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He should be eligible the night of December 17th, which is the day that the fall semester officially ends. From what I understand it is also dependent upon when his grades get posted, but you have to assume that the Athletic Department will push for his grades to be determined pretty much immediately after he finishes his classes.

Just wait for him to laugh and punch him in the mouth. The pants will fall and you don't stop punching until he goes down.

The small touches were probably the most impressive to me on Saturday. There were bathroom attendants in every restroom. I expected this type of level at the club and suite level but there were attendants in the endzone bathrooms, ready to sweep up any crumb that might fall on the ground. As I walked into the stadium, the ticket scanners greeted me with "Welcome to Apogee Stadium" and they were so polite and courteous. The "seat nazis" were probably the best ambassadors of the day - and they were completely cool with letting me wander around and take pictures. I joked with the concierge up at the suite level that even small restaurants get to do a "soft open" to work out the kinks - but they were so attentive and so happy to listen to feedback. I told the suite attendant that I could offer only one suggestion to improve the experience and that would be to pipe the radio broadcast into the restrooms like the Mavs and Cowboys do... she thanked me for the idea, took out a pen and wrote it down. First class all the way around - from the big things right down to the little things. What a great day it was.

BUT HE PLAYS GOLF, WEARS A HAT BACKWARDS, RIDES HIS BOAT ON LAKE LEWISVILLE AND SMILES TOO MUCH!!!!! HE DON'T GIVE A SINGLE CRAP ABOUT THIS TEAM!!!!

I don't find it as sad as I do dumb.

Kids who want to win will go anywhere. This isn't 1977. It's 2011. The internet and cable/satellite TV make every team accessible. OU sells on its name alone and has for decades. They've been pulling kids from both coasts and all over the map for decades. Even John Blake during their terrible years picked up Roy Williams from Northern California and Ontei Jones from South Florida. Their current Heisman candidate QB is from New Mexico; though OU doesn't play either school from New Mexico. Texas school being closer to his New Mexican family didn't stop him from going to OU. Three of OU's starters - two on offense and one on defense, are from California. OU hasn't played a regular season game in California since...2005. And, before that, 1997. OU will be fine if they end up in a conference without Texas. They'll still recruit the entire country, including Texas. OSU will be fine as well. If everyone's theory about driving distances held, the stadiums at all Texas schools would be sold out. They aren't - except for Texas and Texas A&M. If a kid has a shot at UTEP or Oklahoma State, he likely going to go to Oklahoma State since they are winning now. Winning does that for your school. The truth is, kids will pick winning schools. Distance doesn't matter. Florida State's QB last year was a kid from Colleyville. Florida State never plays in Texas. It doesn't matter. Florida State is a nationally known name. There's a kid from Frisco who is a back-up QB for Florida State. And, their kicker is from Houston. Distance didn't seem to matter for those kids and their families; winning did. Again, not everyone in Texas is from Texas. Go look at census figures on the subject. Because the economy of Texas has been so good, people have relocated to it from all over the United States. But - again and again and again - their loyalties are not to Texas schools or professional teams. You've got Packer and Browns and Steelers watching parties at bars all over major Texas cities. People move here, but they don't forget their roots. This all aggravates old Texas people. But, they should have accepted the reality that not everyone in Texas supports Texas college football teams when the SWC was killed. Sorry, old Texas people. Texas isn't diverse just because it has a bunch of Mexicans, Pakistanis, and Koreans. It's diverse athletics-wise as well. In short, it doesn't matter how big UT is or how much money it has. Other schools don't care. They'll go where they want, and the recruiting will be just fine. Texas is discovering how little clout they have, and how many people in high places they've alienated over the past few years.

Yup...if there's one thing I'm known for around here it's my pessimism towards North Texas basketball. Guess maybe I should have a change of hart. Or even heart.

it is ridiculous to think that we don't deserve local media coverage because our scheduling is poor or that we do, in fact, lose. isn't there an old adage, "there's no such thing as bad publicity."? i guess we all should wait to show up at games or talk up the mean green program until they win, huh?! that's FUBAR. i don't think its unfair to expect or simply ask him to mention a record setting night. email sent.

