goal is to be in HOD?

[Harry]

Most of our fans will attend the Fair every year anyway... Why not package a day at the fair and a UNT ball game?

[oldguystudent]

Not at the expense of a game at apogee.

[greenit]

With the addition of the HoD Classic there are now three games at the state fair, correct?

[Christopher Walker]

Most of our fans will attend the Fair every year anyway... Why not package a day at the fair and a UNT ball game?

Honestly, I've never been to the actual Fair. This past week was the first I've been to Fair Park as well.

[THOR]

Honestly, I've never been to the actual Fair. This past week was the first I've been to Fair Park as well.

me too...i've lived here since 95 and have never wanted to go to the fair...i'd go to the game, but would prefer just games at apogee...

[UNT90]

What would be sweet is of we were smart enough to sell Army into being the home team in the Cotton Bowl for one of our already regularly scheduled series games.

6 (maybe) home games plus the HOD September Cotton Bowl game would be sweet.

What I fear is the exact opposite happening, and Army convincing us to move one of our home games on that series to the Cotton Bowl.

After all, we have been everyone's scheduling Mitch with a b.

[KingDL1]

What would be sweet is of we were smart enough to sell Army into being the home team in the Cotton Bowl for one of our already regularly scheduled series games.

6 (maybe) home games plus the HOD September Cotton Bowl game would be sweet.

What I fear is the exact opposite happening, and Army convincing us to move one of our home games on that series to the Cotton Bowl.

After all, we have been everyone's scheduling Mitch with a b.

Yup, we have an advantage at Apogee with real tailgating, And I would prefer more home games 7 would not hurt my feelings. If we schedule an opponent at the cotton bowl with some draw it would be neutral at best and perhaps become a home game for our our opponent.

[KRAM1]

What would be sweet is of we were smart enough to sell Army into being the home team in the Cotton Bowl for one of our already regularly scheduled series games.

6 (maybe) home games plus the HOD September Cotton Bowl game would be sweet.

What I fear is the exact opposite happening, and Army convincing us to move one of our home games on that series to the Cotton Bowl.

After all, we have been everyone's scheduling Mitch with a b.

Hey...thought you would be at the men's BB game! Ha!

Hey...check your PM's...sent you one this morning.

Edited January 4, 2014 by KRAM1

[meangreener]

We don't travel well during the season,period. Bowl games are a different story, as we did o.k. going to New Orleans. I would hope that we get a chance to play in the Armed Forces bowl in Ft. Worth, and think with our strong showing at HOD bowl we should. What our immediate goal should be is to get some HOD attendees to find their way to Denton during regular season.

2,000 at Robertson last year.

[Keith7]

Lets just hope we don't end up in the Boca Raton Bowl. How is that even a bowl?

[NT03]

My goal is for us to be in the Bahama Bowl #FamilyVacation

[Ben Gooding]

The goal is to annually win the west and solidify North Texas as a CUSA power and pray that in 5-10 years we get an invitation to another conference. That is the primary goal, own the west.

[the green rokemi]

When we did those games at Texas Stadium in the 90's that was a lot of fun & brought good publicity for us.

No it was not. We had a home game taken away and then our fans got out numbered by theirs. Do not take away the power of home field, period. Check our record in Texas stadium, it's awful

[PlummMeanGreen]

Interesting thread...

This?

We must build the foundation to our house before we can build a roof that will hold. New Years Day we all saw a green-tinted perfect storm take place that ended with the culmination of the largest gathering of North Texas Mean Green fans in history. It honest to goodness had to happen sooner than later with our humongous numbers of all our various UNT constituancies and it happened....this last Wednesday, New Years Day.

Yet Apogee is still our foundation and we have to start filling it up with fans of whom record-season tickets has to become an annual occurance until there are no more season tickets available for purchase due to keeping enough seats available for the UNT student body. At this time expansion of Apogee would have to begin. (Only need 9K seats to make it a 40,000 seat stadium).

The State Fair of Texas never did it for SMU back in the day when they still used the Cotton Bowl Stadium as their home. The day they (infamously) drew 5,000 versus Rice the State Fair was in session as I recall. I know.....UNT and SMU....apples and oranges......different sized constituencies and all that, but we still have to build our base at Apogee before we can depend on another Perfect Storm of Mean Green fandom at the historic Cotton Bowl Stadium whether in regular season games there from time to time against Army or the actual HOD Bowl Game.

