2025 American Conference Championship: North Texas 21, Tulane 34

Last weekend, the North Texas Mean Green traveled to New Orleans for the American Conference Championship: beat Tulane, and they were all but guaranteed a spot in the College Football Playoff. Alas, everything that could have gone wrong for North Texas did go wrong. Consider:

• Mean Green RB Caleb Hawkins, a significant part of UNT's offensive attack, was knocked out of the game in the second quarter with an injury. Hawkins led the nation with 23 rushing touchdowns this season; his presence was clearly missed as the game wore on.

• North Texas turned the ball over five times. One fumble occurred on the same play where Hawkins was injured, and a second fumble occurred as a result of a muffed punt. UNT QB Drew Mestemaker, who  threw only four interceptions all season, threw three in this game alone. 

• Adding insult to injury, one of Mestemaker's interceptions was returned for a touchdown on a controversial call - it looked like the Tulane player lost control of the ball right before he crossed the goal line, but the touchdown call was upheld after review.

• UNT's defense had no answer for Tulane's offense. Green Wave QB Jake Retzlaff passed for 145 yards and ran for another 49 yards and two scores. He was not intercepted or sacked. The Tulane rushing offense, as a whole, rushed for almost 200 yards. Tulane scored 21 points off UNT turnovers and did not have any turnovers of their own.

• The Mean Green, who entered the game ranked first in the nation in scoring offense at 46.8 points per game, could only manage 21 points, 14 of which came in the second half when the game's outcome was essentially decided. Tulane's defense kept Mestemaker out of his rhythm for most of the evening; in addition to his three turnovers, he was sacked five times.

The 2025 season was perhaps the best in North Texas football history. Their 11 wins are the most ever in a single season, and they were ranked in the AP poll for the first time since 1959. A conference championship and CFP appearance would have been the crowning achievement to a great year, but it just wasn't meant to be. They now go on to play San Diego State in the Isleta New Mexico Bowl. 

Tulane, meanwhile, plays Ole Miss in the first round of the College Football Playoff. 

North Texas makes a coaching change

The Mean Green have a new football coach:

North Texas has named Washington State offensive coordinator Eric Morris as the Mean Green's new head coach, the school announced Tuesday afternoon.

Morris has deep roots in the state, having been a star player for Mike Leach at Texas Tech, a successful head coach at the FCS' Incarnate Word in San Antonio and a proven developer of both quarterbacks and prolific offenses.

Morris replaces Seth Littrell, who was fired on Dec. 4 after going 44-44 over seven years at the school. North Texas is headed to its debut season in the American Athletic Conference next year.

Littrell's .500 record actually makes him one of the more statistically successful UNT head coaches in the program's recent history. But Littrell was also 0-5 in bowl games, 0-2 in conference championship games, and - of particular importance to Mean Green faithful - 1-6 against Metroplex rival SMU. 

Following their loss to UTSA in the Conference USA championship game a couple of weeks ago, and with the change in conferences looming, the UNT administration decided that the time for a change had come. 

"I am incredibly honored to be the head football coach at North Texas," Morris said in a statement. "I am humbled and grateful for the opportunity given to me by (new UNT AD) Jared Mosley and President Smatresk to lead UNT Football into a new era in The American. As a native Texan, I understand the pride and standard of Mean Green football and I am humbled to be able to lead this storied program. My wife, Maggie, and our boys are so excited to return home. We can't wait to meet the team and get to work."

In addition to playing for Mike Leach (I am shocked and saddened by his sudden death) at Texas Tech, Morris was also on Kevin Sumlin's staff here in Houston in 2010 and 2011. In four seasons as the head coach at Incarnate Word, he went 24-18 and led the Cardinals to a pair of FCS playoff appearances.

Defensive coordinator Phil Bennett will serve as UNT’s interim coach during their Frisco Bowl showdown against Boise State on Saturday.

North Texas spoils UTSA's bid for a perfect season

The University of Texas at San Antonio was one of three undefeated football teams in FBS heading into the last weekend of the regular season; in order to secure a perfect season, all they had to do was notch a win over a 5-6 North Texas team in Denton. It didn't go well.

No. 15 UTSA’s undefeated season ended in a blowout as North Texas running backs DeAndre Torrey and Ikaika Ragsdale combined for five touchdowns in a 45-23 rout of the Roadrunners on Saturday.

