stebo

Also - of the 20,000 that showed up - I woudl say that 7500 or so were Mean Green fans, about 30%... give or take. We had green in the endzones for the walk up crowd that didn't want to pay $27 bucks, I would say that 70% of the endzone was scattered green... I am going to say that we showed SMU that we can bring a crowd last night, just like we showed TCU that a few years back. After they won - there is no reason NOT to extend this series. It was a blast, both te3ams had a good crowd as a result of the series at each respective stadium, and the series was evenly match (1 win each, both at the home team's stadium). Hopefully we can get a nice long series signed with the Ponies because I really enjoyed myself at the game. BTW - the Boulevard is pretty cool but not as cool as true tailgating. Also, all of the North Texas fans came in but when I went out to take a break, most of the Blvd was still out there - slurring their wrds worse then ever. They have got to give those Greek some sort of incentive to get into the game, the place would have been full if those guys and gals would have just gone in. Their problem is even worse then ours. We might have 2,000 that stay in the parking lot but they had about 4K or so that stayed out there, and that is a conservative estimate.

And Middle got schooled by FAU at FAU last Saturday. I really think that FAU is going to be tough this year. The MUTS are really looking good tonight; especially since they are running their team with only 60 scholarship players. Speaking of FAU - Shnelly is on the tube right now.

I am telling you - I wouldn't be penciling that W next to the FAU game just yet. Shnelly knocked off Conference Co-Champ MTSU this weekend with no problem. In fact, the game wasn't even CLOSE. FAU was up 27-0 before they took their first string out and let them rest. Shnelly is 2-0 against the Mean Green and went 4-3 in Conference Play last year... I wouldn't look at that game as a gimme. In fact, I would dare say that FAU will be a tougher game then SMU.

Somebody's daddy is very protective. Cut the cord bud. DD's classes were some of the lowest ranked in the country AND they were recruited for an outdated style of ball that cannot win at the IA level anymore. Time to let fans be fans - and when teams lose, fans gripe. Nothing personal.

Yep, Dickey never beat the Owls, even when they were IAA. I don't think that we have the players yet. We are going to be dealing with inconsistency for the next couple of years. These players were built for a Dickey type team and we all know what a Dickey type team plays like. Most of them have have zero confidence left. I think that Meager and JaMo are broken goods now. Most have forgotten how to win and many were recruited from schools with losing records and never knew how to be winners. Dickey's sucess was due to a great D and lots of running; this is a whole different game. You might as well have basketball players out there. When Dode gets his kids installed, things will get better. At least he is trying to win. I will still take a 79-10 loss from the team "trying" to win over a 65-0 loss where we walk in witht he white flag raised before kick-off. Todge's effort at OU looks bad but his team scored more then 3 times what we scored the last trip to Norman. If we can replicate that throughout the season, we will be just fine. We had some close games last year, those will be the games that we will win. The ones that are way ahead of us will be tough this year - next year is Todge's first real year for me. And that will be the rebuilding year. We are two years away from real success. I don't mind, in the long run - we will be much better in two years then we would have been with two more years of Dickey ball.

Oh yeah, one more thing.. while FAU only had about 12K for their opener, ULM brought in over 22K. The Belt is getting better all around.

FAU finished the Belt season last eyar at 4-3... They have opened the season at home with a big win over MTSU. I think it was like 27-0 before FAU put in the 2nd string and then the MUTS snuck in a couple of TD's. Their Board of Regents have a vote in 2 weeks for their new on campus stadium, and if the vote at FIU is any indication - it should be a done deal. A lot of people were pretty hard on the FU's when they moved up to IA to save the league; but I have always known that those schools had serious money behind them. Much like UCF and USF, when you have a lot of money behind your program, you will eentually be good. Looks like they are starting to prove this... My point? Well, at first glance - you look at our schedule and think that the first chance for a win would be in the third wek aganist FAU... maybe we should be a little careful before scribbling a "W" next to that game. The Owls and Schnelly have finally had time to put a real IA team on the field and will be a tough opponent in a few weeks. Captain Kangaroo has had our number and he might have some more in him after all.

