rcade

Yes. It's better to be in a bowl game at 6-5 than to be home at 6-5 or 5-6, no matter how little respect the New Orleans Bowl and Sun Belt get in Division I. These bowl games and conference wins put North Texas on the map. People know who we are, and that's the first step towards becoming a respected mid-major like Marshall or (kills me to say this) South Florida. If prep players in DFW think of North Texas as a place where they've got a strong chance at a bowl game, that's a good thing.

For crying out loud! These are Division I college football players. If any of them can't handle a little criticism from fans on an Internet message board, they're not going to do well on the football field anyway with 350-pound monsters with rage issues on the other side of the line. I hate it when people play this card. Boo freaking hoo. Fans who care enough about the Mean Green to be depressed all week because of a loss are a good thing.

I'm glad a Texas school is contending for the national championship. I wish it was a Texas school a little further to the North, of course, but I think there's benefit to having a champ in state again. Florida shouldn't be a stronger football state than Texas.

Wasn't it a Diet Pepsi guy last year? I know it's a minor thing, but I crack up whenever I see the drinkholder on the sidelines. Poor bastard.

Touchdown North Texas -- 34-yard trick play pass thrown by Cobbs to Quinn! Hank called it the best pass all year. 30-14.

North Texas is still climbing, although the map hasn't been redrawn yet. One thing this map shows me is why Texas isn't producing the kinds of I-A powerhouses that Florida does. Our loyalties are divided over a lot more schools. Here in Florida, it's all UF, FSU, and Miami. And each group has a distinct geographic region with less overlap.

Good point. North Texas now has 14 votes, though one is mine in St. Augustine, so it looks like another 10-15 fans will have to show up for UNT to start showing up on the Texas map.

Have you looked at a map of the U.S. recently? The Sun Belt is an southeastern conference. All of its expansion in football has been in the Eastern time zone, and the last two Mountain time zone football schools just left. Perhaps it should be called the SEC -- SunEast Conference. :-).

Several thousand fans have voted so far.

An Internet web site has mapped pro and college sports allegiances based on the "who is your favorite?" survey of thousands of people. The college football map shows no presence of North Texas, even though it's one of the teams you can choose: College Football Census For links to the other maps, see this weblog post: SportsFilter If you have 5-10 minutes take the survey on the site and tell them your favorite teams. Some of the breakdowns are pretty cool. I had no idea that Indiana was Boston Celtics country.

Listen here

No kidding. The guy's larger than life. He said during the third quarter on TV that three SouthWest Conference teams told him they'd support the entrance of North Texas during his tenure. Anyone know which schools he was referring to?

That interview with Hayden Fry was the reason I couldn't hang on to my bad mood after this loss. The value of what he said about the facilities, and about the overall prospects of the school, are huge.

I don't think there's any way Jamario breaks that for a touchdown. Troy had too many fast players close to his heels, and Jamario's a little short on zoom these days.

I'm impressed with the way the defense played, especially after the third quarter when they should have had nothing left. And the 3-D graphics of the new facilities were incredible. Sucks to have lost a game, but 26 straight conference wins brought us to the point where ESPN2 came to Denton and those facilities got the greenlight. I still am optimistic about the future of North Texas.

Amen, brother. Is there a way you could add something to each post's member info section that shows a user's level of membership in the Mean Green Club? I think putting dollars into that club would be considerably more productive than starting private fundraising efforts and demanding Dickey's head. I've been too cheap to support it myself, but as a 15-year fan and alumnus, I need to put up or shut up.

True, but we had a realistic chance of beating them -- hence the level of fan disappointment when we got stomped.

I'd rather see that money be spent on world-class athletic facilities and a world-class stadium. Those would make a bigger long-term impact on UNT football than replacing a coach with the current record for consecutive conference wins in the NCAA.

Schedule more out of conference games against teams we have a realistic chance of beating, like Tulsa, Baylor, and the University of South Florida, and less paycheck games like Kansas State, Texas, and Alabama. A team that's good enough to run the Belt for four straight years is good enough to beat some bottom-25 I-A teams.

I'm not happy with the lack of out of conference success, but the most we could have realistically hoped for playing Kansas State was to be respectable through the first half. If we run the Belt again, it should be considered a huge success for a team this inexperienced. I'm eager to see if Dickey can pull that off with this bunch. If he does, it will bode well for next year.

Thanks. I agree with you about fans who sit on their hands. That used to kill me at Cowboys games when I was a season ticket holder early in the Jimmy Johnson years.

What does an obnoxious fan being gay have to do with anything? Would you mention an obnoxious fan's race?

Even if we win the Belt, which I'm not feeling confident about after the first two games with the new quarterback, I feel like this is the year the Mean Green faithful start to ho-hum winning the conference. Perhaps it is fitting that we're playing for the right to go to the Lafayette Bowl this year. I'm not ready to bail on Dickey, but this 52-point loss to Tulsa just puts an exclamation point on UNT's inability to win out of conference.

Don't be so quick to dog the Mean Green. North Texas would have been in this game if not for that 54-point run by Tulsa.

On TV, it looked like Chris Henry's leg was broken because of how the tackler landed on it, not because his ankle became stuck in the turf. I don't think turf played a factor, unless it prevented him from swinging his legs away from the tackler.