Quarterback Frank Harris had two of UTSA’s three lost fumbles among six overall before sitting the second half at UNT’s rain-soaked Apogee Stadium, a 10-year-old facility where a Top 25 team had never played.

UTSA (11-1, 7-1 Conference USA), which never started with more than five consecutive wins in the program’s first nine seasons, is still hosting the conference championship game Friday night against Western Kentucky. No. 1 Georgia and fourth-ranked Cincinnati are the remaining undefeated FBS teams.

The Roadrunners, ranked 10th nationally in rushing defense, had given up six touchdowns on the ground all season. The Mean Green (6-6, 5-3) matched that late in the third quarter of their fifth consecutive victory that followed a six-game losing streak as UNT earned bowl eligibility.

Playing in cold and wet conditions, the Mean Green took advantage of UTSA miscues as well as a ground attack that gashed the Roadrunners for 340 rushing yards and six touchdowns. North Texas outgained UTSA by almost 100 yards and dominated time of possession. 

After the game UNT head coach Seth Littrell described the win as "the biggest win I've had and we've had as a program." He's got a point: going into this game, North Texas was 1-47 all-time (!) against ranked teams.

While the Roadrunners were never in the hunt for a College Football Playoff berth, an undefeated season could have sent them to a New Year's Six bowl, depending on how other conference championships played out. Aside from that, an perfect season would have been a tremendous accomplishment in its own right for UTSA's relatively young program. 

Alas. USTA's streak was ended - they're no longer even ranked in the AP top 25 - while a North Texas program which had been left for dead earlier in the season extended its own winning streak to five games and is now bowl eligible. It's a truly remarkable end to UNT's regular season, and a stinging loss for the Roadrunners. 

Both schools are currently members of Conference USA but will continue to play each other when they both join the American in a couple of years.

Underdog Dynasty and the Denton Record Chronicle's Brett Vito have more. 

Incidentally, the UH Cougars open the 2022 season at UTSA.

The conference realignment carousel, and a dire situation for C-USA

Last summer, once Texas and Oklahoma announced their plan to leave the Big XII for the SEC, another round of realignment musical chairs was inevitable. The Big XII backfilled by taking Houston and two other schools from the American Athletic Conference. Now it's the American's turn, and they're poaching a handful of schools from Conference USA: 

Six schools -- Florida Atlantic, Charlotte, North Texas, UTSA, Rice and UAB -- have accepted invitations to join the American Athletic Conference, the league announced Thursday.

No date has been set for the schools to join the conference, but a source told ESPN that the earliest they could join would be the 2023-24 season.

"I think they will definitely take great advantage of the exposure and the platforms that are going to be provided by this conference," AAC commissioner Mike Aresco said of the additions. "So we look forward, down the road, and we're not certain when they're going to come in yet. That's still to be decided."

Once all the announced realignment shuffles out, the additions would give the American 14 teams in football and basketball. Aresco conceded that growing to 14 was a way for a conference that has become a feeder league for the Power 5 to be prepared for future poaching.

While nobody's going to confuse any of these additions for marquee programs, the American clearly hopes that their locations in major media markets - Miami/Fort Lauderdale, Charlotte, the DFW Metroplex, San Antonio, Houston and Birmingham - will allow the conference to retain at least some of its TV contract value once the Cougars, Cincinnati and Central Florida depart.

Aside from maintaining the conference's presence in the Houston area, the inclusion of Rice gives the other three private schools in the American - Tulane, SMU and Tulsa - as well as service academy Navy another "peer institution" they they feel comfortable competing against. I'm also happy that the Mean Green got the call up, but they need to earn this promotion by turning their struggling football program around. (I'm somewhat surprised, in fact, that SMU agreed to the addition of a North Texas program that competes with it for recruits and media bandwidth in the Metroplex.)

Normally, one would expect the next domino to fall to be the Sun Belt, which would get raided by C-USA. But in fact the opposite is happening:  

Southern Miss has joined the Sun Belt Conference and will enter the league as a full member no later than July 1, 2023, the league announced Tuesday.

The addition gives the Sun Belt 11 football-playing members (Little Rock and Texas-Arlington are also in the league).

