FirefightnRick

I went in to pick up the new plates for the GREENBACKERS MEAN GREEN SMOKE PIT this morning and asked the woman at the counter if she had any way of finding out when/if/what the new U of North Texas collegiate plates would look like. She said "yes, I have the latest updated book right here". I told her about the new logos that came out in April and all. While looking through the book she showed me the new Baylor and UTEP plates. After not finding anything and looking puzzled she excused herself to go back to her supervisors office to call Austin. After about 10 minutes she came back and said: "They are telling me that as far as they know there is not going to be any new North Texas plate", she then said " for now you will have to order the current one". She then gave me this information to call to keep checking: 512-374-5010, push option #4 and speak to someone at that office. How flipping typical is this? And while I'm asking questions, where in hell is that branding kickoff that was to happen this summmer that they announced at the debut in April? The 4th of July is in 3 days, someone call Lee Jackson over at the Country Club and get some answers! I don't know why I'm suprised? Rick

Thank goodness. Where would North Texas be without having CLC out there protecting our multi-million dollar merchandising programs too. Rick

Imagine that? Rick

University of North Texas, 320 Rice, 269 Prairie View A&M, 253 Texas State, 228 St. Mary's University – 101 I know not many here see this as I do but it relates to something that I have eluded to for way too long while trying to explain a "WHY", yet it still comes up from time to time with the often asked question of: "Why can't I get any North Texas gear at the local store?" Above you see the numbers of plates sold to university's with a small fan base. North Texas is no different. We have a very spirited, supportive fanbase that love and support their school as any in the nation. But it's a SMALL fan base. The fact that only 320 fans out of the countless thousands of alumni statewide purchase the plates each year is a microcosm to our overall fan base. Simply, it's a very small fan base. The problem is our Logo/Branding licensing is set up for a system that handles these kind of numbers: 1. Texas A&M, 6,346 2. University of Texas, 3,121 3. Texas Tech, 2,764 And when I say "system" I mean a "money" system. The system that is Collegiate Licensing Company is based on money and it operates to make a lot of it generated by thousands of fans. THOUSANDS upon THOUSANDS, and this runs the cost up to produce our products, making it difficult for local manufacturers to operate for us. Whereas, if NT and the Exes association were to go with a private licensing system they could control their licensing and allow the smaller, more local manufactures to produce our products, get more shirts and hats out there available to more people thus getting our name out there too. Which is the WHOLE POINT of this! To get our name out. Of course, most of you already know this, and NT does too as I'm blue in the face by now. It's just good to see it in this way because it really clearly states why things are the way they are for us. Rick

Why?.............never mind. Good luck with all that! Rick

As I have posted before, after we recieved the FOI, the URCM and our athletic department had CLC put all manufacturers on notice back in January or February that there would be new logos and a new color coming out. They also attempted to do something pretty smart and had CLC help them find which shade of Kelly green material is most used to make hats and shirts etc. It seems the email that discusses this mentioned Nike as one company that they referenced, can't remember exactly now. But Nike doesn't make most of their stuff, they contract it out, still NT should have been able to find out the most common color. Thus, anyone who tells you they are having trouble finding companies that make our stuff in the new correct shade is bull$hitting you or they just don't know what they are talking about. Rick

As posted several weeks ago, HERE is what our new uni's will look like. And as posted HERE, is the explanation I was given by the manufacturer as to the color or shade of green the jersey's will be. I hope I can find a similar shade of the brighter green in spray can form for the Greenbacker smoke pit as I will need to start that project soon. The good thing is, thanks to SoundMan, last year when he put the new floor in it for us he laid down a thick oil-based coat of kelly green so now all we have to do is match that. I plan on having some of the new logo's water-jet cut ouf of 3/16ths steel soon to replace the old script North Texas and MEAN GREEN. I'm up for ideas if anyone has some to share? Rick

Green Lantern Perfect response. I have done this as well, in fact I did it to a fellow FF three weeks ago at a party while he was giving me a tour of his new house, and his loft office that was completely dedicated to the horns. I didn't say a thing until he brought up last years game and giving me hell. I then popped the question about when he graduated from there? He never attended UT nor did any of his family. Needless to say the bragging quckly ended. But I think he and others respect the fact that, hey at least I'm proud of where I went. I'm in the same boat as the student SUMG came across. Well, 23 years ago I was. Then after researching NT, watching them take on TCU a couple of times and actually beating them in '86, I turned down an acceptance to a&m in '87 and followed several friends and transferred from Tarleton as well as other schools to Denton. A year or two later two of my classmates from High School transferred in from a&m as well and we had a blast and never looked back. Since then I have met many incoming freshmen who are very excited about going to NT. We have several FF's who have come to me in the past about their kids looking into going to NT. Their responses have all sounded great and their anticipation of going to freshman O positive. Rick