It's hard to believe that when Rick arrived, the athletics budget was sitting at around $6 million a year. Every year we raise it and every year we become more legitimate. The conference that we desire requires a $20 million dollar annual budget, we are getting pretty close to that!

That's cool. I like the team unity thing. Were all the players doing it? Like, I know that Meager has a buzz cut and Jamario might look silly with blond hair, is it everyone?

I have one but I think that it is way too big to attach. I will try...

I little birdy told me that you can go on to CafePress.com and design your own hats. That same little birdy has his own two interlocked NT hats. The only drawback of CafePress - they only have white and khaki hats. I left the design on there if anyone wants one. I now have four interlocked NT hats, two from a fancy pants Lids which will never leave the bag and two from CafePress. I wear the Khaki one every night when I walk my dog. It is perfect.

lol, I told you it was a 1990's Stebo rant. It just pissed me off. I am still kind of pissed about it. Then I see Drex post that we have 5000 members. Well, that is just horse hockey. We have over 100,000 alumni in the DFW area and we only have 5,000 members? And of those 5,000 - only about 300 are active alumni? 300? Jeez. It doesn't do us any good to claim that we have 100K alumni in the Dallas/Ft Worth area if only 300 of them care. I would guess that SMU has about 10K alumni in the DFW area (just a complete guess) and that at least 25% of them are active in some way (go to games, join the alumni association, etc...). If we had a 25% involvement - we would have 25K at football games and then another 5K students. We wouldn't have any problem selling out games and building new stadiums. The truth is - we have a bunch of people that have gotten sick of the process and the BS and moved on. Ok - end of rant - back to non-judgemental, calm - year 2004 and forward Stebo.

There may be 5000 on the books but when I was asked to sit on the Tarrant Exes BOARD (without even being a member anymore), we discussed the membershp of the CHAPTERS - Denton, Dallas, etc... At the time, the University Rep said that there were approximately 300 people that were actually involved, showed up to meetings, served the Exes in some sort of capacity, etc.. There were never more then 10-12 people at our meetings even though we were trying very hard to get more people involved. The Dallas Chapter had gone awash during that time because the Exes had "absorbed" their burden of a large bank account. You see folks, the Dallas Exes had a pretty good thing going for about 2 years - then the Exes found out that that Dallas Exes were building up a nice sized bank account and decided that for the betterment of the entire organization, that money was best in the hands of the professionals in Denton - not the folks that had raised it and invested it wisely. At the time my buddy Adam was serving about 11 positions with this Dallas chapter, including President - because all of the other ACTIVE members had thrown their arms up in disgust and left. It was him and like 2 other people, all serving many positions. Sure, they wanted help, but they sure as heck didn't get it. Why? Because there are approximagely 300 ACTIVE members of the Exes. Drex is obviously one of them. My great friends (hopefully still after this tirade) Jim and Brad and Vickie are also some very involved alumni. But then you look at guys like Stephen West... once the poster boy for the Exes and now wanting nothing to do with them. The Exes need to be exposed. They also need to be completely overhauled. Hopefully that dude from San Jose State will know what to do - but how many active members could they possibly have? So my wording was a bit off Drex... the Exes have about 300 active members (and that is being VERY generous). I have been to mixers/happy hours at the Denton, Dallas, and Fort Worth chapters and there were never more then 30 actual members in the event with the normal amount being about 12. They needed people on the board of the Tarrant Exes so bad that they had me appointed to a spot, even though I openly admitted that I was not a FAN of the Exes and that I had not renewed my Exes membership for several years. The organization is in terrible shape. And like I said before, the University that I work for holds events for our alumni all the time - this last week we held one for our ribbon cutting at the new Resource Center in Plano... we had about 200 on hand, all Exes and Students - coming to an event simply because an e-mail blast was sent out and a few hundred phone calls were made. Think about that - I mean REALLY think about that - The marketing at an online school from Arizona has proven to be more effective than our school that has been in Texas for a century. That is pathetic. Thow in all of the logo stuff and you understand why guys like me (who love to volunteer for pretty much anything) will not have anything to do with the Exes anymore. Drex, I would like to hear your thoughts on the logo. I don't want to argue members with you. You know it and I know it. We have both sat through those meetings talking about it. Let's talk about the Exes and the interlocked NT. What was the First thing that you thought of when Rick posted that hat? Was it - "AWESOME! Now my school might get some of those interlocked NT logo people to get involved?" or was it - angry, that should not have happened, we didn't give them permission for that, we haven't discussed royalties for that logo yet, followed up by - OH, and they might throw us out on the streets because of this! I saw that you responded to the membership portion of the post but pushed all talk about logo BACK onto the University and now Gretchen Bataile. Do you have ANY opinions on this subject? Don't you see that if neither side is pro-active, nothing will ever get done? The Exes should be the ones fghting to get this logo adopted as a spirt mark. That is YOUR PURPOSE! What else is your purpose? That is it! You fight for the alumni. You have read it on this board and heard it from everyone - we want the interlocked NT to be at least INCLUDED in the long list of branding items. Now, the job of the Exes is to make that happen... not point fingers and talk about joint summits to get all parties together (that is a weak point of the organization,lol) - you guys - all 10 of you, whoever is running things right now - should be fighting for the alumni and our right to have a good spirit mark. But then again, how can you do that when you are worried about the $1.11 that you were screwed out of in royalties from the hat purchases by Steve, Rick, and Emmitt?

