PlummMeanGreen

Sad but… They are not giving up.

I thought the RR’s were going to implode upon us last year. It may turn into an interesting game today. May the best bird win.

I have it on good authority that this was Deep Green’s favorite uncle...😳& that is all I’m going to say about that. gmg

Barbara: My all time British heart throb! (Well—not really). Dorky brother who gets his in a few frames: “They’re coming to get you, Barbara.”

MORE RABBIT CHASING BUT STILL NOT CATCHING… We do tend to beat ourselves up on our attendance, don’t we? Of course, some of us have been doing that for half a century & more. You begin to wonder—why does this persist? Denton County will hit 1,000,000 in population very soon so let’s try not to act like we’re in some foreign “hard to get to” outpost. Almost 8 million Greater DFW citizens live within an hour of Apogee Stadium . It’s a mountainous gold mine of people, but who will put the first pick in the ground to mine for new fans? We seem stuck with old familiar faces. Putting a string of several above .500 seasons & throw in a bowl win or 2 would help. The most I’ve seen up there is 4 above .500 seasons in a row. That would be 1975, 1976, 1977 & 1978. Only 4! Hard to believe, isn’t it? College football fans have to have reasons to think their football program is trending upward. They have to think once their coaches get a job at UNT that they’ve unpacked all their suitcases, get to work & actually want to stay awhile. All our bowl losses & that infernal SMU game blowout loss several weeks ago took the air out early in our balloon in our 2022 football season. It all but demoralized our fan base—it broke our spirit. Easy to see the UNT student body is onto this, too. 44,000 plus Fall 2022 UNT students are (in all actuality) the equivalent of 44,000+ sold season tickets, but there has to be a quality entertainment value for those tickets to be utilized. UNT student attendance has been our inspiration in past years, but that has slacked off lately. They will return under the right circumstances. At UNT, it just seems all the planets have to be aligned.☹️ Yes, I do agree that mid afternoon kickoffs are part of the problem. Any of you ever sit in the sun at Apogee’s east side at those 3 o’clock kickoffs? DFW is a winners town—a winners sports market. You have to win & you have to beat a known ranked school to prove to your fans that your football program is projecting upward. That’s SL’s main problem now, but you have to also schedule more notable schools to increase the chances for high profile wins. UTSA is doing all the right things now. If Traylor can sustain football success down in ol’ San Antone’ then UNT will not only have SMU to contend with in the American, but UTSA as well. Would we have it any other way? Lets not be competitive in only another weak football conference. We’ve sung that hymn one too many times. GMG! Winning football fills stadiums… Cheerleaders from my student days at NTSU. Cutter Bill’s & Denton rancher (& other things) Rex Cauble donated this car to UNT Athletics. I appreciate its place in our history, but I do not miss this stadium which opened in 1951.

What channel is the Game network in the Houston area? Anyone know? Thanks in advance.

JUST ONE MORE THING… The Jim Crow era story UNT All American Abner Haynes didn’t talk about with the allotted podcast time was when the team took a train from Denton to Houston to play the UH Coogs in the 1950’s. ••• Many of you have heard this story, but this is what I recollect from hearing Father Time (as Ron Shanklin called Abner) several years ago when the 3 of us were at a Fort Worth 7’th St. Mexican eatery, namely Dos Gringos. (Ron Shanklin of the Mean Joe Greene era had some interesting stories of his own that day). Anyhow, UNT’s team train was parked on the railroad track near the Houston hotel & its management said blacks were not allowed to stay or eat inside their hotel. Again, it was the era of Jim Crow so that was an unfortunate common experience most all blacks had in the South & Southwest. Well, the white players for North Texas spoke with Eagle coaches & said if their 2 black teammates couldn’t join them in the hotel the entire team would spend the night in the train with Leon & Abner. Love that story & I’ve heard similar stories to that one at other sports locale’s. Below pic is Robertson Stadium on the UH campus where I’d wager NT teed it up with the Coogs in the late 50’s. It was called Jeppessen Stadium in the 1950’s. The Oilers even played there when late KC Chief’s owner Lamar Hunt helped organize the American Football League in 1960. Abner Haynes at Fouts Field, Denton. GMG!

If our program had the momentum of the past with some significant wins vs schools of note under our wings, 10,000 MG fans at this game would have been easily predictable. We once traveled 20,000 Mean Green fans to UT in 1976 (or that’s what the Austin American-Statesman said we brought). Earl Campbell (hamstring & all) had a late TD run to beat the Mean Green 17-14 that evening.

This podcast is well worth your time to listen to no matter where anyone attended college in the Lone Star State & beyond. 👏👏 Hank Dickenson & Zac Babb did a superb job with this podcast. I had never heard Dr. Leon King talk about his & Abner Haynes’ integration of North Texas story until this podcast. Many of us have heard Abner talk about their 1955 experience on our Denton campus during the sad Jim Crow era in America. 🦅 The dedication of these 2 Texas historic guy’s plaza near Apogee Stadium is Saturday, November 5’th. Easy to predict that event will be as well attended as Mean Joe Greene’s statue unveiling that many of us who frequent GMG attended.

Funniest thread ever since Harry started GMG.com—I can’t stop laughing. Neither can Randy!

How many Road Runner starters “will not” be starting will answer a few questions on their injury list (which will not be for public consumption before game time). Anyone else think Coach Traylor probably took a few psych. courses at his college alma mater?