Let's be serious. We have zero shot at a big 6 conference. Zero, ziP, nada. We were not able to sell out the 1st game in a new stadium. Still a long, long way to go.

I understand Baylor doing what they are doing... though, given the opportunity they would do it too. But, couldn't Baylor's posturing only blackball them in the future?

Did they mentioned teh respective team scores? Let's tell 100K apathetic alumni we lost 48-23 and see if Brelan's yardage gets them all excited to rejoin the bandwagon.

Big XII schools generally don't care how many opposing fans travel. You have to fill your own stadium. Most of the Big XII schools don't have large sections available for opposing fans. Why would you if you can sell out with your own fans which increases season ticket sales and allows for mandatory donations for seats? Worrying about how many opposing fans come to your stadium is the same mentality UH used to have. We used to complain that no one in CUSA (with the exception of UTEP) brought fans to UH. Now we're finally getting to the point where if the opposing team brings zero fans, it can still be a sell out. Hopefully UNT gets to that point too. The stadium will help. Winning will help some too. Once you get momentum, it starts snowballing. One sell out leads to another. That leads to games selling out early which leads to higher season ticket sales. But don't complain about the number of fans your opponents bring. That just makes your fan base look weaker because your attendance depends on something outside of your control.

Houston only drew 5k more because our stadium only holds 31k. I think your program and UH's program are very similar from a few years ago. It took a committed administration to really start our ascent. And a whole lot of leg work from dedicated alums and students to rally the support. Great job on the beautiful stadium, you have us beat there. Looking forward to seeing you guys in Houston next year. Good luck to the rest of your season. I will be following your team and rooting for you. GMG!

He's more worried about his next freaking golf tournament than leading his football team to a championship. The guy makes me sick. He has to be the most careless QB with the most experience in the NFL. Gotta get rid of him. Rick

I had the chance to catch up briefly with Coach Leonard on Saturday...he was already set up and tailgating when I made it to the Hill around 1:30...thought that was pretty awesome. I congratulated him on such a great recruiting class and if he knew anything about Patton and Franklin's eligibility...he said Patton will be good to go and they're hopeful on Franklin. He then excitedly brought up Mitchell, telling me what we knew that he'd be eligible in December. Never seen a coach beaming so much over a player.

And to add on to this thought...we've a group of fans who seem to relish in a North Texas basketball loss. They only come over to the basketball board following a loss and start popping off phrases like "this team is playing street ball" or "why don't we play zone?" or "does this team not practice free throws?" or "why didn't we pick up full court in the waning moments of last year's conference championship game against Arkansas-Little Rock when Soloman Bozeman hit a clutch 3 pointer with our best defender on him, but only picking up at half court?" Just some generic examples. They're a whip. And they're considerably more frequent when people confuse expectations with hopes, coupled with logic. There are 340 some odd teams dreaming of an NCAA birth...150 or so aren't kidding themselves. To be making guarantees 3 months before tip and with more unknowns than knowns is foolish.

Email Newy Scruggs

Plus, when they ran him off, they were able to hire another nationally known coach - and, didn't have to look at Texas high schools. Tech has beaten schools in many different conferences now. They've been to bowl games now for 11 straight seasons, and have had 18 winning seasons in a row. They've beaten schools from the Big Ten three times in bowl games (Minnesota, Michigan State, and Northwestern) and schools from the ACC twice (Clemson and Virginia), and on from the Pac-10 (California) during that span. Tech is a well-known entity. Not even Texas or Texas A&M boast as many bowl seasons in a row as Tech.

There were probably some copy points about the game, but hell, Newy probably ate them.

Renewed ours today! We're looking forward to another great season at the SuperPit! GMG!

1. Play a somebody... 2. Beat a somebody... 3. Fill Apogee often (which happens because of 1 & 2) ...then the DFW "major sports market" media will be standing in line at the Apogee Stadium elevator to get to their special designated media location inside our end zone to end zone Press Box.....maybe even Newey. Scheduling schools into Apogee like Texas Southern U (albeit a great university but just not in the right NCAA division) is not a good start in doing this and yes, Social Security is a Ponzie Scheme!

