Happy Birthday Coach Mac

Coach Andy Mac · July 28, 2020

untjim1995 · July 28, 2020

Dan McCarney's time in Denton was a roller coaster, to be honest. Really good man and great experience, he appeared to be a solid hire. He came here with all of this exuberance for the job, with an air of excitement we hadn't heard in Denton about its potential than we had heard in decades. He would sell the program to anybody and was great with the media. And he took Dodge's players, who were hamstrung by all kinds of issues, and led us to the great 2013 season, culminating in a bowl shellacking of UNLV in the HoD Bowl in the Cotton Bowl in front of a huge UNT crowd.

And then the wheels fell off. His recruiting literally couldn't move the needle at all here in Texas. Our QB play was atrocious as he got more conservative with the gameplan. And he went from uber-excited to the old beaten down UNT coach, complaining about the fact that recruiting here was tougher than he ever thought it would be. And he had a stroke that he was able to bounce back from fairly quickly, but he lost it as a game coach. And then Portland State happened. And the UNT 17 stepped up and bought out his contract on the spot, something RV and the administration would never do without someone else coming forward to do it for them.

Old Denton ended up beating Dan McCarney into the ground, which became easier to do as he got older and less healthy. I'm very happy that he is retired and is able to enjoy his life today. He deserves that and I'm thankful for the 2013 season that he led...

Edited July 28, 2020 by untjim1995

NorthTexan95 · July 28, 2020

Remember that during his time here he lost an eye, lost his brother, and got older. I think it all took a toll on him and the assistant coaches were unable to pickup the slack.

MGNation92 · July 28, 2020

IOWA SURE IS GREAT, IF ONLY MAC COULD'VE IOWA'D A BIT MORE IOWA IN HIS NORTH TEXAS IOWA, WE WOULD'VE FLORIDA IOWA MORE OFTEN.

I got to UNT in spring of 2013 so my first football season was the HOD season and I was immediately a fan, even went to the Texas game the next year thinking we had a shot. It was all downhill from there. He seemed like a decent guy, minus the alcoholism and spousal abuse, but I saw through his facade pretty quick. Hope he's doing okay.

greenminer · July 28, 2020

1 hour ago, NorthTexan95 said:

Remember that during his time here he lost an eye, lost his brother, and got older. I think it all took a toll on him and the assistant coaches were unable to pickup the slack.

It's common knowledge that he wouldn't lift a finger to recruit.

If he had bothered with recruiting, we might be talking about a great coach who overcame incredible personal adversity. But he didn't, and we are not.

NorthTexan95 · July 28, 2020

2 hours ago, greenminer said:

It's common knowledge that he wouldn't lift a finger to recruit.

If he had bothered with recruiting, we might be talking about a great coach who overcame incredible personal adversity. But he didn't, and we are not.

I don't think the "common knowledge" is as common as you think. I remember his first year he went with an assistant coach to Cyril Lemon's home to flip him. I don't know what he did recruiting at Iowa St and I only have that one example from his time at UNT. However, lots of college head coaches don't do much recruiting and leave it to the assistants to do the heavy lifting.

greenminer · July 28, 2020

1 hour ago, NorthTexan95 said:

I don't think the "common knowledge" is as common as you think. I remember his first year he went with an assistant coach to Cyril Lemon's home to flip him. I don't know what he did recruiting at Iowa St and I only have that one example from his time at UNT. However, lots of college head coaches don't do much recruiting and leave it to the assistants to do the heavy lifting.

What I heard is that he literally told our assistants to relax on recruiting. He was not coordinating the efforts among them.

RBP79 · July 29, 2020

Criticizing a coach that won his one bowl game is funny. Ain't saying he didn't need to be fired but he at least won his ONE bowl game opportunity!

untjim1995 · July 29, 2020

What killed his recruiting was running an offense that was archaic. We ran the ball and threw bubble screens while every other college was running some wide open throwing offense that fit perfectly with Texas HS football’s 7-on-7 offense...

Mean Green Matt · July 29, 2020

9 hours ago, untjim1995 said:

Really good man and great experience, he appeared to be a solid hire.

With all due respect to Dan McCarney, I cannot believe that people are still making this argument. He had 12 years of being a college head coach under his belt at the time he was hired and had a 56-85 record to show for it. I understand it was Iowa State, but 30 games under .500? After 12 years? It was basically the most "North Texas" hire imaginable.

You are what your record says you are. He won 39.72% of his games at Iowa State. He won 40.74% of his games at North Texas.

With that being said, I still wish the guy a happy birthday.

All About UNT · July 29, 2020

Just imagine, and I love DT for the record, what MF could have done on this team

97and03 · July 29, 2020

6 hours ago, All About UNT said:

Just imagine, and I love DT for the record, what MF could have done on this team

Fun to think about, but Mac would have never heard of him or recruited him and Mason would have taken that OkSt walk-on offer.