The ONLY reason I said dork is because your name is MeanGreenDork - you dork, lol. As for the hats - you may have seen them - But I have the two sitting in my house right in front of me right now. They are puke green. The way that they got "accidentally" made is simple - it is summertime. The hats from TOW were sent for approval and someone with a lazy eye (or possibly his own beliefs) ok'd them. They ARE in the marks that CLC and TOW has to choose from. The baseball team has the hat with the interlocked NT. The lettermans jackets were funded by a private person, not because of the lack of funds but because of the stupid interlocked NT that is on them. Time and time again, we all disagree - but for the most part, 90% of the fans would prefer the interlocked NT to spelling out the words. In fact, it is the ONLY logo that we all seem to like and would be proud to wear. I will wear these ugly hats most likely, just to prove a point. That the ugliest damn "mistake" hats in the world still look better then the other crap out there legitimately. By the way, I made some basic interlocked NT has on Cafe Press and they are my two favorite hats now. The guy at lids looked me right inthe eye and told me that if that logo was on a solid green hat, he would sell the hell out of them. They carried ZERO Mean Green hats at this Lids, I had to special order them. I looked through all of the other schools that they did have - the only longhorn hat that was not plain orange with the emblem on it was a camoflauge hat for their true redneck fans. The thing is, the University that I work for - University of Phoenix... has done a better job marketing itself in the last 7 months then NT has in the last 70 years. That is sad.