"This is a big day for our conference," Sun Belt commissioner Keith Gill said in a prepared statement. "Southern Miss brings a host of strengths to our conference. They are competitive across all of their sports, have a strong brand and are supported by a great fan base. The electric atmosphere surrounding their games is a tradition we are proud to now be a part of."

Sources say the Sun Belt also is close to adding Marshall, Old Dominion and James Madison, which would increase the football membership to 14.

Marshall and Old Dominion are also members of C-USA. Why is the Sun Belt also taking a bite out of C-USA, rather than the other way around? 

One reason is on-field success: a few years ago Conference USA may have been perceived as a stronger conference than the Sun Belt, but thanks to recent success from programs such as Coastal Carolina, Appalachian State and Louisiana-Lafayette, the Sun Belt has overtaken Conference USA in terms of prestige. This appears to be the result of a deliberate strategy on the Sun Belt's part: while other conferences focused on media markets, they focused on competitive programs: 

“At the end of the day it probably doesn’t make a difference if they are in a major metropolitan area or if they are inside the Sun Belt footprint,” former Sun Belt commissioner Karl Benson told the Daily News-Record this week. “Those teams still have to deliver, particularly on the football field.”

Benson, who retired from his Sun Belt post in 2019 and moved into the world of college sports consulting, put the SBC on its current path during the 2012-13 realignment saga. Conference USA snagged programs in big cities while the Sun Belt looked for passionate fan bases and on-field success.

Fast forward to present day, the Sun Belt could make a case for best Group of Five football league while Conference USA fights for its very existence. That makes it all the more strange the American Athletic Conference chose to follow the C-USA model. The American responded to losing Cincinnati, Houston and Central Florida to the Big 12 by adding UT San Antonio, UAB, Florida Atlantic, Rice, Charlotte and North Texas.

To be sure, there is some grousing that the American did not invite any current Sun Belt teams to join. If I had to guess why this is the case, it probably has to do with television network politics: ESPN is the main broadcast partner for both the American and the Sun Belt, while C-USA's main broadcast partner is CBS Sports. ESPN probably told the American to leave the Sun Belt alone and go after a competitor's property instead.

In any case, the end result of the American's and the Sun Belt's predations is that C-USA will be left with five far-flung members - UTEP, Louisiana Tech, Western Kentucky, Middle Tennessee State, and Florida International - once these moves occur. This makes the conference too small, per NCAA rules, to receive automatic bids to tournaments, and leaves the conference's future in doubt, 

Conference USA's options are slim. They could add FBS independents like New Mexico State (which has had exactly four winning seasons in the last 30 years, but would be a travel partner for UTEP), or they could entice current Football Championship Subdivision programs, such as Missouri State, to make the move up to FBS. According to Indiana sportswriter Todd Aaron Golden, this marks the "desperation phase" of realignment: 

C-USA is clinging for life. There aren't many FBS options left for them. When this happens, the fertile fields desperate conferences go to are to the FCS Division, where they try to hook the latest sucker into thinking there's a pot of football gold at the end of the rainbow. 

Golden argues that there is no pot of gold for FCS schools that move up to FBS: whatever revenues schools like Missouri State might gain from being an FBS school will be more than offset by higher salaries, more scholarship requirements, and more travel costs. But that hasn't stopped schools from making the transition in the past, and that's what might save Conference USA.

CFN's Pete Fiutak offers his thoughts on the American's expansion, while Awful Announcing ponders the future of Conference USA. For anybody who is having trouble keeping track of all this collegiate reshuffling, ESPN has a handy realignment tracker.

North Texas 14, Rice 20

Last Saturday was a sunny and cool November day - a perfect afternoon for football. So I went over to Rice Stadium, hoping to see the Mean Green secure bowl eligibility with a victory over one-win Rice. Unfortunately, things didn't go as planned.

The Good: Down 20-0 at halftime, North Texas rallied to score 14 unanswered points while holding the Owls scoreless the entire second half. Quarterback Mason Fine and running back Tre Stiggers both scored rushing touchdowns, and UNT special teams recovered an Owl fumble on a punt return deep in Rice territory midway through the fourth quarter to keep hopes of a UNT win alive.

The Bad: North Texas botched the ensuing drive, as a holding penalty and three incomplete passes by Fine (who had a rather mediocre day, completing only 17 of 32 passes for 163 yards, no touchdowns and one interception) prevented the Mean Green from reaching the endzone. Rice recovered the ball on downs and ran out the clock to secure the win.