Big Z · July 29, 2020

20 hours ago, MGNation92 said:

IOWA SURE IS GREAT, IF ONLY MAC COULD'VE IOWA'D A BIT MORE IOWA IN HIS NORTH TEXAS IOWA, WE WOULD'VE FLORIDA IOWA MORE OFTEN.

I got to UNT in spring of 2013 so my first football season was the HOD season and I was immediately a fan, even went to the Texas game the next year thinking we had a shot. It was all downhill from there. He seemed like a decent guy, minus the alcoholism and spousal abuse, but I saw through his facade pretty quick. Hope he's doing okay.

Ya I do remember hearing about him showing up to practices drunk, but didn’t know about the spousal abuse, what was that about?

Oh ya, I did know that Mccarney and the strength and conditioning coach got into a verbal argument in his office. It was to sad to see the Terminator leave the program.

Big Z · July 29, 2020

Lol have him speak at your job or your kid’s birthday party!

https://www.athletespeakers.com/speaker/dan-mccarney

97and03 · July 29, 2020

14 minutes ago, Big Z said:

Ya I do remember hearing about him showing up to practices drunk, but didn’t know about the spousal abuse, what was that about?

Oh ya, I did know that Mccarney and the strength and conditioning coach got into a verbal argument in his office. It was to sad to see the Terminator leave the program.

Abuse was prior to this job.

meangreen11 · July 29, 2020

Sad truth is - other than Daryl Dickey - that name one HC at UNT FB who has gone to greener pastures? Place has been a damn graveyard for coaches sadly.

greenjoe · July 29, 2020

Other than Fry, I don't think any NT head coach has gone on to anoth3er head coaching job.

Happy birthday coach. I hope you're well.

GO MEAN GREEN

MeanGreenTexan · July 29, 2020

Rod Rust wound up having a pretty nice career in the NFL after his time here. But yeah, other than him, Fry, and I guess you could say Dickey has landed on his feet (I mean, although he's at a P5, he's still an assistant)... there haven't been any others that I know of "moving up" after their time at NT.

letsgiveacheer · July 29, 2020

5 hours ago, meangreen11 said:

Sad truth is - other than Daryl Dickey - that name one HC at UNT FB who has gone to greener pastures? Place has been a damn graveyard for coaches sadly.

Of course there is Fry. Tyler went to Texas Tech. Rust went on to be the HC at New England. Matt Simon did a fine job with the Baltimore Ravens until he was dismissed for passing locker room gossip. But yes, a HC job at North Texas is basically a career killer.

Edited July 29, 2020 by letsgiveacheer

greenjoe · July 29, 2020

Not Tyler, but Jerry Moore to Tech. Good catch ‘cheer and MG Texan.

GO MEAN GREEN

Cr1028 · August 1, 2020

On 7/28/2020 at 10:53 PM, All About UNT said:

Just imagine, and I love DT for the record, what MF could have done on this team

On 7/29/2020 at 5:12 AM, 97and03 said:

Fun to think about, but Mac would have never heard of him or recruited him and Mason would have taken that OkSt walk-on offer.

Hell Mac didn’t even recruit DT. He was BY FAR the best quarterback of the Dan McCarney era and Mac didn’t have shit to do with it other than bringing in Cyril Lemon. Mac has Dodge to thank for finding and grooming Derek Thompson. Mac’s quarterbacks couldn’t throw their way out of a wet paper bag.

97and03 · August 1, 2020

52 minutes ago, Cr1028 said:

Hell Mac didn’t even recruit DT. He was BY FAR the best quarterback of the Dan McCarney era and Mac didn’t have shit to do with it other than bringing in Cyril Lemon. Mac has Dodge to thank for finding and grooming Derek Thompson. Mac’s quarterbacks couldn’t throw their way out of a wet paper bag.

ok GIF

bstnsportsfan3 · August 2, 2020

I appreciated the bowl win but the blatant nepotism he showed allowing Andrew McNulty to run this offense was when I knew it wasn’t going to work out for coach Mac

GrandGreen · August 2, 2020

On 7/29/2020 at 10:45 AM, meangreen11 said:

Sad truth is - other than Daryl Dickey - that name one HC at UNT FB who has gone to greener pastures? Place has been a damn graveyard for coaches sadly.

Name one hc other than Fry, Moore and Littrell that have a winning record at NT.

Losing coaches seldom move up. DD was a horrible HC and so was Dodge. Moore was also a questionable coach, who took a loaded team left by Fry and quickly ruined them.

Moore later found a lot of success at a lower football division.

Edited August 2, 2020 by GrandGreen

greenminer · August 2, 2020

48 minutes ago, GrandGreen said:

Losing coaches seldom move up.

Seldom is right, but we had two high profile ones happen recently. Chad Morris and T. Benford*.

Talk about falling upwards.

*perhaps not as high profile*

Edited August 2, 2020 by greenminer