Dork, I get the feeling that you were either ON the branding committee OR know someone that was.... because I have never seen anybody else take up for this group of "image creators" like you always have. And you always say the same thing... Is the look good? Nah... Is the logo any good? Nah... Do I like it? It's ok.... Did the committee do a heck of a job? ABSO-F-ING-LUTELY! I mean come on man, they dropped the ball. It is time to scrap the crap that everyone hates. THREATEN TO KICK THE EXES OUT OF THEIR LITTLE HUT IF THEY DON"T GIVE UP THE LOGO - and move on. The shade needs to drop to a darker shade of Kelly because I think that these hats are glowing in the dark over there in the corner. That is how bright green that new toothpaste green is - it looks "glow in the dark"... Dork, I know that you are a Dork - thus, you have trouble telling what is cool and what sucks... but I am a 35 year old man and even I can tell you that color is only going to be used for safety cones, sno cone coloring, those glow sticks at Six Flags, and NORTH TEXAS F-ING GEAR. It sucks and we need to get it changed back damnit. As for the hats with the interlocked NT - the guy at the store, along with the 7 or 8 guys standing around him all looked at the hats with me. They were like - that hat would pretty much be the best hat around without that gay ass green and grey. They kept asking me if the green had gone back to lime green, like in the 70's and early 80's. I will give you this, ONE person in the store liked it - but she was female. The hats do not say "MEAN GREEN" in spirit, color, or literally. Our University could have saved a TON of money and gotten MUCH better results by simply listening to the fans. The fans buy the merchandise, not the suits that run our Denton University from SOUTH DALLAS.

So I got really excited when Rick initally posted the interlinked NT hat, I can't lie. I thought that maybe this was the "big announcement" that had been discussed on the board (even if it was pure speculation). I thought that MAYBE just MAYBE the Exes had come to their senses and allowed the athletic department the rights to printing their precious logo without Exes across the bottom and that "possibly" the logo might even end up on a new helmet someday. Of course, lots of things have happened since then and my hopes and dreams have been snubbed out. But the hat was just god awful ugly, it had that "Nascar" look to it with splashes of crap on it. When Emmitt posted the second one, I decided - what the hell. You only live once and they are "buy one, get the second one half off". I ordered both from the Lids website and had them delivered to the Lids next to my house free of charge. At this point, I had found out that these two interlocked NT hats had been accidentally approved completely (by mistake?) and that the Exes were EXTREMELY concerned about when they would get their millions in royalty checks. To me, an organization with less then 300 members and zero administration should be worried about a lot more then a silly logo that they came up with for next to nothing. If they want, I will send them the 22 cents that they would normally get off of a logo rights check. I am sure that my 22 cents would really be able to straighten things out. Heck - I bought two, Rick bought two, and I think that Emmitt might have bought one, too - that is like almost a buck. With that much money they could probably totally change the face of the organization! Of course, the "we need our cut" BS was just the "initial" reaction - then when reasoned with - about how the royalty might be recognition of their alma mater... some Exes agreed that the "pay off" would be DFW citizens actually wearing the logo someday...But tha wasn't the REAL problem - the REAL problem was that they had been THREATENED by our new Chancellor to NEVER PRINT THAT DAMN LOGO or else they would be THROWN OUT of heir new little visitors center and not have a home for free! I think that is Horse SHIT. First of all, the Universty gets a lot more out of the agreement then the Exes do... the Exes have to staff the thing. There are empty rooms all over campus that the University would LOVE to fill up with free labor. The Exes provide the College with a great welcome center or welcome back center and it doesn't cost the University anything more then the air that would be pumped into there anyways. I think that is a VERY poor excuse for yet another cockamamey story about the poor Exes getting THROWN OUT of their building if they were to print any merchandise (SOOOOOOOOOOO dramatic, geez) with their own logo on it. To me - this was just too much BS for me to digest. But I still ordered the hats, regardless of them being ugly; because I knew that they would probably become collectors items as the Exes/school would never allow this to happen again. Both can blame the other and nothing can continue to get done. Granted, this is the only logo that the fans have ever somewhat agreed upon, let's throw all of that logic out the window - the Exes simply cannot allow the AD to print this logo... and even if they decided to, then they would be left homeless because Chancellor Lee has threatened to throw them out of their home if they cotinue to disregard the branding committee!!! Which brings me back to that SHITTY ASS BRANDING COMMITTEE. Yes, they were filled with the greaest minds that North Texas could gather. Yes, they spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on identifying a color scheme and "logo" that would stick with North Texas for the next 50 years. Yes, they had very talented people on the staff for the process. But the more and more that I learn about the parameters that they were given - the more that I see why North Texas is where we are today. What a complete waste of money. To spend all of that money for those creative minds, only to handcuff them with the task of making a "font" just boggles the mind. The University did get a spirit mark out of it - the son of the worm - but the problem is, our AD doesn't want to use it. We are the Mean Green. If you start throwing Eagles up then people wll continue to mock us by doing the whole "Caw, Caw!" crap at games and try to call us the Mean Green Eagles (when it is not our name). Then you get down to what they did give us - Mean Green (in their font)... well, it isn't so "mean" in this ugly ass green. I realize that they wanted a universal green that everyone could print and wear; but this new green on this new hat looks like something right out of the discoteque that Hayden Fry used to hang out at. It is not a cool color. There is nothing cool about it. There is no way that we can market this green and get college kids (or alumni) to wear it. There is NOTHING mean about the green on my hats. Chancellor Lee - you suck. Branding Committee - your work sucks Exes - you suck, grow a set of testicles. RV - I feel for you and all the BS that you have to put up with at NT. I would be interviewing at every chance if I was handcuffed the way that you have been. Ok - that is my rant for the year, 1990's style Stebo.