UTSA’s home field advantage could mean quite a bit for this game. Hope the team in green can overcome that with the most pro-active offense of this 2022 football season. 35,000-40,000 in the AlamoDome could be worth a bunch of RR points on the scoreboard. Go ahead—cut all the KFC jokes you want, but do you know how organized your athletic dept. staff has to be to get 35,000 fans to a game & for a 10 year old football program? Game results? Depends on which Mean Green football team shows up this Saturday afternoon. ▶️ Prediction: They could really kick our ass; then again—we could really kick theirs. ▶️▶️ It will be a tie game after the maximum number of overtimes. 🤬%#%€#🤬%#~>\ 🤬— NOW LET US PRAY! GMG!

Whatever those new rules will be, you know they will only make the G5 schools jump for joy (sarc’). Here is a group pic of the NCAA Rules Committee.

This what you looking for, Steamin’? 😆

We’re probably (team-wise) a step slower than UH (who barely beat the RR’s) & maybe a step slower than UTSA. Playing smart football can overcome some of that. •••Our secondary scares me vs QB Harris. ••• I hope Trieb has a career game vs the RR’s. He needs to. •••UNT needs to jump out ahead in the scoring department with our elite 4 man running backs corp. Keep the RR’s defense on the field with several sustained clock-eating drives—just tire them out. ••• Last year UTSA turnovers contributed to the lopsided results of that game. Good hustle by the Mean Green also helped. (A similar effort at the Frisco Bowl with a starting RB who did not play would have meant a win. ▶️ If UTSA starts this game as we did last year at Apogee—we could be in for a very, very long afternoon at the AlamoDome. Speaking of the Alamo…I hope SL & WB takes the team to visit her if they have an extra hour or 2 today or tomorrow. John Wayne’s movie version of it near Bracketville, Texas.

I will go on record to say I loved the Murphy Bros. wearing green. I know PB was not president of their fan club because of maybe one too many jumps offside, but to me that’s how competitive they were. I only wish them the best in LaLa land.

By George! I think you’ve got it! I do recall when TCU came to Fouts that they had a similar size showing of Froggie fans. I think that may be the only KSU pic of that game because I can’t find a video or any other pics anywhere.

I prefer this idea, Tony B.

Is the 450 (+/-) member Green Brigade Marching Band going or just a smaller group? This may turn into a good game. Compared to last year, the MG “D” worries me. UNT’s running game could be the difference. The key is not getting behind too early. Aune is not a come from behind QB.

Sorry, cr1028. Blood sugar running high. More joys of being Type 2 diabetic. This shit’s going to kill me before I know it. 😔

Not a poll—just a question. or— ••• I wish UNT athletics would ask the TV networks for more TV camera shots of Apogee’s more impressive side; that is, the press box side. Seems like it’s almost totally ignored in most games I’ve DVR’d. gmg

So just forfeit the game, Coach! 😆

Remember when Texas HS product Drew Brees had to shop himself out of the state of Texas because no D1 school in the Lone Star State (supposedly) did not offer him a scholarship?

CHASING 🦅EAGLES THAT TURNED INTO 🐇 ‘WASKILY ‘WABBITS… Looking at photos & a video of Traylor after last year’s “still doesn’t make a whole lotta’ sense” MG win over a 16’th ranked UT-San Antonio; anyway, a post-game pic or 2 show an equally confused “what the hell just happened to us” Coach Traylor one cannot forget. •••The game this Saturday is as much a revenge motivation game UNT will have played in years. I think that a reason why some are predicting a RR blowout over the MG. The fact that in recent years the RR’s might have been out-recruiting UNT with Texas HS players some who look more like a UH Coogs fit than where they ended up in the shadows of the Alamo. Anyone who has followed NT football thru the decades with all the numerous conference homes the MG have resided has every right to be a tad frustrated with what has been going on in recent years. I hear some in CUSA can’t get why UNT “with all their facilities, venues & hot chicks” can’t seem to win much more than it loses. Then you begin to hear “UNT does so little with so much” more & more. (Again, which Tribe’s graveyard did we build Fouts Field & Apogee Stadium on top of)? 👁👁 Looking back we’ve had no conference football championships in awhile & the only time we seem to compete for one is when whatever conference we’re in overall quality has trended downward. The ultimate slap is when we entered CUSA it never had the same quality it had after former CUSA members became the AAC & then—-after we left the friggin’ Sun Belt Conference it got better with more schools who were even getting Top 25 rankings. Crap!🤔 •••To quote the great Slim Pickens in Blazing Saddles: “What in the wide world of sports is-a goin’ on here?”🤪 The Sun Belt? Look at that league in its debut year. UNT entered it with more D1 scholarship players than any other school in that new conference as I recall. So who we kidding—that helped immensely with UNT winning those first 4 championships. Winning 1 out of the NO’s Bowl’s first 4 games proved the SBC is where we belonged back then. Then we wanted to be a member in another league which would be CUSA who became the AAC after we finally got in, uh, CUSA!🙄 Gosh doggit’! Where is Dr. Phil for heavens sake?!?! And…Did Rod Serling of (insert theme song) Twilight Zone fame write the screen play of the “Mean Green Football Movie” the last 20 years or what? No matter the situation: STILL MEAN GREEN & DAMN PROUD OF IT! 🦅 TCU at Fouts Field, Denton.