What could have been

Cooley · March 4

Nick Saban, head coach of North Texas

Wasn't aware of any of the candidates, but was told that Nick Saban was our #1 guy to become the next Head Coach after the firing of Corky Nelson. Saban came to Denton for his final interview but the money wasn't quite right. We instead settled on Dennis Parker. Can anyone confirm?

From a very reliable source

Mean Green 93-98 · March 4

I'm skeptical. At that time, Saban was head coach at Toledo, a MAC school, and we were a 1AA (FCS) school. That would have been a significant step down.

Maybe he was a candidate when we hired Matt Simon? At least at that time, we pretty well knew we were moving back up to 1A the next year.

TIgreen01 · March 4

35 minutes ago, greenminer said:

What if we don't lose to Florida State in Bowden's first year?

What if we were not Bill Snyder's first win at Kansas State?

What if Bozeman misses that 3 with 1.5 seconds left?

What if Andrew Smith hadn't been in a tragic car accident?

What if we never dropped to AA, and the admin votes in favor of athletics?

What if Johnny Jones won that NCAA game vs. Memphis?

What if Jamario is never injury prone?

The amount of dumb, hard luck this program has endured leads me to believe that there is some cosmic force pissing on us every chance it gets.

Don't forget the covid year. Record didn't show it but they were a complete team and rounding into form right at the right time only for the tourney to be canceled. Will always believe that was our Sweet 16 (at least) team that just didn't get a shot to show it. The next year was the year we beat Purdue.

keith · March 6

On 3/4/2025 at 2:45 PM, TIgreen01 said:

Don't forget the covid year. Record didn't show it but they were a complete team and rounding into form right at the right time only for the tourney to be canceled. Will always believe that was our Sweet 16 (at least) team that just didn't get a shot to show it. The next year was the year we beat Purdue.

That's when I knew we must have pissed off the sports gods at some point in the past and they were going to hold it over us forever.

Edited March 6 by keith

Cougar King · Sunday at 12:52 AM

In that timeline, I don't defect from UNT and am known as Eagle King where I constantly antagonize Coogfans.

UNTcrazy727 · Monday at 07:23 PM

On 3/3/2025 at 9:16 PM, Cooley said:

Nick Saban, head coach of North Texas

Wasn't aware of any of the candidates, but was told that Nick Saban was our #1 guy to become the next Head Coach after the firing of Corky Nelson. Saban came to Denton for his final interview but the money wasn't quite right. We instead settled on Dennis Parker. Can anyone confirm?

From a very reliable source

No idea about Saban, but its always been rumored this is what happened with Jim Harbaugh when we eventually hired Todd Dodge.

SilverEagle · 2025-03-11T15:31:06Z

Don't know about Saban or Harbaugh. But "back in the day" I read in an article, either by the DRC or NTD, that Corky Nelson had been knocking on our door for a while before he was finally hired. Most notably he tried to get the job when Bob Tyler got hired.........against the advice of just about everybody in the SEC. The administration was just bound and determined to hire Tyler, and only God knows why. Could things have been different if we had hired Corky Nelson instead of Bob Tyler? Corky would have been able to recruit, (in a very familiar territory), as a 1-A coach and as a result the 81 season might have been completely different.