How You Know Your Coach Is Coaching his rear Off?

[FirefightnRick]

When he goes into Knoxville having to play his third string QB and running back, who would be getting his very first start that day,.. in the 8th game of the season,..and leaves with a win.

Yeah, this is a week late but I hadn't realized all of what Coach Fry faced going into that game in 1975 and how he addressed the challenges he faced that day.   I wanted to share some of it while it's still fresh in my memory and so it can be referenced back to by any of our new alumns. So many of these kids today come away knowing very little of our history.   If anyone can add to it please do as well.

I remembered some of the stories from before, and of course had the pleasure to talk to Sears Woods about it once back in '07 in Norman.  And I've been talking to some of our more experienced alumns about it as well. SilverEagle even has the newspaper from the day after.

Despite every other disadvantage he faced that day Coach Fry had to play third string QB Glenn Ray, who was the backup to Kenny Washington and Ken Smith.

And though Woods would go on to lead the team in rushing that year, his only season to play at North Texas,.....(he transferred in from a small college in Oklahoma because they disbanded their football program)...he was the third string RB and was getting his very first start that day, ending up with 121 yards rushing and two TD's.  When I met him I remember being shocked at how short he was, having imagined all this time that the great Sears Woods must have been a giant in stature as well as in lore.   As it turns out, I'm guessing he might have been 5'5"-5'6"?   I remember shaking his hand and at the same time trying to hold back what I was thinking.."Holy shit...your the great Sears Woods?"...making his accomplishments in that game even more amazing to me.

So coach Fry knew he was at a great disadvantage in every way going into that game.  But as everyone realizes now, the man was an innovator and a sneaky dude as well.  He made adjustments to give his team a fighting chance.  His offense did two things that day that wasn't typical for the time.  He used an off-balanced line and utilized the no-huddle.  This seemed to keep the Vols guessing and out of sorts all day.

At the end, after holding their offense in check all day Tennessee tied it up with a TD with seconds to go at 14-14.  Mr. Woods told me as soon as Tennessee kicked the extra point coach Fry yelled for him.  He told me... "I ran up to him on the sidelines and he grabbed my facemask and said.....'Sears, you've got to return the kick off...run it back and win this game,....we are going to win this game'..so I did!".  He then said.."As soon as I got past the front all there was left was the kicker, I knew I had it at that point".  As he was telling me this I could see it in his eyes, that even though he'd probably told the story a hundred times before, he was there in the moment,..right there,..and was still so damn proud because he knew what that game meant to Coach Fry and our program back then.  

Anyhow, Coach Fry coached his ass off that day for sure. God how I wished I could have been there to see it.  I know dear old Rick Spears..aka Green Grenade was there up in the pressbox and he never stopped talking about it up until the last time I saw him.   When I saw the color video of the run back prior to our game last Saturday it was the first time I had ever seen that footage before.  Seeing the replay got me to thinking about that incredible day.  Sorry this is so long but it's a great great story that I think will always be worth retelling.

 

Rick

 

Edited November 19, 2015 by FirefightnRick

[ADLER]

Those stories about what happened, it's true, all of it.

[untjim1995]

Could you imagine what a victory like this today would do for our entire program? It would bring in so many disinterested students and alumni, it wouldn't even be funny. Hell, losing at Georgia by 24 points produced more interest from my non-UNT alums than any other game we have played since we beat Cincy in the NO Bowl in 2002.

I really thought that game at Texas last year to open the season was our chance to do just that. Instead, we rolled out QBs that acted more scared than a blond in a horror flick and we got crushed by a very mediocre Texas team. In normal years, we would have lost that game to them 70-0 with what we rolled out there on offense.

as my dear friend, Richard Durrett used to say, its gonna take UNT beating a Power Team AND winning their conference to get the DFW media's fullest attention. Until that happens, you'll see it being lukewarm, at best, or almost void, as it is when we suck like we do right now.

[DeepGreen]

Can someone post the video of the Woods winning kickoff return?

[Christopher Walker]

Those stories about what happened, it's true, all of it.

[Eagle-96]

He lobbied his ass off when he left the MVC to independent and got us into the SW...wait nevermind.

Hayden left disillusioned about our station in life much like many coaches have here. Once he knew we were never getting in the SWC if SMU had anything to say about it(which they did) he was gone gone gone.

[UNT 90 Grad]

Thanks for helping me not feel alone in recognizing what he did there.   Less than a month out now.   

[FirefightnRick]

He lobbied his ass off when he left the MVC to independent and got us into the SW...wait nevermind.

At least he tried to get us there,..which is more than I can say about the current guy in charge.

 

Rick

[untjim1995]

And in the meantime sentencing us to D1-AA hell?

