stebo

Almost as silly as a "Midnight Madness" - oh wait, that's right - there isn't enough interest for a Midnight Madness. Sorry Garfield, no lasagna for you.

I give your football team an "A" - your fans a "B" - and your spelling a "D"... make that a "D-"

Oh man, you guys and gals are going to have so much fun! Make sure that you go to the Green painted bar across the street for a pint of Pabst Blue Ribbon (on tap!)... That has been the lucky concoction I have had in my last two trips there and those were succesful. Also, if you drive and have some extra time, go drive through the Civil War Battlegrounds/Memorial Park located on the outskirts of town. I know it sounds lame - it did to me when Adler dragged me there, but they are really cool and interesting. It will make you have an appreciation for the men and women that fought to keep our country together as a Union. Everything has been restored nicely and since the war was fairly recent, most of the artifacts are in really good shape. It is also free, so if you are a college kid looknig to do something while you are out of town but are low on cash - try a tour through the battlegrounds, you won't regret it. The walking tour is NOT a walking tour though (not unless you want to walk about 11 miles!) - make sure that you take your car and then stop at the numbered landmarks to read up on what happened at that spot.

I am thinking about buying the online thing. I can hook my laptop up to my TV through the video card and watch it (kind of) like a TV game. Crip**KATT said that last year he tried it and it was pretty choppy... so it might be a waste of money... but I imagine that it is very much like watching the live feeds on Big Brother, not the greatest - but at least you can put a visual with listening to the MGRN. If anyone wants to, maybe we can all get together to watch it somewhere that has high speed internet and a TV.. I will just bring my laptop with me and hook it up for everyone to see, and then we can chip in for the $30 bucks or whatever it is for the online viewing cost. Crip, do you have the link to where I would go to see if this game will be offered online? What company does the SEC/LSU use? I know that the Belt used a company out of Monroe for our trial of internet feed games but they have gone belly up since last year. The owner was a ULM grad and posts occasionally on the Sun Belt message board. They are actually just waiting on technology to improve before they re-introduce the idea because they got tired of refunding peoples' money when the game did not stream correctly for them. Did you guys use that same Monroe based company or is it a different one?

11 more posts to go Jim, you can squeak those out by tonight surely. I would suggest a post of 7,000 "smileys" and stuff. At least use every single one of them in the post since you are most famous for using the emoticons.

Don't the Cowboys need a kicker? Maybe Toby can make a return to the Lone Star State before retirement.

All you have to do is take one look at this year's basketball schedule and you will lose interest before the first tip-off. Our biggest OOC home opponent is UT-Peanut Butter. Sure, we get a nice one thrown to us every now and then - Indiana, TCU, SMU, UT - but never in the same year and we always lose. For football, I can make the whole day out of it... come out, enjoy the outdoors, get some sun, BBQ, tailgate, watch the game.. it is an "event".. with basketball, you drive out there, freeze your ass off in the parking lot if there is any tailgating going on, and then go in to watch your team get their butts kicked. Just not any fun to me. It is nothing personal - I won't go watch the Rangers either because I don't like bad baseball either. I made it out to 4 games last season, mainly to support the Pit Crew's efforts. But for some reason those guys have a hatred for all things NT football now so I really don't feel the need to try and help them out (nor do I get the feeling that they give a damn if I help out or not, lol). Sorry Kevin, I imagine that you will understand eventually. The beatings haven't gotten you down yet. I was a season ticket holder for 12 years (as a student and then an alumnus) before I gave up. Even had floor seats for a couple of years... Sponsored the broadcasts on the radio with my business like a good alumnus should... the works. After awhile, I just had had enough. I am sure that your time will come, too. IF we turn it around, some folks will come back (like football) - but most will be kinda like me - leery of putting their hearts into something that has traditionally gone bad eventually. So the fans to fill the Pit wll have to be new fans or alumni that have never given it a spin (and thus become bitter)... We have plenty of students and alumni to outdraw Western Kentucky and they barely averaged 4800 a game last year. And before you guys start blaming everything on promotions and stuff... you need to look no further then Coach Jones' 2005-2006 schedule. It is TERRIBLE. That is not the kind of schedule that any athletic dept can promote. Besides, there is no money to promote it. All of te extra money needs to be used to give our coaches raises. Well deserved raises. At least with JJ we have gotten back to .500 ball. When he has 4 consecutive trips (or 1 for that matter) to the dance then we can start making people feel bad about choosing to support one over the other. Some of us are out in the real world, working jobs, and just trying to find our place in our careers and our families. When b-ball season rolls around, I need a break. I will go to a couple of games, regardless of who they are - but probably not the four that I hit last year. By the way, one last thing; when you say your prayers tonight - please say thanks to the football team for playing LSU and K-State and for getting us our equal 1/10th share of the BCS money (finally) for this year. They are the ones that pay for the other 16 varsity sports on campus. Without football, no other sport would be able to support itself in a 1st calss way. You think that we would be building a 266 acre Athletic Village on the other side of the highway dedicated to athletics without the recent success of the football team? Even if our basketball team had been to 4 straight NCAA tourneys and won one game in the 2nd of those years - it would not have brought the money into the program from outside sources the way that football has. Heck, the video scoreboards in the Pit and the Green Seats in the Pit were paid for with football money. Football drives the bus down in Texas. Plain and simple.