And lest we forget, City of Denton AND Denton County would like some Apogee Stadium based games that have traveling fans staying in all their hotels and motels, too. And like another 1 or 2 of you have already posted elsewhere..........we don't need to shoot ourselves in the foot with what support we have in Denton as it is. Some of us saw us do that during the Fry/Texas Stadium era (and experiment) too. IMO....our UNT traveling fans base is not bowl tested enough to know if we can duplicate what we did last Wednesday in the numbers we had We also have to keep in mind that........we had almost 1 full month to sell tickets for the HOD Bowl game, too.

Promotions has been talked about by several the last few days on GMG.com more than I can remember. Not sure you can take stripes off bureaucratic "we won't change what we been doing for anybody" zebras and wonder if anything changes at all even this next Fall in the areas of promotions but this for certain............

................we are still in the DFW Metroplex and we should still promote our Mean Green football product in the Fall of 2014 as if we actually won no games in 2013. The news cycle is very short in our world today and with college students...they will forget quickly the events of New Years Day and find other things to do this next Fall, too; that is, if we don't make Game Day an event worth putting on their personal schedules.

02.

GMG!

Edited January 5, 2014 by PlummMeanGreen

[Side Show Joe]

Yes, the HOD should be our goal every season, if we can get it. If we, B.B., and the HOD have their way, I think we will be there every season we are bowl eligible. Our problems will come from the other C-USA members that will want a chance to play the Big 10/12.

As for the HOD Kickoff Classic, I only want us playing in that game if we can get an opponent willing to count it as their home game (UAB would jump at that opportunity, they only averaged 10,548 this past season). I like playing at Apogee. We need to worry about selling the place out before we start thinking of moving home games to Dallas. We need to play 6 games a season at Apogee. We have a great atmosphere their and a real home field advantage. The only way I would want to play in the HOD Kickoff as the home team, is if we also had Hawaii on the schedule as an away game, allowing us to schedule an extra home game.

Edited January 5, 2014 by Side Show Joe

[Rudy]

No it was not. We had a home game taken away and then our fans got out numbered by theirs. Do not take away the power of home field, period. Check our record in Texas stadium, it's awful

Add to that, the drive in, sucked, the parking was a biatch, and the drive out sucked. The time we played aTm, I missed the 1st half.

[JesseMartin]

Here's why I see this as such a conundrum. We have a few thousand of our core fans that of course we shouldn't piss off who don't want to do the Cotton Bowl as a home game. Then there are another few thousand, probably slightly less than the other group, who don't mind either way. Then we have the remainder who are disconnected or casual fans, some of whom went to the game at the Cotton Bowl this week (and many more who didn't) that *might* get hooked if they go to a regular season game or two in Fair Park, but may not be persuaded to come to Apogee first to get hooked. So aside from convincing somebody else to make that a "home game" or vacate some of our existing OOC games that are already scheduled, there's no way to make everybody happy. True, Texas and OU make it work, but don't they also each have 7 other home games every season? I think the closest thing to a compromise is if there's a season where everyone's already mad that we only have 5 home games and we are able to get the Cotton Bowl scheduled as a 6th home-ish game. Otherwise someone will have to convince Rick and co. to try one of those other options (getting someone else to make it their home game seems more likely than vacating a game already scheduled) if we're going to try to keep the die-hards happy while still using this as a way to draw in newbies.

[Ben Gooding]

Simple. Start selling out Apogee annually or at least with some consistency and schedule games wherever and people will come. 6 games must stay at Apogee each year until that happens. This shouldn't really even be in debate. A regular season game will bring in maybe 20k to the Cotton Bowl, and 20k in the Cotton Bowl would make a mockery out of the football program. GMG

[THOR]

so fans on the fence would rather drive to a foreign stadium then come to the home stadium with much better sight lines in order to get hooked on our school/team??? not gonna agree with ya jesse...

[JesseMartin]

so fans on the fence would rather drive to a foreign stadium then come to the home stadium with much better sight lines in order to get hooked on our school/team??? not gonna agree with ya jesse...

