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By Brett Vito bvito@dentonrc.com Published: 29 April 2015 11:34 PM The names that rolled across the television screen were intriguing to Cody Spencer for the first day of the 2004 NFL draft. Spencer had just wrapped up a standout career at North Texas and was pretty sure he would get a shot to play in the NFL after helping lead the Mean Green to three straight bowl games. What started out as anticipation quickly turned into a bitter wait for the former UNT linebacker, who eventually left the television behind, grabbed his phone and headed out the door with his brother Jeremy Sanders. “We decided to go fishing. While we were out I got a call from Al Davis, who was calling to tell me they had drafted me,” Spencer said of the Oakland Raiders’ late owner. “I didn’t know what to say or what to think. You don’t know where you are going or if you will get drafted.” Receiving that call while floating around in the Gulf of Mexico near Port O’Connor was a relief for Spencer, who went on to have a productive five-year NFL career. The question now is when the wait will end for UNT’s program as the 11th draft since Spencer was selected gets under way tonight at the Auditorium Theatre of Roosevelt University in Chicago. A total of 2,545 players have been selected from everywhere from Abilene Christian to Yale in 10 NFL drafts since Spencer was taken in the sixth round with the 182nd overall pick in 2004. UNT hasn’t had a single player among them. read more: http://www.dentonrc.com/sports/sports-headlines/20150429-football-a-decade-of-silence-for-unt.ece

Corky Nelson didn’t have the best facilities or the biggest budget during his tenure as North Texas’ coach during its stint in what was Division I-AA in the 1980s. What Nelson did have was access to was the fertile recruiting grounds in the Dallas-Fort Worth area and a group of players who bought into his philosophy of hard work and not backing down from anyone during his tenure from 1982-90, not even teams like Texas. That combination helped the Mean Green win the Southland Conference title in 1983 and advance to the I-AA playoffs three times under Nelson, who was part of a six-person class that was inducted into the UNT Athletic Hall of Fame on Saturday before the Mean Green’s spring game. Jim Cooper, Scott Hall, Heather Hutyra, Ernie Kuehne and Cody Spencer rounded out the class. “I was demanding,” Nelson said. “I felt like that is what it takes to win and be successful. You also had to get the players to believe in what you were doing. The guys who played for me then did.” read more: http://www.dentonrc.com/sports/colleges/north-texas-headlines/20140413-nelson-five-others-enter-unt-athletic-hall-of-fame.ece