Name one stadium that was built that way. With the money ahead of time from a corporation. Even Gerald Ford hopped onto the project after the school had committed to fund the project. At that point, he just added his name to the project that already existed. Papa John's Stadium was simply added AFTER the renovations/expansions had begun at the Louisville stadium. Movie Gallery hopped onto the Troy stadium well after it was built. I can't think of one single college team that has built a new stadium or done serious renovations to their existing stadium by not going it alone first and then have donors hope on board sans Boone Pickens... The only way to really get this done in North Texas is with a student service fee being raised (the way that it should have been raised properly the first time around). We have a waiting list and if students don't want to pay the fees then they can go to UTA. Nobody is forcing them to go to school here. I think that if Dickey had continued to win that the BOR would have eventually upped the fee again but the losses just did not justify a new stadium. A winning team and a friendly BOR will get this done. We have also caught up with our equity gender stuff (so much that we are ranked #2 in the nation) and we can start using those extra fees that we have been collecting to renovate womens' sports facilities to start putting some aside for the guys. But I respect that you know a lot about fund raising and more importantly, fund raising at North Texas. You seem to really know your stuff. You just don't seem to understand the funding of athletic facilities in the state of Texas... more importantly - North Texas. We have to pay for it and then hope for a sponsor, there is no mystery silver bullet donor that will get us to our stadium.

Over and over again I read our fans bitching and moaning about not getting the "big donor" - folks, NONE of the people building their news stadiums had a big donor BEFORE they announced their stadium and already had it funded. Troy had theirs built and running for a year before they got their donor. UCF is funding theirs through student service fees that we are not allowed to charge in Texas. So is FIU. WKU had their $37 million dollar renovation announced, paid for, and they were building it before a donor came along with a $5 million dollar check to help them out. We have to do this in house and show a commitment from the FANS before we will build and we have to build before any donor is going to slap his/her name on it. This is a tired arguement. I can't believe that people would blame RV. The man that is often associated with bringing NT to the highest level ever is Hayden Fry and he wasn't able to raise 1/5th of what RV has raised in about the same time period. The only thing that I blame RV for, and this is a very SLIGHT blame, is that he hasn't set up a direct fund for donors that want their money earmarked ONLY for the stadium and nothing else. If he were to do that, they would lose out on Mean Green Club donations and those are really helping to pay the bills. The next step would be to set up an account that cannot be used for anything BUT a stadium. Let donors donate at any time or set up for automatic payment plans. In addition - you should be able to click a button at any time and throw $20 bucks in their via credit card. The fans should also be able to see the balance. Almost like a HUGE trust fund that we can all donate to whenever a guy like RETSO has #495 bucks that he wants to donate but wants to make sure that it goes to STADIUM USE ONLY. All major donations should go in there as well as private donations (small and big). There was talk a while back of the fans doing this on their own and giving the department a password to view the funds as they grew. The only thing is that the Athletic Department would surely think that if a person was giving to this stadium fund then they would cut back on their Mean Green Club donations. I don't think so. Here is the reason why - this fund would not give anyone the free game day giveaways. In fact, about the only thing that this fund would do is give the fans a chance to REALLY see how far we are in terms of fundraising. If this fund had been started 10 years ago (when it was first kicked around) - there could have been up to a couple of million in there, especially if it was invested wisely. Now we have question marks. I trust RV but I really want to know how close or far we are from the stadium. I put al of the blame on the fans for not giving more but I really can't blame them if they think that the money will be used for Women's Softball (no offense ladies) when what we really need is a new football stadium.

