GMG TIME MACHINE: AD Craig Helwig in a 1997 interview

[Jonnyeagle]

The Wearin' of the (Mean) Green

SMU and TCU each have a lengthy and well-documented tradition of excellence in football. Until the troubles of the 1980s, the Southwest Conference in which they played was the stuff of legend.

That isn't necessarily true for North Texas, which begins its second season in the Big West Conference. The Mean Green has traditions of its own, but it's been in seven different conferences or alignments and never has enjoyed the prominence of the Metroplex's other squads.

However, with the population boom north of Dallas-Fort Worth, UNT has the opportunity to develop a regional audience, Helwig said.

"The growth of the Metroplex is out here," he points out. "With the (Texas Motor) Speedway, and Intel going into Alliance, we're at the tip of the triangle. It's a tremendous advantage to have access to this population base. There are 41/2 to 5 million people here, which is more than Kansas State, Nebraska or Oklahoma (universities). And that's right in this immediate area."

With that population base, the North Texas Eagles have mounted a strong campaign to win the hearts of Denton fans.

"We don't have to be the ticket for the Metroplex, but if we could be the ticket for Denton County, we'd be in good shape," Helwig said. "There have been marketing studies done, and we've utilized direct mail. We do a lot of marketing within this county. We're working with the Denton Chamber of Commerce."

Helwig has a smaller budget to work with -- $5.7 million in 1995-96 -- but doesn't have to support the expense of private-school scholarships, as Copeland and Windegger do.

At the moment, though, UNT is in the position of being cannon fodder. The Mean Green will play Big 12 heavyweights Texas A&M and Texas Tech this season, along with Oregon State of the Pac-10, after losing to Vanderbilt from the SEC in their opener, 29-12. Those games offer six-figure guarantees to the Eagles, as well as giving them tough tests before the conference season opens Oct. 4 when they take on Idaho.

read more:  https://www.bizjournals.com/dallas/stories/1997/09/08/story3.html

[UNTLifer]

[untjim1995]

39 minutes ago, Jonnyeagle said:

The Wearin' of the (Mean) Green

SMU and TCU each have a lengthy and well-documented tradition of excellence in football. Until the troubles of the 1980s, the Southwest Conference in which they played was the stuff of legend.

That isn't necessarily true for North Texas, which begins its second season in the Big West Conference. The Mean Green has traditions of its own, but it's been in seven different conferences or alignments and never has enjoyed the prominence of the Metroplex's other squads.

However, with the population boom north of Dallas-Fort Worth, UNT has the opportunity to develop a regional audience, Helwig said.

"The growth of the Metroplex is out here," he points out. "With the (Texas Motor) Speedway, and Intel going into Alliance, we're at the tip of the triangle. It's a tremendous advantage to have access to this population base. There are 41/2 to 5 million people here, which is more than Kansas State, Nebraska or Oklahoma (universities). And that's right in this immediate area."

With that population base, the North Texas Eagles have mounted a strong campaign to win the hearts of Denton fans.

"We don't have to be the ticket for the Metroplex, but if we could be the ticket for Denton County, we'd be in good shape," Helwig said. "There have been marketing studies done, and we've utilized direct mail. We do a lot of marketing within this county. We're working with the Denton Chamber of Commerce."

Helwig has a smaller budget to work with -- $5.7 million in 1995-96 -- but doesn't have to support the expense of private-school scholarships, as Copeland and Windegger do.

At the moment, though, UNT is in the position of being cannon fodder. The Mean Green will play Big 12 heavyweights Texas A&M and Texas Tech this season, along with Oregon State of the Pac-10, after losing to Vanderbilt from the SEC in their opener, 29-12. Those games offer six-figure guarantees to the Eagles, as well as giving them tough tests before the conference season opens Oct. 4 when they take on Idaho.

read more:  https://www.bizjournals.com/dallas/stories/1997/09/08/story3.html

Great article--we basically decided to move up to 1-A because we could get more road games to pay for the entire athletic department. Otherwise, we would have stayed 1-AA, just because the administration and BOR didn't care. I graduated in December of 1995, so I saw us go from Dennis Parker getting hired as I get to Denton, under Steve Sloan, to seeing us go up to 1-A with Craig Helwig as AD and Matt Simon as the HFC. It was quite a journey to see us move upward, going from a low point of playing in front of about 100 people on a nice early November evening at Fouts against Nicholls State in a Southland Conference game, to the point of beating Oregon State at Fouts as a member of 1-A.  When I left, I figured we would continue to see big jumps in the program, but I was naïve to how little we cared about supporting the program. And I was naïve to just how few people that were fellow UNT alums, students, and local citizens of Denton actually cared about this place. But something happened in 2001 that really surprised me--when we made the NO Bowl for the first time, I saw more people at the bowl game than I usually saw for actual games at Fouts. That made me realize that people around here that couldn't find Fouts with a map, actually wanted to see us play when we gave them a reason to cheer. And it was then that I felt again that we could build up into something bigger. And I guess we have--its just been at a much slower pace than I figured it would've been 25 years ago.

[drex]

The move to 1-A was predicated on the fact that the NCAA told us we had to either move up or down.  There was movement within the NCAA to eliminate the 1-AA level of football and even the possibility of 1-AA basketball.  So, even Hurley, did not want us to drop down to Div.II in football.  That is the basics for our move to 1-A as I understood it at the time.

[untjim1995]

8 minutes ago, drex said:

The move to 1-A was predicated on the fact that the NCAA told us we had to either move up or down.  There was movement within the NCAA to eliminate the 1-AA level of football and even the possibility of 1-AA basketball.  So, even Hurley, did not want us to drop down to Div.II in football.  That is the basics for our move to 1-A as I understood it at the time.

I totally understand that and I know that we very well did not have a choice to go down in 1983. What floors me is that we stayed down there for as long as we did. Teams like La Tech, Tulsa, Arkansas State, USL (now ULL) and NE Louisiana (now ULM) all avoided or moved back up to i-A before we did, all with a MUCH smaller enrollment and history. Had we not done that, at worst, I suspect, that we would have been in the WAC back in the 80's, with the idea of actually having been in CUSA at its inception. Instead, we thought it was just awesome to hang out with Nicholls State, McNeese State, Northwestern State, NE Louisiana, SFA, SHSU, and Southwest Texas State, as well as UTA and UTSA in the other sports. As I asked @PlummMeanGreen the other day, the decision to nuke the fanbase in the early 80's is one that I will never truly understand. It seemed short-sighted and absolutely silly to run a program at the 4th largest school in football-loving Texas as if it were some ridiculous endeavor.  Don't get me wrong when I say this, but I actually understand why UTA just quit football instead of doing the i-aa thing, just because it literally seemed like the message being sent to the community was that football was basically too costly. I'm glad we didn't quit--it gave hundreds of folks scholarships to further their lives--but it just felt like we embarrassed ourselves by joining forces with spares in the SLC than by actually trying to be better. And we SHOULD HAVE TRIED TO BE BETTER...again I understand the argument that we had to drop down, even for a year or two, but not for 12 freaking years. We could have gotten out from under the albatross of Fouts, in a better conference affiliation, and furthered our reach to alumni who cared about football. This place would look so much different if we had chosen the correct path.