They were out at TCU yesterday.. I was pissed that they weren't at North Texas. Good to hear that TCU was just the warm-up for our spot. BTW, they were dogging TCU all during the broadcast... that is what they do, make fun of stuff. Don't take it personal

That looks terrible. At least it isn't an Eagle.

Wrong, we would be competitive in the MAC and the WAC for football. As for basketball, we have to work on winning some Sun Belt games before I can believe that we would compete at a higher level. Maybe getting past the first round of the conference tourney. The new basketball schedule came out today and it absolutely sucks. Not one home game to promote.

UNTGirl, I hate to be the one to break it to you - but pick again... Roy is no longer with the team.

Why is it slow? We can't bash Dickey yet because the LSU game is not here and gone. Don't worry, there will be plenty to talk about in 8 or 9 days. Speculation about if we going to even be good enough to beat the MUTS, etc... But after the 65-0 thrashing we took at UT last year, nobody wants to put their heart into this game - so our season starts with most of our fans the next week at the MUTS. BTW, the guy that owns the gas station up the road from me told me that gas will peak at $2.99 a gallon by the end of the summer - and probably drop a little in the Fall before going back to that price of about $3.00 a gallon - where it will stay. So I would agree, if you are looking at a car - find one that gets at least 25 MPG and above. As it is, the places only charging $2.59 are basically breaking even right now. They are hoping to make their money on the cokes, chips, and ciggies... and breaking even on the gas. The guys that are charging more then that most likely had the a remodel done by their mother gas company (i.e. Texaco/Mobil/Exxon/etc..) and get charged more per gallon to finance out the remodeling costs... OR they are just trying to make a profit still. Most have just conceded that gas will be a "push" and make their money off of the convenient store items.

I think we average about 18K this year. Tulsa will bring them in and if we win just ONE of the OOC games (if we are going to win one then it should be Tulsa) then people will show up to the next one even though it is on a Tuesday night... it is on ESPN which she be enough motivation to get a good marketing push out of our Athletic Department. They are on a budget, but they will find the money somehow to push this game. Then we have Homecoming, that is a guaranteed 18K... then the Thansgiving game (could be a dissapointment), then the finale - might have a drop off for that as well. But I think that we average 18K in the end.

Holy crap! This could be the big man that will rejuvanate the program finally! Wow! Wow! Wow!

UGH!!!!!!!! Welcome aboard the time machine. Today we will be travelling back to the days of the quarterback carousel at North Texas! We welcome aboard our special guests: Josh Gulley, Richard Bridges, and Spencer Stack.

That is true, but after the back 2 back restraining orders it has been a lot more difficult for two dollar pistols and untangel to follow him around... at least within 300 feet

Oh Freak, you just hit post number "666" - that is creepy, hurry up and post another time, lol.

Well for each event we just pass the hat... Here is the thread that raised the money and donations for this event. We pretty much just throw a thread out like this before each event... GMG.com BBQ thread

Message board - working with the University. We bought the smoker a few years back and Rick pretty much handles the upkeep of it. We added a second one last year but it was in really bad shape. Sound Man is working on rehabbing that one now to give us some more cook space. Our group started out as the Mean Green Club, founded by Mean Rob Black in the late 90's and then the University asked for the name back (Coach Hayden Fry had used that name for the fan booster club in the late 70's but it had changed into the Foundation over time). The Mean Green Club (our version) is what brought a lot of us together back when Harry ran the old Paradise board and we realized that we weren't the only North Texas fans out there. We grew it and now have quite a bit of firepower. We have smoked more brisket over the last 5 years then a lot of restaurants, lol... We chanegd our name to the Greenbackers when the school took over the Mean Green Club name and have used GMG.com to move that unofficial group forward. We are definitely the largest tailgating crew at North Texas, and we have annual flag football games along with a permanent spot in the Mean Green Tailgating village as a result of it. Other groups have to pay to reserve their spots in that village but the department gives is some aid by not charging for the space along with helping us out with some tables and chairs for our events.