Terrell Brooks: He went 3-0 in Madden against a couple guys on his floor that forgot to reserve tickets to the game. He proceeded to bring home some Chicken Express and totally dominated it from chicken strip to the final corn nugget. I would say it was a good night for him.

Meanwhile Baylor only bought 800 seats for their aTm allotment and returned the rest. If you think 4k is low, you're crazy. I know there are schools that do travel that, but we're not Nebraska. And if you need a school to travel 7k+ to fill your stadium (almost 1/4 of the stadium) on opening night, UNT might as well give it up.

I totally agree. I didn't get any freebies either! Plus I sat at my house all morning waiting for someone from the athletic dept to come to my house and drive me to the game...and when I got there...no one would personally read my parking pass (Which I had to pay EXTRA for!) or tickets to me. I may not be back. How DARE the athletic dept ask anyone to charge for anything. We need more free stuff and more hand holding if we are ever going to be big time.

a/s/l?

I turned in my club seats to have lower bowl seats for a couple reasons, but that is a big one. My wife and I want easy access to concessions that aren't offered upstairs, and we want to be able to bring friends with us. I WANT SOME NACHOS!

I was at the Coach Mac show last evening and not a word about Brooks. If it has anything to do with not starting, well, maybe it's a good thing for him to walk away now. Really bad news, but these are young men who still have some growing up to do, and this just might be part of that process fro young Mr. Brooks. I am sure the reason behind his departure will become clearer over time. Looks like Coach mac is not a coach to talk about this stuff (or injuries for that matter) within his program. I think that's fine and maybe the best way to handle these things...internally.

Possible that he couldn't bust a grape?

If you want to get a good look at exactly the type of attitude that has plagued UNT for many years, just read the above post. PATHETIC. Obviously has no clue, and I doubt, with the attitude displayed, ever will.

I was thinking she missed calls all night and this isn't me being anti-woman ref, because I didn't notice that she was female until the second half. That being sad, she wasn't good. That however didn't cost us the game.

I missed most of the show. Did they bring this up at all? What did Coach say?

That would be the tailgate on the back of my truck in T-town Saturday.

ESPN3 = split screen NT @ Alabama and UCF @ FIU.

Rangers let you bring in food/drinks..... But no were else around here I can think of.

Did someone say bar?

The faults of Coach Dodge don't matter to me any more. We all already know he wasn't up to the job. I just want to see if the team gets better from week to week under Coach McCarney. As long as there's progress this season I'm happy.

I know there have been a few times, often a week or so after some poor, late-night decision making that I've cheered for a Crimson Tide.

You can pile on Dodge all you want, but he had one good class; his second and I think did a fair job scrambling for recruits the last two years. A bad Belt team that plays in Fouts is going to be a hard sale. Everyone assumes that McCarney will be a better recruiter, he certainly has much more to work with. Most of us think that McCarney recruits are a step up but frankly there is little evidence of that yet. If you look at this year's commits there are few that have offers to perceived better football schools. There are also at this point not an unusual number of true freshmen playing. Lemmon is starting and a few others are getting playing time, but it is too early to really rate the whole class as anything better than ordinary. The sad facts are that UNT is lagging the other established FB division schools in recruiting just as they have the last 3 years. Not a knock on McCarney or staff it is just going to take time and some wins to substantially upgrade recruiting. We all hope that this staff is much better evaluating recruits because it is going to take a much longer time for NT to actually compete with even the CUSA teams for the same athletes. The obvious hope is that many of McCarney's recruits despite being relatively lightly recruited will turn out to be stars.

I agree. At least the fight is back and these kids are going to play their @ss off for this school. i respect the hell out of them

Romo is the reason this team has been competitive for the past 6 years. Remember what it was like with Quincy Carter, Chad Hutchinson, Clint Stoerner, Vinny Testaverde? Is that what you want?

I may be wrong but I am guessing he meant a much bigger stadium capacity wise. As far as amenities it's hard to beat since we have everything a college stadium would want I am thinking.