I think Grey, Cooley and other pretty much covered it all. I was going to add Kieth Chapman but someone already did. I saw him hit some of the biggest, decisive kicks ever including three monster hits to help us come from behind to beat Ttech as a 1-AA in '88. Interestingly, Marcus Camper is a cop in Arlington and I believe Troy Redwine is a firefighter in Irving now. They were our Mighty Quinn's of the 80's and 90's. If you ever get a chance to see a replay of that catch in '88 that little 5 foot 8 inch Marcus Camper made against Texas you will know how amazing that guy was. Rick

BIG DAWG Obviously your not sick of these so called mistakes yet. Good email Silver, glad to see there's still folks out there unwilling to roll over like a.....?. Rick

Rick

I'm told that the green jersey's will be slightly lighter than the previous two seasons jersey's. I was told though that even though they are a bit lighter, we may not even be able to tell the difference. We'll see in 8 weeks. Rick

All orders are in and the projected delivery date back to me is the week of August 20th. For those who did not take advantage of this and want a current authentic game jersey in the future need to keep it in mind for next spring. I cannot stress enough how very rare of an opportunity this is for us folks. Authentic jerseys for NT(and really for any other school) cannot be found anywhere else unless you purchase a previous game-worn jersey from a collector, at a much higher price of course. I encourage everyone who has not, to take advantage of this if it is available again to us next spring. I'll do as I did this year and start to notify folks during spring training and go from there. Rick

I was there too and here is the front of the sports page of the Topeka paper along with my ticket stub. Plum, do you see something that interests you on the ticket stub? I have a picture of it somewhere? It was pretty hot that game, a day game at that and I remember the girl who performed as Eppy/Scrappy nearly vapor locked after the game. Several of their fans in our section told us we were favored in the papers but I'm not sure about that. If you can, read the final drive in the article. It was sickening because the final drive started inside their 15. Then their QB gets sacked back to their 6 yard line with the clock running under 2 minutes or something like that. Then, came the bull$hit pass interference call that started the drive for them. Our DB and their reciever Micheal Smith trip over each others feet right in front of our bench while watching the pass sail over their heads and land 10 feet up field, PASS INTERFERENCE....FIRST DOWN! The rest was history as their drive ends in a final second, TD pass from their 12. The students tore down the goal post and hauled it up onto campus. Our guys did a hell of a job going up against a much larger, faster, taller Big 8 team but the defense wore down that final drive. I remember one TD where Scott Davis drilled a pass between two defenders that had to of been greased and had a rocket strapped to it for it to have found it's target. What a cannon of an arm. This game was just an unreal effort by our guys and the K State folks were amazed by their level of play yet ecstatic for the win, but all of us who made the trip were not surprised at all because we had become used to Davis and company performing this way against the big boys. Everyone of the play makers from that era deserve to be in our Hall of Fame. Rick

Mr. Mercer will ALWAYS be THE VOICE of the Mean Green! Rick

Rick

You know, I'm ok with the Eagle if it's upclose. But from looking at my plate, that gives me an idea of what it will look like from a distance, and it's not all that great I suppose. I'm trying to convince myeself otherwise. I hope the new 3-D version RV spoke of will look better. We need to simply get away from printing an eagle on anything other than for the kids merchandise. It's never going to look fitting on uni's or serious marketing material. Rick