Thus sending us to the bowl game at 5-6. BTW, Troy was IA that year. They took a very unconventional approach to moving up and did the old-style 4 year transition (had to do it this way in order to raise money to build stadium/raise interest in program)... they did it that way rather then the 30K stadium and 17K in one year route like we did. We got revenge on Troy in another one of their transitional years (2003) when we beat them at home 21-0. In all, Troy had 4 transitional IA years - whereas FAU and FIU will only have two. It is not really IA, but it is defintely not IAA... it is a transitional place in between. Wins against them counted as IA wins, not the IAA exception during that time. They were not allowed to participate in any post-season play what-so-ever; which is the reason why most schools take (or shall I say took - these rules are outdated now) the faster route. For some reason, I think that they did get a nudge in the area of transferring players by going the 4 year transitional route. I think that Troy could transfer in players from other IA schools and play them immediately (kind of like IAA school) - but only for the first couple of years. In the final year, their transfer players from other IA schools had to sit out a year, just like other IA schools. They also had the ability to offer the IA limit of 85 ships during all that time so it is no wonder why Troy was able to build a thriving program that knocked off Ole Miss while still in transition and went on to knock off Marshall twice and Missouri last year. Those rules are gone now, FIU has moved up to IA and has a stadium with less then 20K seats, something that could not be done when Troy was moving up. P.S. - don't mean to rub salt in the wounds but in 2001 we also lost to colorado State in the NO Bowl giving us a final record of 5-7...

FLJ

BTW, one more thing... I think that the crown was taken out of te field for a reason. I think they want to prevent drainage off to the sides of the field, and push the field to drain into the ground. This would keep the rubber pellets in place and not washed into the floor drains that surround the field. Either way - I imagine that this design takes a little bit of upkeep with the pellets. Either we will need to rake the field after each game and/or add more pellets I have no idea. I think that rain will play a part into how much maintenance we will need to provide. Unlike Astro-turf, this surface will require some sort of attention (other than patches) after installation. At least that is what I am guessing.

Well, the material feels very brittle to the touch before the rubber pellets are added so I imagine that it just ripped or bulged in a few spots. I went down onto the field and in my best kitchen-Spanish possible, tried to talk with them about it, lol. The parts that they were repairing were rectangular squares. You could see that a rectangular square had been cut out (the grey gravel was showing) and the workers were pouring a green paint into the area before adding a new rectangular section to replace it. Since this field looks just like grass, these patches don't really show up. I asked him how many they had done that day and I think that he said that they had 3 left and had done 9. I tried to figure out where the other 9 had been and couldn't tell what was part of the original roll-out and what was part of the patchwork. It was really kind of interesting... I expected the grass "blades" to be thick rubber - something that would "give" a little. But it is more like the thickness of streamers on a really good quality pom-pom (can't think of any other way to describe it). When you sit on it (pre-rubber pellets) - it feels very hard. I guess that is because there is basically no pad under the field like old Astro play fields used to have... instead the padding is done with lots of small rubber pellets that are raked into the surface after it is all in place. I can't wait to see how this feels after the pellets have been added. It sure looks great.

I was up in Mean Green country for the BBQ this weekend... Courtney and I went to Fouts and saw the new field and it looks great. The workers were patching it up in certain places where there were bubbles or rips. We went up to our seats and there is a noticable difference in the view. There is still a slight crown in the field but no NEARLY as bad as before. Taking away that crown helps with the sightlines and I think everyone will be pleased with the new-look Fouts. Up till this point I have thought that going to a lighter green was a bad idea - but when you see how dark (and realistic) that the new field looks; I think you will agree with me that a lighter green on the uni's was needed so that they did not blend in too much on TV. Anyways, Fouts is a great venue - even with the track around it.. the new field just makes her look that much better (especially when you add it to all of the other improvements that have been done).. Oh yeah, I forgot to add - the deck is growing this year and has been completely re-done. It has a cement floor now held up by wooden beams. It is being transformed into kind of a "V" shape for the fans. It jets out at the entrance and then goes back in and then has the pillars in place to jet out again (it is not done yet)... Should look pretty good and now it completely connects to the stands surrounding it making that end a semi-bowl.

It is a tough question to ask North Texas fans... while we have won plenty of Sun Belt games, we have not had a lot of luck in OOC. So I think that our fans put a higher price tag/value on winning OOC games - especially those against BCS teams. But if you are a team like MTSU, then you probably want to beat NT more then Bama... one win gets you closer to your first bowl game and the other doesn't.