I think that the heart of the white helmet is more of a result of the branding committee then Todge. It sounds like they painted a helmet Kelly "tootpaste" green and it was very unflattering... so they went with a white helmet. That is what I get out of this... There are a group of us that fought that branding committee and were mocked on this board. FFRick, Myself, CMJ, and several others - went to great lengths to try and get a voice on the bran ding committee for the group of fans. No out voice, but just A voice that would represent the fans.... We were basically told to go F ourselves. Now we get the ramifications of it. Still no logo on the helmet when a perfectly good logo (the interlocked NT) was volunteered by the Exes for use, and this tootpaste green that might look great on some shirts but looks absolutely TERRIBLE on uniforms.

I was skeptical about the WHITE but I like them now. I understand the theory about being able to see the receivers down field better and we haven't had a white helmet since 1967. It will be cool to see these white helmets in action, not going to judge just yet.

I don't think that any section is sold out. Our group added two seats to our package this week wth no problem at all. Just a simple phone call. There is definitely more interest simply because many people would have refused to renew if Dickey was still here... They got to keep their season ticket holders from last year and that was the biggest challenge. Anything extra is gravy, like bringing back those that had not renewed the year before, etc, etc....

Good for Western. I want to note that this does not change their plans one bit - it merely adds to their revenue. As with Troy and FIU, these schools scheduled the new facilities FIRST - were in the process of building them - and THEN the donation came. These donors are not "saving" or "starting" these projects... they are hopping on board because the school has been able to get it going without their big money help. Stadium Donors normally come after the stadium is built. There is no magic bullet. We have to build and then we will see a few more big donors. I would bet that the Goldfields will donate another large donation after we break ground and even old Mac might come around with some more money (although not likely, lol)...

The MUTS have a bus like that, it was owned by their athletic dept - was the team bus - and now the fans have bought it and call it Hillbilly Haven or something like that. It is pretty awesome though, satellites (multiple) and tv in the luggage area..... plus a sitting roof on the deck to chill out and tailagte/watch a baseball game at their litle baseball stadium.

You would really assume that, wouldn't you? But I lived in Durant, where Southeastern Oklahoma State is - and the Choctaw tribe never had a problem with it - not once. In fact, when the NCAA forced this resolution through - the school left it up to the Choctaw tribe as to whether or not they would fight it or roll with it. The tribe actually was angered that the name was being threatened but did not want to spend the money to fight the almighty NCAA. So the school gave the tribe the right to rename the mascot as to include them in the process and try to keep their indian heritage involved. The Choctaw Chief held a meeting of the tribe and they voted to fight it. When he explained the cost, they still wanted to fight it. When he brought this to the school, the school said that they would not support the tribe fighting the name and they would go that path alone. The tribe gave in... but they were not happy about it... and cam up with a new name - The Savage Storm. The school was a little scared that it would be perceived as the same nickname so they removed all indian regalia from their spirit marks and now they have this storm looking logo. So while "Savages" may seem hostile and abusive - some indian cultures do not always find that to be offensive... they can be (in this case) "proud" of that trademark (as crazy as that sounds). Then again, they are from Oklahoma and everything in Oklahoma is like the freaking twilight zone (except in Tulsa, lol)...