The whole "back in my day" and nostalgia for the Fry era is baffling. Looking back on it with a curious oriented mind to learn more about my university...IMO, our struggles start with him.

Your dead-ass wrong about Fry leading us to I-aa.. 

Hayden Fry left here after the 1978 season to go to Iowa. We hired Jerry Moore. He coached here for two seasons, then got hired away by Texas Tech. We then hired Bob Tyler, who got us into deep NCAA trouble and was fired after one season. That led to hiring Corky Nelson, just as we were about to get dropped down to 1-aa in 1983. We dropped down because the NCAA has stadium size minimums, if not other regulations, that forced schools like ours to drop down if we didn't come up with viable options. Some schools, like UTA, just dropped football. Others, like La Tech and Arkansas State, figured out how to quickly climb out of the 1-aa hole. But not us. This I-aa fiasco was what our chancellor, Al Hurley, decided was the middle ground to go down to.  We stayed down there for a dozen years, effectively killing the program. You'll never understand what it was like around here in the heyday of the SWC. They all cheated like crazy, but they were unbelievably good. In the 70s and 80s, at different times, Texas, Arkansas, Texas A&M, SMU, UH, Baylor, TCU, and Texas Tech all had teams that got ranked for at least one season. Many of them were at the top for most of that time. And OU had their huge runs, as well, even though they were in the Big Eight, because of the Texas kids they would get to come across the Red River to Norman. Literally, we became a joke and an afterthought for fans and media in this area--where we pretty much remain to this day. We got poisoned and placed into a coma, not waking up again until 1995. And since that time, we have been able to walk, but more times than not, we are just back in bed again, like we are today, sickly and needing a lot of medicine just to get up and walk again. The reality of never running ever again, like we did only under Fry in the late 70s as being a ranked team, is very much a probability.

The problem wasn't Hayden Fry's dream of admittance into the SWC, which was NCAA royalty. It was the fact that there was no plan B--like joining the Big Eight or even something smaller, like the old, original WAC that had UTEP, UNM, BYU, Utah, Wyoming, Colorado State, SDSU, and Air Force in its conference. Instead, in pure North Texas (State) fashion, we gave up. The leadership here had tried to kill the program in the early 70s, which miraculously failed somehow, and we hired Fry after SMU fired him. The success we had was huge and once the he left for Iowa, fully beaten by having absolutely no support at all with RANKED TEAMS, the leaders of the university got back to doing what they did best with athletics--they did what they could do cripple it.  Because they didn't care about it at all.

Some things never change...

[meangreenbob]

 

 

Excellent post Rick. I have always used the Fry years as the benchmark for UNT football. IMO we have never reached that level again.

Edited November 20, 2015 by meangreenbob

[Matt from A700]

Would love to see footage of the last few minutes of that game.

[oldguystudent]

Can somebody make me a gif of Hayden Fry walking on water?  In 1975?  Forty years ago?

I truly hold nothing against the man.  At all.  He accomplished great things at UNT (although I think he may have erred in leaving the MVC, but that's ancient history)

But it's 2015.  We've got present day issues to deal with.  

[SilverEagle]

Can somebody make me a gif of Hayden Fry walking on water?  In 1975?  Forty years ago?

I truly hold nothing against the man.  At all.  He accomplished great things at UNT (although I think he may have erred in leaving the MVC, but that's ancient history)

But it's 2015.  We've got present day issues to deal with.  

Yeah, like our program is at it's lowest point since right before Hayden Fry took over. It wouldn't hurt if our next coach had a lot of the same qualities as Hayden. Think of this multi-cyberstroll  down memory lane as semi-instructional for whoever is really going to make the final decision about our next HC. That's assuming of course that whoever that is reads these threads.......and take even 1% of them seriously.

[FirefightnRick]

And in the meantime sentencing us to D1-AA hell?

The whole "back in my day" and nostalgia for the Fry era is baffling. Looking back on it with a curious oriented mind to learn more about my university...IMO, our struggles start with him.

Sounds to me like Fry came here idealistic before getting beaten down and fed up, before leaving in a blaze of glory. Sounds a lot like two post-2000 UNT head coaches.

The point of this thread wasn't to make an ass of oneself by trashing a great coach, team and game, but to tack onto the the memory of the Tennessee game some things of interest some may not know.  It's why the network showed highlights at the beginning of our game. It wasn't a question on wether you care or not cause I don't care if you do.  You probably weren't even a tickle in your daddy's pants yet.  It was and is considered our greatest win, by an innovative, legendary coach we were lucky to have for a short time.

All college programs have legendary coaches or great games they remember and recall.  They are proof of one time greatness that we can pull from and have hope for the future.

 

Rick 

Edited November 23, 2015 by FirefightnRick