Year 3 will be critical for McCarney and UNT

GreenMachine · February 3, 2013

I'm not sure I agree with your last sentence here. I think a few are, but the people at the top and in the BOR certainly aren't, nor are the folks in Denton that you want to start coming around to attend games.

In reality, as wardly posted a while back, we have been a loser for the 50 years, except for a few years in the late 60s, mid 70s, and early 00's in football. In basketball, we have had decent teams in the 70s and 00s, but nothing that has made an impact regionally, much less nationally. People aren't sick and tired of losing around here--they are apathetic to it. Alumni, students, faculty, Denton residents, and DFW media absolutely don't care about UNT sports. If even a few percentage more did care, we would've had to build a bigger stadium. We can't sell out Apogee for its opening game against a highly ranked, in-state opponent in UH. We couldn't sell out the Super Pit when a ranked UT team played here back in 1997. Its not that they are sick of this, its that they literally don't care. And, in many instances, more than we want to still believe, most of the group I listed above actually loathe athletics.

I truly believe If you want to see people care around here, tell them that the Green Brigade and the One O'Clock Lab Band will be doing a concert at Apogee before, during, and after a football game, and that the only way you can see them is to pay and stay the whole time. Tell them that we are having an arts festival inside Apogee's concourse all day that requires you to buy a ticket to the football game to attend the show. This isn't College Station or Lubbock, where the football games are the place to be on a Saturday. I don't know if there are any other college towns with FBS programs that love the arts and music so much more than they do athletics--heck, maybe that is refreshing in that Denton breaks the mold on this and strives to keep a wonderful fine arts program available for its citizenry instead of being all about its football team. But it seems to me that you either have to fish or cut bait in today's FBS world. You either fund the program properly (advertising, salaries, facility upgrades, recruiting budgets, etc.) or you don't. To me, we are about halfway to where we should be, in terms of funding and promoting this program, which is light years ahead of where we were just twenty years ago, when we really gave athletics about a 10% commitment. But, its still not enough to make more people care to get truly interested and invested in this place. Until you do that, there will be never be enough people that are sick and tired enough about this program to bring about change. It will just lead to an even worse outcome--more apathy.

I agree with everything except I don't believe Denton promotes our fine arts or music depts. I have attended 2 performances in the last 3 years at the Murchinson and there were 50 people tops at both performances.

greenminer · February 3, 2013

I agree with everything except I don't believe Denton promotes our fine arts or music depts. I have attended 2 performances in the last 3 years at the Murchinson and there were 50 people tops at both performances.

Lab Band Madness.

GrandGreen · February 3, 2013

Well it is fairly obvious that NT major sports are not gong to be attractive to front runner fans. They have all attached themselves to another college or a pro team. The problem is that there are many more fans out there from NT's natural fan base that fit that description than those who support the Mean Green. Add to that the leadership of NT until recently have shown little interest in promoting athletics at NT.

The other negative for NT is that it has never really been a part of the Texas football scene. Although, the current athletes know little of the SWC, it shaped the idea of many decades of fans that if you were not in that league, you just didn't matter. Since the break up of the SWC, NT has been stranded in some conference with no other Texas teams.

The other factor is that NT is not alone, most teams not in a power conference struggle. UTSA and TSSM are getting a boost of newness, how long will that last? Rice and SMU don't draw regardless of their success on the field. Houston is the most analogous to NT, even though they have had a conference advantage over NT for 50 years, they still are like most lower tier teams, draw very poorly with average teams. I think most everyone knows now that published attendance numbers mean little these days, so it is very difficult to make comparisons.

NT has advanced greatly in facilities and overall resources. The next step IMO is to demand a level of success from both the athletic administration and coaches.