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North Texas State....


GM1998

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This is another illustration of the failure of our athletic department. Winning teams expand the brand of universities. Our President knows this. So do ya'll. We continue to be bottom feeders so no one pays attention. If we had success and cracked the top 25 in a revenue sport on a regular basis then people would know who we are. However, we are irrelevant in sports and are treated accordingly in the sports circles.

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I was in band in high school and at our end-of-year concert my senior year, just a few weeks before graduation, they had all the seniors come out and stand at the front of the stage and the band director talked about each of us and what we'd done and what our plans were for the future. He got everyone's stuff bang on perfect except for me. He said I was going to North Texas State. This was 2003. And that moment, on that stage in front of my parents and everyone, was the first time I'd ever even heard the name. I'd never known it as anything other than UNT. (Full disclosure, I didn't know squat about UNT before I became a student. I knew they had a badass music program and that they were one of two photojournalism programs in the state, besides UT. I applied and got accept sight unseen. First time I ever came to Denton let alone the campus was for freshman orientation. And incidentally, that first moment I drove up Ave C through the center of campus, I knew I had made the right decision and that this place was gonna be special for me).

For someone of Mack Brown's age, for whom during most of his life we were NTSU, I get it. Especially if you have no ties to the school or anyone we play. It was NTSU when you were growing up or when you were in college. Whatever.

But for anyone under 54, we've been UNT the majority of your life. 27 years as UNT. If you were born in the 1970s or later, you have no excuse. Nothing guts me more than a 40-something or younger TV commenter who calls us North Texas State. 

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Think about this.  Middle Tennessee State University (MTSU).   In the athletic world, referred to as Middle Tennessee and their helmets only feature MT (kinda like our helmets featured NT during the 80s).

Now pretend they are no longer in our conference and decide to change their name to the University of Middle Tennessee (UMT).  As long as athletics continues to market them as simply Middle Tennessee, the official name change probably barely hits your radar if at all.  If our time period of relevance with them was during the MTSU days, I could see me forgetting about their name change down the road and whether or not State was still part of it.  

I'm in my 40's and it was NTSU when I started going there.  It used to bother me a little when folks got the name wrong, but not so much any more.  The slip up of calling us North Texas State can be blamed on two things IMO:  1) our ADs decision to maket athletics as North Texas rather than UNT and 2) our lack of relavance to most because we haven't had any substantial strings of success since the name change in the revenue sports.

Edited by UNT 90 Grad
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Great points by UNT 90 Grad.

As a 1982 graduate of NTSU, I called it North Texas then and still do. I don't like the UNT moniker, probably because of its association with CBL's signature coffee cup or the jumbled call letters for the campus radio station, and prefer NT. Conveniently, doing so gives me one more letter to use on my numerous tweets about how I wish NT soccer's defense could play at Apogee on Saturdays.

The NT shirts I buy, as opposed to the shirts thrown to me in the stands, say North Texas or Mean Green, not UNT. When I put on a bumper or window sticker, I cut off the "University of," displaying only North Texas.

Whenever Firefighter Rick dislikes my viewpoint, it is minimized as "only at North Texas."

We are...North Texas.

(Keep Calm and) GMG

 

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Growing up it was State, but changed when I was still in HS, but we grew up calling it 'State'.  When I recieved my masters It was UNT.  I like the word 'STATE' in the name.  While I understand it "regionalizes" the University it is already regionalized by 'North Texas'.  The only way to break that is pure 'UNT' marketing which I don't care for.  I always say 'North Texas'.... I earned my BA up north at another university named 'STATE', Penn State, and the fact that 'State' is in the name is never even talked about.  Proof that winning cures all.

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For someone of Mack Brown's age, for whom during most of his life we were NTSU, I get it. Especially if you have no ties to the school or anyone we play. It was NTSU when you were growing up or when you were in college. Whatever.

I get it too and who cares? As long as they mention North and Texas, everyone should know who they are talking about. Yawn, we have much bigger problems to focus on. It feels so juvenile to complain about what name people use when they reference us. It's sort of like Prince changing his name to some symbol and expecting everyone to stop calling him  Prince.

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This is another illustration of the failure of our athletic department. Winning teams expand the brand of universities. Our President knows this. So do ya'll. We continue to be bottom feeders so no one pays attention. If we had success and cracked the top 25 in a revenue sport on a regular basis then people would know who we are. However, we are irrelevant in sports and are treated accordingly in the sports circles.

We are one of two things. Irrelevant and/or a punch line.  Now we get to have our asses handed to us again by a perennial CUSA foe on Fox Sports SW.  Another opportunity for scorn and ridicule on national television. Are you seeing this Dr. Smatresk? It's an embarrassment.

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NT State I like it. Can we change back to NTSU?

Why not at this point.

I get it too and who cares? As long as they mention North and Texas, everyone should know who they are talking about. Yawn, we have much bigger problems to focus on. It feels so juvenile to complain about what name people use when they reference us. It's sort of like Prince changing his name to some symbol and expecting everyone to stop calling him  Prince.

What is he now, like a vagina symbol or something?

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It not that we don't win it because we virtually never win.  When was the last time the Mean Green won a regular season game against a well known successful program on national TV?  Answer: NEVER.  We have never even made a game like that competitive in the 4th quarter.  Let's look at our record against FBS schools in our region that started playing FBS level before 1990

UTEP: 14-6, Texas Tech: 4-4, Houston: 7-7, Rice: 2-4, Tulsa 7-17, SMU: 5-29, Baylor: 1-12, TCU: 1-17, Oklahoma State: 1-10, Oklahoma: 0-7, Texas: 0-7 and Texas A&M: 0-7  

Therefore college football fans in this region outside of fans of UTEP, Texas Tech, and Houston have not reason to respect our program or get the name right.

All the more reason the athletic department has to hire a big name coach with national prominence.  They need to set aside 2.5 million dollars to hire a head coach and hot up and coming OC.  The money is here in the 150k plus local alumni pockets.  Why this AD has not made a huge push to get small donations from the average alumni and not just business owners.  If the AD could get $3,000 donations from 10,000 local alumni UNT could hire anyone they wanted.  A thirty million dollar boost in the revenue could pay for improvements to Apogee, hire a coach with national prominence, and hot young coordinators with strong regional ties to work under that coach.  The AD should be bold and come out a say, "I want go out an hire a coach that would command 2 million dollars plus on the open market.  And for a truly special coach I would be million to pay 3 million.  I can't name individuals with jobs right now because that would not be classy.  But you can go down the list of coaches by their salaries look at the coordinators and head coach making around 1 million or more; those are the ones I am interested.  Telling you local frustrated alumni who doesn't understand why we are on par with Texas Tech, Oklahoma, Oklahoma State,  Baylor and TCU, that we need a commitment from you to step up to the big boys.  And my pledge to you is to be transparent about how much we have raise and how much further we have to go to reach our financial goals to go and get the coaches a lot of P5 conference programs would want"  With his track record RV can't do that now because he has no credibility.

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