Came to the game with the wife and parents(who came from an hour away). Even though the team lost, everyone is making plans to come to the next game. Things are changing in the attitude towards NT football. We just need to start winning games.

With the addidions of Mitchell , Patton & hopefully Franklin , I think rebounding will be one of our strengths

I just don't get how the parking/walking in was that hard for so many. CoogFans is just tearing into the experience because of that. I parked where I always did for games at Fouts, and just walked a little farther over the 35 bridge. Five more minutes of walking isn't often a bad thing, you know. Friends were parked in the lot down by Victory, tailgated there, awesome time. Leaving the game, no problem. Strolled out with a big group back that way, Police managing traffic well, no problems at all.

Disappointed yes....... Surprised not really. We have been very bad for a very long time now. It was a good crowd but people want to see a winner or at least competitive football. We will get there. I predict inside of fifteen years there will be an expansion.

WAR sure as hell does, though.

I'll drop the line by line rebuttal and first admit that I am really enjoying the discussion. It just doesn't happen that much besides a few corners of the interweb because so few fans care these days. As for Rudy's points, I'll try to take them in order by paragraphs. I think Modano just hit a hard patch of time -- the NHL went clutchy grabby, he adjusted only when a coach rode his ass and then it was too late for him to be a superstar when the rules were fixed again. I will always blame him for not living up the conditioning end of his role at the end -- no matter how many memories he gave me. You live up to your contract -- mopey or not. I also know Detroit had a 3-0 series lead, but a fully functioning Modano could have swung any of those games, especially the 2-1 loss in game 2. Remember how the SJ series - in retrospect - came down to the guy jumping out of the way of Mo's slapshot goal? Maybe there's a moment or two in there that could have swung things for us. It sucks we know he didn't have what he needed to grind through 3 full rounds. I think our GMs are a mixed bag and I love Turco with a passion. I still often work out in my #35 shirt and went to the same church as the man. There are not many nicer guys in hockey. I was convinced he would go to Chicago or Philly and make us look stupid, but Chicago is seeing the same late breakdowns and lack of big saves -- with or without the bad defense. As for Auld, I don't think the market was ever there and Philly was the only logical contender that made could take Turco's salary if I recall correctly. They stood pat and got a finals run out of the deal. Bastards. I think the Texas Stars minor league system is a good thing for our goalies and I think that will change our pipeline. Drafting Jack Campbell as the future franchise makes the other kids expendable and I think the defense is partially better because they know what Lehtonen will do with the puck. The Red Wings have always taken an old guy or two for depth because they know they can cover for them. His time for them is the playoffs (he was not having a good year even with their talent) I think the Jere offer was little more than a nice gesture because he seemed done. Also, unlike the current version of Modano, he's still capable of teaching the kids how to play sound, two-way hockey. Not a bad leader to keep around as the transitions continue. Modano was just keeping Benn off the ice where he belonged. I'm also no Crawford fan, but think he's been humbled enough to give this a better effort than before. I consider him little more than a stop gap to keep the rebuilding process on track as it continues -- whether we're in 2nd or 12th in a few weeks.

Unpopular opinion time -- but Modano stole money for the last 4 years and has even begun admitting as much on his little Red Wings world tour before he got hurt. http://www.defendingbigd.com/2010/11/26/1837371/modano-on-last-few-seasons-i-kind-of-gave-up-on-it After I read this a few weeks ago, it killed a lot of my stored up goodwill for him. He was great in his prime and I'll miss seeing him breaking in the zone at full speed and whipping the most ridiculous backhander I have ever seen, but I would have preferred to have left things with his big last week last year. You can say we were out of it the last two years, but who knows what a healthy Modano could have done in the 2008 WCF?

He sad he is interested, but not as the majority guy since he doesn't have what he thinks is enough of a hockey background/passion. He said he's been part of a few groups kicking the tires, but the same Monarch guy who ran the Rangers sale is running this one, so it won't be easy. He said he really wants the arena, but doesn't see the Stars as part of building a regional TV network because the seasons overlap with the NBA.