The Ugly: The first half. The Mean Green were outgained by Rice 228 yards to 51; North Texas didn't even record its first first down of the game until the 2:28 mark of the second quarter! The lone bright spot for UNT in the first half was the recovery of a Rice fumble - and they fumbled the ball back to Rice one play later!

What It Means: A 2019 season that was supposed to see North Texas compete for the C-USA west title will end in disappointment, as the Mean Green have assured themselves of a losing record. The Owls have won consecutive games for the first time since 2016.

Houston 46, North Texas 25

New quarterback? No problem! The Cougars got back to their winning ways by upsetting North Texas (yes, the Mean Green were favored) in Denton, notching their first win against an FBS opponent for the season and emphatically answering questions as to the team's "will to fight" after starting quarterback D'Eriq King opted to redshirt for the rest of the 2019 season.

The Good: With King no longer behind center, it was up to second-string quarterback Clayton Tune to show that he could direct the offense. He performed well, completing 16 of 20 pass attempts for 124 yards and a touchdown. He also rushed for 100 yards. Patrick Carr ran for another 139 yards and three scores. The UH defense, meanwhile, held UNT's rushing attack to less than 100 yards on the evening.

It was a great night for UH special teams, as they scored touchdowns on a kick return (Marquez Stevenson, 82 yards) and a punt return (Bryson Smith, 60 yards) - the first time since October 1973 that the Coogs had two such returns for touchdowns in the same game.

The Bad: The Cougars’ pass defense continued to struggle, as UNT quarterback Mason Fine lit them up for 353 yards and two touchdowns. UNT actually outgained the Coogs in this game, 456 yards to 359 (however, these totals do not include kick return yards).

When the UH secondary wasn't covering poorly, they were tackling poorly. UNT’s final touchdown occurred because Cougar safety Deontay Anderson hit UNT wide receiver Jason Pirtle but failed to wrap him up, allowing Pirtle to bounce off of him and walk into the endzone.

The Cougar defense’s 21-game streak of recording at least one turnover also came to an end, as neither team turned the ball over in this game.

The Beautiful: the Green Brigade and the Spirit of Houston joined together at halftime for this wonderful rendition of America the Beautiful:



The announced attendance of 30,123 was an Apogee Stadium record.

What It Means: This was a much-needed win for the Cougars, and Clayton Tune showed that he is capable of running Dana Holgorsen's offense for the remainder of the season. UH now gets a much-needed week off before hosting Cincinnati on October 12.

The all-time series between Houston and North Texas is now tied at seven games apiece. The next edition of the Mean Green Cougar Red Bowl will occur at TDECU Stadium next year.

New Mexico Bowl: North Texas 13, Utah State 52

Probably not the way the Mean Green wanted to end the season:

Utah State walked into the New Mexico Bowl with one of its best records in school history but uncertainty. Its head coach, Matt Wells, left to take the Texas Tech job. Interim coach Frank Maile had to prepare the Aggies with an army of graduate assistants and an announcement a new coach was coming next month.

North Texas, meanwhile, was coming into Albuquerque with experienced coach Seth Littrell and highly touted quarterback Mason Fine.

The Aggies pushed those distractions aside Saturday.

Jordan Love threw for 359 yards and four touchdowns and Jalen Greene had six catches for 151 yards and a score to help Utah State rout North Texas 52-13.

It didn’t help that Mason Fine was injured in the first quarter, but his absence had nothing to do with the fact that UNT’s defense was torched for 556 total yards and gave up passing scores of 72 and 67 yards. Utah State's defense also preyed on UNT's passing game, picking the Mean Green off four times.

It was a tough way to end a 2018 season that saw the Mean Green notch nine wins for the second season in a row, including a win at Arkansas (that featured this hilarious trick play). North Texas has now lost three bowl games in a row, and the Denton Record-Chronicle's Brett Vito wonders if the window for that elusive bowl victory is closing for the Mean Green:

UNT has raised the bar in three seasons under Littrell.

He’s raised it to the point that there is an uneasy feeling among the Mean Green faithful after the Aggies blasted UNT 52-13 at Dreamstyle Stadium.

College football — and college athletics in general — is all about capitalizing on the rare windows of opportunity to vault a program forward.

