45 years of football

wardwhite · March 3, 2006

i entered north texas as a freshman in 1961.during the past 44 soon to be 45 years of eagle football the following changes have occured :

1] 2 name changes. in fact, if memory serves, we could have been''texas state" had if not been for frank erwin, chair of u.t.'s board of regents. i think their basketball arena is named after him.

2]5 presidents, at least 4 logos, 3 nicknames, and every shade of green imaginable.

3] 9 head football coaches, 21 winning seasons, and 4 bowl games.

4] we had 7 winning seasons in the 60's, 4 in the 70's ,5 in the 80's, 2 in the 90's, and 3 of 5 season's pluse 4 bowl games this decade.

5] regardless of whether we are the eagles, mean green eagles, or just mean green one thing has never changed; our alumni are the" lean green" when it comes to giving. unless we can change this attitude we are going to have a hard time upgrading our facilities hence our athletic program. it boils down to"what do you want, what do you need, and what are you willing to pay for?"

NT91 · March 3, 2006

i entered north texas as a freshman in 1961.during the past 44 soon to be 45 years of eagle football the following changes have occured :
1] 2 name changes. in fact, if memory serves, we could have been''texas state" had if not been for frank erwin, chair of u.t.'s board of regents. i think their basketball arena is named after him.
2]5 presidents, at least 4 logos, 3 nicknames, and every shade of green imaginable.
3] 9 head football coaches, 21 winning seasons, and 4 bowl games.
4] we had 7 winning seasons in the 60's, 4 in the 70's ,5 in the 80's, 2 in the 90's, and 3 of 5 season's pluse 4 bowl games this decade.
5] regardless of whether we are the eagles, mean green eagles, or just mean green one thing has never changed; our alumni are the" lean green" when it comes to giving. unless we can change this attitude we are going to have a hard time upgrading our facilities hence our athletic program. it boils down to"what do you want, what do you need, and what are you willing to pay for?"
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So true!!

MeanGreen61 · March 3, 2006

i entered north texas as a freshman in 1961.during the past 44 soon to be 45 years of eagle football the following changes have occured :
1] 2 name changes. in fact, if memory serves, we could have been''texas state" had if not been for frank erwin, chair of u.t.'s board of regents. i think their basketball arena is named after him.
2]5 presidents, at least 4 logos, 3 nicknames, and every shade of green imaginable.
3] 9 head football coaches, 21 winning seasons, and 4 bowl games.
4] we had 7 winning seasons in the 60's, 4 in the 70's ,5 in the 80's, 2 in the 90's, and 3 of 5 season's pluse 4 bowl games this decade.
5] regardless of whether we are the eagles, mean green eagles, or just mean green one thing has never changed; our alumni are the" lean green" when it comes to giving. unless we can change this attitude we are going to have a hard time upgrading our facilities hence our athletic program. it boils down to"what do you want, what do you need, and what are you willing to pay for?"
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Wonder how many on this board actually donate $ to athletics. Not just buy tickets, but also contribute ?

ADLER · March 3, 2006

user posted image

"Yeah!, Yeah!, Customers suck!"

SilverEagle · March 3, 2006

i entered north texas as a freshman in 1961.during the past 44 soon to be 45 years of eagle football the following changes have occured :
1] 2 name changes. in fact, if memory serves, we could have been''texas state" had if not been for frank erwin, chair of u.t.'s board of regents. i think their basketball arena is named after him.
2]5 presidents, at least 4 logos, 3 nicknames, and every shade of green imaginable.
3] 9 head football coaches, 21 winning seasons, and 4 bowl games.
4] we had 7 winning seasons in the 60's, 4 in the 70's ,5 in the 80's, 2 in the 90's, and 3 of 5 season's pluse 4 bowl games this decade.
5] regardless of whether we are the eagles, mean green eagles, or just mean green one thing has never changed; our alumni are the" lean green" when it comes to giving. unless we can change this attitude we are going to have a hard time upgrading our facilities hence our athletic program. it boils down to"what do you want, what do you need, and what are you willing to pay for?"
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I can't argue with you about that. But since you are talking about history, you might have mentioned some of the reasons why "giving" to the athletic program is not at the level of some other schools.

GreyEagleOne (or some others) can confim some of this (or adjust the information), but until Hayden Fry arrived there was no mean green club, nor anything like it. It has been stated that Dr. Matthews even discouraged such an organization, even when some greenbackers talked about starting one back in the Joe Greene days. Fry was shocked to find this out when he arrived, and began organizing the mean green club (or whatever it was called back then).