Maybe, even with the way you phrased it. I'd like to find out how many of those living in or near Dallas who haven't been back to Denton in a while might show up to the Cotton Bowl...telling them how cool the new stadium is and how much we've advanced may not be enough. There are so many people that are so into the Dallas/Addison/Frisco scene that they haven't driven the 30-60 minutes to go back to Denton in years. Dangling something on their proverbial doorstep could help swing the interest enough to get them back to little D. Of course, some marketing/survey research might help find out for sure, and UNT does employ a few students in a call center year-round, don't they?

Hasn't our average attendance only gone up by a couple thousand in the last 10-15 years? I think we'd all like to see a 50% boost in attendance between 2013 and 2014, but we've been hoping that for a long time, and continuing to do the same thing with the same results isn't working. We just had a huge Cotton Bowl win on New Year's Day in one of the best seasons ever, so of course we all hope that will be the deal-breaker.

Maybe give it one season to see how that affected us, and if we don't see the big boost we'd like, revisit this topic towards the end of the season?

[oldguystudent]

That stadium is historic. It's also cramped, uncomfortable, crappy acoustics, impossible to move in concourses, and generally way outdated. Not too interested in seeing a regular season game there.

I'm especially not interested in having games at apogee cut by one in favor of the cotton bowl. Do you think they would discount my season tickets the face value of one game or compensate me with free tickets to the cotton bowl? I wouldn't hold my breath on that one.

[meangreener]

That stadium is historic. It's also cramped, uncomfortable, crappy acoustics, impossible to move in concourses, and generally way outdated. Not too interested in seeing a regular season game there.

I'm especially not interested in having games at apogee cut by one in favor of the cotton bowl. Do you think they would discount my season tickets the face value of one game or compensate me with free tickets to the cotton bowl? I wouldn't hold my breath on that one.

I hope we don't cut a regular season game for a game at that stadium. It has seen better days and Apogee is a homefield advantage.

On the topic however, keep winning HOD and running CUSA until a better conference comes knocking. It'll be quicker than you think, especially if our fanbase keeps growing an astronomical level. Can't tell you how surprised I was at UTEP and pleasantly pleased over the HoD game.

(Also, I would just like to say I was right about the attendance, sales through the office and allotments.) *cough cough*

Edited January 5, 2014 by meangreener

[NM Green]

I like the idea of making the Cotton Bowl a goal. Apogee is special and everyone who goes there loves it and has a great time - Mean Green or opposing fan. Let's focus on getting the people to Denton and make the Cotton Bowl our Home Away from Home for the coming years on New Years Day!!!!!

GMG

[ADLER]

Like it, or not like it, North Texas is on the list of teams that CUSA will have to provide as an opponent to one of the military academies in the Heart Of Dallas Classic during the State Fair. Probably at the top of that list with stars next to our name.

We can all plan as if its an honor and rally the fanbase to participate in this essentially home game against Air Force, Navy, or Army as a charity benefit, or we can kick, scream, and flail ourselves around on the ground protesting. Which method of acceptance would ya'll prefer? Either way North Texas will still be obligated/honored to participate in this charity event to raise funds for military veterans.

Like all of you, I hope these game(s) do not come at the expense of a home game at Apogee. Instead I would hope that we could cancel the opportunity/bodybag/payday game each season that we play in the HOD Classic.

[Harry]

Like it, or not like it, North Texas is on the list of teams that CUSA will have to provide as an opponent to one of the military academies in the Heart Of Dallas Classic during the State Fair. Probably at the top of that list with stars next to our name.

We can all plan as if its an honor and rally the fanbase to participate in this essentially home game against Air Force, Navy, or Army as a charity benefit, or we can kick, scream, and flail ourselves around on the ground protesting. Which method of acceptance would ya'll prefer? Either way North Texas will still be obligated/honored to participate in this charity event to raise funds for military veterans.

Like all of you, I hope these game(s) do not come at the expense of a home game at Apogee. Instead I would hope that we could cancel the opportunity/bodybag/payday game each season that we play in the HOD Classic.

ESPN box lists the attendance as 31K and change.. Don't buy that. But again, we have a lot of fans that will kill two birds with this game because they were planning on attending the fair anyway with their family.

Heart of Dallas Classic Boxscore Link