UNT is in one of those windows now, thanks to the pairing of Littrell and quarterback Mason Fine.

Fine is one of the best quarterbacks in program history. Littrell is well on his way to carving out a significant legacy with the Mean Green.

UNT has capitalized to a certain extent. The Mean Green have played in bowl games in each of the past three seasons and won the Conference USA West Division last year. That’s a significant step forward.

It just isn’t enough to satisfy Littrell, Fine or anyone else. A bowl win has been UNT’s goal from Day 1 of the Littrell era.

The chase will now extend into the fourth season of Littrell’s tenure that will also be Fine’s final year at UNT.

The Mean Green are 0-for-4 in championship games when you count those three bowl games and last season’s Conference USA title game loss to Florida Atlantic.

The state of the UNT football program is much better today than it was just a few years ago, but the big prizes - a Conference USA championship, a bowl victory, perhaps even a season-ending top 25 ranking - have yet to be realized. With a quarterback entering his final season and a head coach that continues to attract attention from other programs, 2019 could very well be a "now-or-never" type of season in Denton.

In praise of UNT's trick punt return

North Texas scored on a punt return against Arkansas last weekend because the Razorback players (wrongly) assumed that the North Texas punt returner, Keegan Brewer, had signaled for a fair catch and also because the Razorback players (wrongly) assumed that the play was over, even though the referees never blew their whistles. By now most people have seen it, but just in case you missed it:



I like this for three reasons:

1. I am a North Texas fan. (Hence the name of this blog.)
2. I am *not* an Arkansas fan. (This goes back to my childhood, when the Razorbacks were one of Houston's biggest Southwest Conference foes.)
3. I think this play is absolutely ingenious, and something that makes college football so much fun to watch.

I get that some people don't like it. I've seen comments on Facebook and elsewhere calling it a cheap trick, something that only pop warner teams would do. I disagree. Trick plays are a part of football, and there was nothing cheap about this one. It was meticulously planned. It was also exceedingly dangerous, as Will Leitch points out:

There is no player in all of organized sports more defenseless than a punt returner who is looking up at the sky, waiting to catch the ball, while 11 men bear down on him at full speed. It is the equivalent of walking across the Autobahn blindfolded with your ankles tied together. Even if you think football is “too soft” like some people, you can’t argue against the fair catch rule. Players would break their necks every week without it.

So, then, it seems particularly odd, and maybe a little disturbing, at this particular moment in football history, that a coach would exploit a rule meant to keep players safe in order to benefit his team, no? What North Texas’s special teams coordinator Marty Biagi asked Brewer to do, essentially, was stand there and wait to be destroyed … and, fingers crossed, he wouldn’t be! Even Biagi understood what he was requiring of Brewer: “You can’t just put that in on a Wednesday and then go, ‘Hey! Trust me!’” he said. 

It is to the credit of Biagi and Brewer, as well as the rest of their North Texas brethren, that the play was so well constructed and well executed that Brewer wasn’t obliterated right there on the Fayetteville grass. But the very fact that Brewer, who, I feel obliged to point out, is a college sophomore who isn’t even getting paid for any of this, was asked to stand there helpless and naked and this close to having his head ripped off for our amusement, and surely felt that saying no was never an option to him … that’s a little weird to celebrate, right? Sure, it’s funny and clever that North Texas got away with something. But what if they hadn’t? What if an Arkansas player realized that Brewer hadn’t called for a fair catch and just flat laid him out? How funny and clever is it then? 

Leitch, who concedes that this was "the coolest football play I have seen in a long time," suggests that the North Texas coaching staff was gaming a shift in attitudes about player safety:

But it is probably also worth considering that Brewer wasn’t laid flat, wasn’t absolutely destroyed by a rampaging tackler. And that is, in part, because of how football has changed over the last decade, making remorseless hits of defenseless players much, much less common than they used to be. There have been rule changes, but those changes have also cascaded through the way the game is played — they have made players more safety-conscious, as weird as that is to say about football, more deferential to opponents in positions of physical vulnerability. Which is exactly why the play design was so brilliant. What Biagi recognized was that, even if Brewer really was a sitting duck, the defender almost certainly wasn’t just going to go all-out and destroy him, because defenders are discouraged from those sort of big hits, penalized for violent-looking hits even if they are in fact legal, because of the increasing focus on the brutality of the sport. When defenders see opponents standing like sitting ducks, they don’t drool anymore, they ease up, suspicious, looking at the guy with the ball like a kid with a cookie that’s a little too available … a kid who smells a trap. Ten years ago, Brewer might have gotten leveled anyway, fair catch signal or not, out of defensive instinct. Now, the instinct is in the other direction. Now everybody plays it a little bit safer, just in case.