I'll take one of these please! Rick

Click on the link for Voertmans. See the Daffy Eagle hat in the image? They still have some of those or at least they did a month or two back when I was last in there. This is an example of merchandise stuck on the shelf that will not move. It's at least three years removed from the CLC sheets, possibly four? Voertmans and other national chain bookstores like them can recover from this. But your locally owned merchant doesn't have that luxery. Now with the new logos coming out and many to choose from, they will again be stuck with previous NT stuff that didn't sell and they won't soon forget it and how we have a history of changing logos all the time. Thus, they will be very reluctant to buy. Their suppliers, the manufacturers of this stuff, will more often than not require them to pay in full for everything up front. EX: I want to buy a plastic NT Eagle car decal to sell in my store. The manufacturer say's ok, your cost will be $5 each but your minimum order is 2,000 to offset my expense for my design work, my additional CLC license I must apply for to produce it and the cost to manufacture the molds because we do not get many request for NT Eagle decals and you will more than likely be the only one. The retail cost for our product is $8.50 and we will require you to sell them for no more than that. So the local vendor must invest $10,000 for his/her order. Then they must be able to sell 1,176 tiny car emblems at $8.50 each just to recover the investment. Being faced with the task to move 1,176 items of one product of a school that still has merchandise sitting on shelves from the previous set of logos, a school with a history of changing logos every 5 or so years, is more than enough to give the vendor second thoughts about ordering items from North Texas to sell in the DFW region when they can easily just sell merchandise from another competing school with a well known, standard logo. The above product example was an actual conversation between GREENSTOCK and AUTOEMBLEM which is located in Colorado. They basically told me they would rather continue to manufacture products for the NFL, NASCAR and the top selling collegiate schools than to bear the cost of producing molds for unknown programs such as NT because of getting stuck with a mold that would only be used once. Craig Helwig stuck us good when he took us into a national license where the manufacturing and selling of our products are so tightly regulated that only the BIG MONEY manufacturers and vendors(bookstores) can afford to get involved. I bitched and complained about it and no one would listen. I bitched about the colors and told you the crap wouldn't sell, especially when all we were going to do is lose our ass each season with that rediculous schedule he set up for us, and no one would listen until only recently. Bye bye to blue and orange. Still, the university marks are more of the same and I'm not completely sold on all the athletic marks either. At least this time we have a winning program to help launch this stuff? It would be nice if the university could help RV out and show a good faith move to the vendors and buy up their remaining crap and GIVE them some free samples to sell for profit. But that aint gonna happen. Unless they have some trick up their sleeve it's going to take a lot more winning and several years for it to be available as we all believe it should be. Beating LSU would be a nice start for sure. Rick

I'm split on this. I know why we are going with "NORTH TEXAS". AS RV has stated many times. "If they don't know who we are, at least they will know where we are. However, we are competing in Texas with other schools that have logos on their helmets. Baylor, TT, A&M, Rice, Houston, SMU, TCU, UTEP. All incorporate a logo of some kind. The NT Exes logo would do that for us just fine as several versions of it here has shown. However non of this really matters even if we had a logo, whether it's the Postal Scrappy, the American Airlines Turbo Prop Scrappy, the NT Exes or the block or script "NORTH TEXAS". Non of this matters any more because UNLIKE our in-state competition, our UNIVERSITY will not be represented by it. But instead be represented by four or five or more different logos and again the confusion will continue as it has in the past. Rick

Jim, that is EXACTLY what the URCM is hoping for. Rick

As mentioned in the notes taken during the October 21st meeting, RV states that if we were to label our (university)athletics with a three letter moniker we will instantly be placed in third place behind TCU and SMU in the minds of the general public. NT helps differentiate us from the others. RV "strongly" supports the use of "NT" over "UNT". Mentions that he suported the NT Exes logo but possibly enhanced a bit. Dr. Pohl does not support it as well. One of the student leaders that was part of the meeting stated that most men do not support it. One stated that some students will think of UT when reading UNT and that he supports NT as well. According to most of the email responses our alumni, especially our athletic alumni do not support UNT over NT. Nearly all support the use of the NT Exes logo. Many stated how often they had attended games and heard UNT used by rival opponents with a "C" in front of it. Most of our ex athletes can give you examples of this, along with Punt, GRunt and whatever else can be made of it. The athletic department has heard of these complaints for years. There is ONE person in the meeting above that is clearly noted as in support for UNT and that is Lee Jackson. It lists him as follows: "Thinks he knows a lot about design- has an interest. Was a Dallas Co. Judge. He needs to be a part of things"..."Advocate for "UNT".."Admires TCU usage(curved, arched). Stay tuned. Rick

Ah you gotta love the coddled and pampered! Rick

In case you haven't been inside the Snake Pit to support our volleyball team lately it's changed quite a bit. It's been renovated on the inside, painted white throughout with new windows on the north and south ends and the gym is completely airconditioned. And other than some new pull out seating on the south end of the floor, the rest of the floor seats have been removed. So you have some floor seats on the south end and then the old original seats in the upper sections on the east and west sides. The wooden floor appears to be a new one but it is configured to hold either two volleyball courts, running east and west or two basketball courts running east and west. There is not a basketball court running north and south, in fact the goals for that are gone. Only 4 ceiling mouted fold up goals exist for the east/west courts. It's changed so much you would hardly recognize the place these days. The gym is the home of the volleyball team but they are really excited about moving over to the new facility soon. Rick

I'm curious, but is the assistant your talking about here (some assistant coach from some high school or college that kept NTSU in loosing seasons) the one time 80's assistant and only head coach in school history to lead a Mean Green team to the big dance, Jimmy Gayles? Rick