TheWestie

You left out the first one on the left... Dumpster

What is a shame is how many worker bees at the Morning News and the Star-Telegram are UNT alums. The kink is that the check-writers are SMU and TCU alums. As of a few months ago, of the little more than a dozen newsroom people at the DRC, 8 were Alums. OH and by the way, the DRC 2013 Football preview magazine comes out Thursday. With another awesome UNT center section. Over 120 pages of football goodness including some pretty badass photos I must say.

Somebody tell C-USA that this is not TAPPS.....

Don't forget to stop in to Karma Cafe for some free WIFI and secondhand smoke and grab a Panini at Java Flakes. Than grab a pizza from the back of Texas Jive

Jeez..... By all the complaints you'd think they had gone with the Lime green Fry jerseys but put this guy on the helmets

If only these folks had a Bald Eagle. http://www.bpraptorcenter.org/ FYI, Bald Eagles spend the winter down here and you can see them around Ray Roberts and sometimes Lake Lewisville.

Every band kid knows that up in the stands, water isn't for drinking: It's for filling up unattended brass instruments. Just like Icy-Hot and Orajel. Back around the turn of the century (1999-2003) when I was in high school, we practiced out in the parking lot from about 3:30 till 5. In July and August when the NWS declared a heat advisory we cut out about 30 minutes early. About 4 or 5 times we had to cancel and postpone practice until about 7pm because of the heat. We would be able to take our jackets off for really hot games, but still had to wear the pants. And had to have a band T-shirt on under the jacket so we would still match. Other than shoes, that's all some of us would wear to some games. I remember a particularly steamy Week 4 game in 2002 we played Galveston Ball down on the island and sat with the Sun facing us. This is after riding the cheese wagons for a few hours all the way from the North side of Houston in the afternoon heat. Barely anyone wore underwear. The dry cleaners in town made a killing that next week... Hot, nasty, disgusting polyester/wool blend military marching band uniforms that had been around since the early 80s. Flaming hot chrome buttons and crossbelt buckles. Good times.

If we're gonna bring any former mascot back, let it be this guy. He took us to some pretty good places, like New Orleans...

For the record, Vito had to leave and head over to the Athletic Center to get the scoop on some things for you guys. That's why his video is of, well, not much. The sound of the wrecking ball bouncing off the wall on the first couple of hits was one of the funniest things I've ever heard. Here's the other video, with some good old fashioned KABOOM. http://www.dentonrc.com/video/?freewheel=90853&sitesection=dentonlanding_top_non_sty&VID=24993545

Why pay $500,000 for the UNTs of the world to come play you for a home opener and risk getting beat at home to start the season when you can schedule a non-conference against someone just like you in a stadium halfway between both schools and negotiate some exclusive TV rights to it, separate from any deal your conference might have? Have 100,000 generic sports fans/T-shirt fans trying to one-up their bros by spending way too much to go to said game and brag about it. Yup, sounds about right. I'm looking at you LSU Vs Oregon and Notre Dame Vs Arizona State on October 5.

I like that sound of that. Just throw it somewhere downfield, if we don't catch it they'll intercept it, and then we'll just smash them so hard they fumble and we recover the ball and gain a bunch of yards. Nice.

I remember sitting in the Super Pit during freshman orientation a decade ago and Ricky V standing next to a big garbage can telling incoming freshman to come up right then and there and throw away any item of clothing they were wearing from another university and he'd give em a new UNT thing. I'd love to see Mac doing that now.

Hmmmm.... Houston, Denton, San Antonio, El Paso..... I-35, I-45, I-10..... Spray paint this mofo gold and call it a day.

If only they could get Sam Bass' gold shining in the sunset on the side of that hill in the distance behind Apogee....

Are you going to have the cycling socks with the Battle Flag on them again? Or was it socks with the SOW on them? I can't remember, saw them in there years ago....

I think I'm pretty qualified to answer this.... Apogee has suffered from the same problem that the Cowboys Stadium has. When the lights were new (1st year-ish), they were amazing. Much brighter than anywhere else I'd ever been, and I've shot football in a lot of places. But the lights have "burnt in" with use and have dimmed a bit. Cowboys Stadium has done the exact same thing. The debut season in Apogee I shot at ~ 1/1000 @ f4 @ 1,600 ISO. This past season I had to drop it down to about 1/500 or 1/640. That's just one stop, but that does make a difference. For me that's the difference between the little bits of turf fill being blurry or being frozen when a guy drags his cleat across the field. But it is still brighter than almost every other football stadium I've ever been to. Just not by as much. In the grand scheme of things, that means Apogee isn't as special in that regard as it was when it opened. BUT, it's still brighter than The Rob was, brighter than Darrell K. Royal Memorial, brighter than Kyle Field, brighter than Death Valley in Baton Rouge, brighter than Pizza Hut Park, brighter than the Alamodome (seriously, that place is as dark as Massey Stadium up in Pilot Point. Ugly. Go Bearkats), and brighter than Rice Stadium. What Apogee does better than any stadium I've ever been to though is how even and consistent the light is. The SOW at the 50 is as bright as the back of the end zone, as the hash mark on the 25, as the 10 yard line on the other end of the field and so on. THAT is what is really important for the TV folks. The lighting is the same all over the field and point onto the field from the end zone. And more importantly, IT IS THE SAME COLOR. Fouts, bless it's heart, had horrific patches of light and they were all different colors. If a player was in the dead center between the hash marks, they had shadows on both sides of them. But once them went to once side of the field or the other, they would only have a shadow from the lights closest to them, THAT'S how weak the lights at Fouts are. And the end zones had no light in them. Remember, the towers are at the 25 yard line, pointing out the end zone. Besides not having enough lights and being too far from the field, as they lights aged over the years, the bulbs aged and the gas inside them changed. Bulbs burnt out whenever they did and were replaced as they burnt out, meaning there was a wide range of age for the light bulbs. This caused lots of different colors or light. At Fouts (and at Bronco Stadium in Denton, and for that matter at most high school football/baseball fields more than 10 years old) you can get orange, green, purple, brown and blue lights in one picture. Combine that with the way that those lights work. The flood light bulbs pulse their light. It's quick enough that our eyes don't pick it up, but a camera shutter speed fast enough to freeze a player is faster than the cycle. Watch a super slow-mo replay sometime and you'll see it. The lights quickly flicker, but at normal speed it's so fast you can't see it. This video shows it. http://youtu.be/obopq9Golnk Point is, Apogee isn't some kind of paradigm shift as far as sports stadium lighting goes, but it is one of the best I've ever seen. It's brighter (nowadays just a bit, but still brighter) than almost everywhere else, but it's got more even and consistent light than anywhere else and it's almost a photographer's dream. Except for the beige brick backgrounds. Ugh. All that said, I do have a gripe. That lights at night at Apogee aren't kind to the uniforms. It makes them kind of a pastel mint green, instead of the almost Kelly green they are in daylight. The cameras I have at work make it seem even worse, but I've seen it in the AP photos from Kansas State, LSU and Alabama.

There ya go Harry, fixed it for ya.

Last year we had a signature "Make Kansas State sweat it out and worry until close to the end" game....

I saw a LOT of people donating. The morons who showed up with arms full of drinks and fast food, not so much. Fireworks looked good. But they looked even better with Apogee underneath them! This post has been promoted to an article

That is a heckuva sunglasses tan line. He also seemed really uncomfortable being on camera and having those lights in his face without shades.

fify

Jeez, I never knew we got Munsoned by Okie State 61-7 in the same season that we beat Tennessee...