much.

Some of ya'll I think are confusing style with quality. The Oklahoma band is there to put on a show that blends in with their traditional game day activities. That will never change. UNT has always been sort of renegade that we are not going to conform to any game-day traditionalism. Simply put: we're their to play some damn hard music and do it well, with some respects to the fan. I had to learn in high school band that there are those that want to please the fans, and those that want to out play everyone else. It probably doesn't make sense to many of you why we wouldn't go the crowd-pleaser route and run onto the field a la OU and play the same ol' stuff. I can understand that. The only thing I can say is try to learn to appreciate that UNT has some darn good musicians, and want to show it. No matter how you feel about the style, you can bet that the OU band knows who the better musicians were that day. I wonder if OU would be wearing unis if one of their band members passed out in last year's opener? I also wonder who's band sat in the shade most of the night. Those uniforms add 20+ degrees to the outside temperature. I don't think that's an exaggeration. FWIW: I really don't like the shorts/shirt thing either and wish we'd be seen in unis. What's done is done. This isn't us moving towards abandoning unis. It's a one-time thing. If we don't wear unis in Denton, then I would be worried.

I definitely saw a different quarterback when Vizza was in. That said, I'm very curious how Meager will be coached/adjust for SMU after this whooping. Maybe he'll have a great learning curve after his first real game in Dodge's system. Vizza....wow. What a warrior.

1) I did and still do 2) I love the game, and the band's attitude is miles better than what it had 8 years ago. 3) Find out why before you put this in a negative post. We took uniforms in '01 (I think that was the year I was GB and we went to Norman), so maybe there's a reason they didn't have them. 4) Check. Duh, of course. 5) see re: #2 Since you are in a position to be so critical of the band, as if you experienced what it was like 8 years ago and what Mr. Williams has done in the last 3 to better it, I suggest you go to him and get something constructive said, and a constructive response...rather than making shell accusations on a board Nick Williams has posted on maybe 3 times the last 3 years. I wouldn't put money on him seeing this tonight and responding but, hey, maybe he'll pleasantly surprise us.

I support lightning in a bottle.

aw green grenade!

What were you doing watching a game from within the 10 yard line?! Get in the stands like the rest of us, dude.

I thought Monroe had a spread while Steve Jyles was there? What happened to that O?

Boston College? Phili? I think mean green nation must know. Stylized eagle?

that's ROFL because it's so true. HAHAJKBFF u r l337