To add to this, GreyEagleOne has also mentioned that it was his understanding that Odus Mitchell also didn't want such an organization. Mainly because he didn't want alumni telling him how he should run his football team.

When Hayden Fry left, the "Fry haters" (aka the "Old nesters") took back control of the athletic dept, and anything that smacked of Fry was frowned upon. This was the group who's only official response to the Hayden Fry era was "Fry left the University 1Mil in debt". In fact, that is the final and basically only statement about the Fry era in the updated (for the University's Centenniel celebration) "Story of North Texas" by Dr. James Rogers.

As an indication of how far we have to go, the University has only recently started seriously checking student ID's when they come into the games. I believe that other Universities, whom we would like to be like some day, charge their students to get into games.

When I was attending North Texas in the mid-70's most of the student body had an "entitlement" attitude. They wanted the University to give them many more goods and services than their tuition and student services fees could possibly have covered. From what I've seen of the current student body, that "entitlement" attitude hasn't changed much.....and the University obviously isn't doing much to change that attitude either.

Edited March 3, 2006 by SilverEagle

PlummMeanGreen · March 3, 2006

"Yeah!, Yeah!, Customers suck!"
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Overheard in NT Athletic Dept: "Yeah, and lets have our Spring (winter) Football Game (once again) on a weeknight so we can have even fewer of those "wascally wabbit" D-FW NT Exes/Mean Green fan types many of whom we know cannot do a weeknight Spring game AND............some of that group who have the audacity of wanting more than SBC successes (with even its football champion annual rankings being somewhere between #90 thru #117) or those NT Exes thinking they want the kind of quality with MG football that would put it inside Top 50 rankings every year." What the hell they trying to do anyway, shake up our little utopian "low set goals/low expecations" co-existence up here in Denton?"

Funny cartoon, ADLER, and I get it..............or what I perceive you to be saying with that cartoon.

PS: And Silver Eagle from your post, AD/Head Football Coach Hayden Fry called his fund-raising arm of NT athletics the "Mean Green/Eagle Club." In fact, I think SUMG may have been the first ever to join that inaugural fund-raising arm of Mean Green athletics back in the 1970's as an NT student.

Also, amazing from Dr. Roger's book about NT with all our older nestors own self-serving legacy about Fry (which was to bring all this high profile buisness Fry aimed for back in his day back down to their own mediocre levels of existance in many of their cases); yet some of those older fossils up there (some still amazingly on our payroll) who try to persevere that $1 million deficit theme when the subject of Hayden Fry is brought up. Hellsbells, it is my understanding that many NCAA D-1 athletic departments operated with such defecits (or even worse) during that era.

AND...............FWIW, Hayden Fry probably gave our school (what?) millions of dollars worth of publicity in our 1975 MG football season alone which included a win over the UNIVERSITY OF TENNESSEE VOLUNTEERS (among other high profile wins during his tenureship in Denton).

And Fry surely did hack off some of our usual old furniture fixture employee-types on campus who really wanted football to die a slow death post Rod Rust. Seems they didn't get their wish on that, too.

Sometimes almost difficult to believe that UNT is even a Texas university with some of the weirdness that comes from our campus and in Denton with such an attitude that doesn't take a new citizen (or a new NT student) to see is just a part of the landscape up there. YET...........those Dentonites who are MG fans are as good as they get, but its the majority of their fellow citizens that makes one want to continually scratch their heads as one who has observed all this since January of 1972.

Also, Fry got his job offer to the Big 10 and Iowa because of the (high profile) name schools his teams beat while being able to do so recruiting with much lesser on campus facilities than we have today. In fact, the NT football facilities back in the 1970's would almost be considered laughable (if not for the fact that it was such a sad statement for all of us back then of NT as to what Fry really had to work with back in that day).

We were really lucky to have the future College Football Hall of Fame coach at UNT for even 6 years truth be known. We now need the 2'nd Coming of a Hayden Fry type that will raise our expectations once again, raise the bar, get us inside the Top 50 of the best D1-A football schools and (once again) create reasons for NT Exes to be proud of their alma mater once again as to where many would want to invest in it again and not feel they are throwing good money after bad.

THROWING GOOD MONEY AFTER Bad? Again, check out all the NT media guides and the W/L records you'd see of coaches who have been on the NT payroll long enough to at least reach .500 and better. And if you take all the 1-AA wins or SBC wins (basically 1-AA type schools, aren'th they?) away and then see what NT coaches multi-year career W/L records would look like.

Edited March 3, 2006 by PlummMeanGreen