Now that special teams coaches from around the country are aware of this trick, it's probably not going to be replicated (by North Texas or anyone else) very often. Credit goes to North Texas: they probably only had one opportunity - ever - to make it work, and they pulled it off.

The Mean Green won the game, 44-17 - its first win over an SEC opponent in four decades - and are now 3-0 on the season.

R+L Carriers New Orleans Bowl: North Texas 30, Troy 50

North Texas kicked off the 2017-18 college bowl season in New Orleans at high noon last Saturday. Unfortunately, things didn't go very well for them:

When Troy quarterback Brandon Silvers glanced around the Superdome, his eyes would stop on the name of Archie Manning, who has become one of his mentors, or on spots in the stands where he's sat during games he attended as a fan. 

During his next visit, he'll be able to look at spots on the field where he threw four touchdown passes, as well as the end zone where he ran for a short score, to help the Trojans beat North Texas 50-30 in the New Orleans Bowl on Saturday.

"Just being on that field today is going to be one of my great memories for a long time," Silvers said. 

Silvers, a former counselor at Manning's football camp, threw for 305 yards, completing 24 of 31 passes. The Orange Beach, Alabama, native was intercepted once on a deep throw, but that hardly mattered in a game controlled by Troy's defense, which produced five North Texas turnovers.

In addition to the five turnovers, the North Texas offense had negative net rushing yards (-8) and quarterback Mason Fine was sacked six times. Add in the four touchdown passes thrown by Silvers and the 435 total yards of offense that the UNT defense surrendered to Troy, and it was a long afternoon for the Mean Green as well as the fans who made the eight-hour journey from Denton.

It's a tough way for the Mean Green to end a strong season. They netted a 9-3 regular-season record, an appearance in the Conference USA championship game, and made their second bowl appearance in two seasons. Although they were beaten by a combined score of 47-91 in their last two games, UNT's 2017 campaign was definitely better than last year's 5-8 record or their abysmal 1-11 campaign of two years ago. The Denton Record-Chronicle's Brett Vito sees positive signs for the future of head coach Seth littrell and his team:

It's important to not let a couple of losses to end the season overshadow those accomplishments and what Littrell and his staff have done to set UNT up for the future.
UNT won the C-USA West Division title on its way to a 9-5 finish. It's just the seventh season with at least nine wins in program history. 

What might be even more promising is that the Mean Green reached those goals while featuring several young players. 

Quarterback Mason Fine set UNT records for passing yards (4,052) and passing touchdowns (31) in a season as a sophomore. Wide receivers Jalen Guyton and wide receiver Rico Bussey also were key contributors in their sophomore campaigns. 

The return of that trio is just one reason UNT should feel good about its future.

The Mean Green took a step towards that future today, as their early signing day haul included three JUCO transfers that should be able to step in and play right away.

Time will tell if UNT can replicate or even improve on their success of 2017, but as of right now the program has reached a point where its goals for 2018 should include a conference championship along with a bowl victory.

Rice fires David Baliff after 30-14 loss to UNT

The Mean Green came to Rice Stadium last weekend and handed the Owls their 11th loss of the season. The Owls briefly led the game on a interception return for a touchdown, but after that North Texas took over; the score was 24-14 in the Mean Green's favor at the half, and UNT added two field goals after halftime in spite of being held to just 84 yards in the second half.

After the tough season-ending loss, focus shifted to the future of the man who had led the program for the past eleven seasons, head coach David Bailiff. Sure enough, on Monday Rice's administration announced that they were parting ways with Bailiff:

Bailiff was informed of the decision during a Monday meeting with director of athletics Joe Karlgaard. 

Bailiff was 57-80 and led Owls to four bowls including three straight from 2012 through 2014. 

Bailiff was named Conference USA's coach of the year twice (2008 and 2013). His 57 wins are second in school history behind Jess Neely. 

Bailiff took Rice to heights it hadn't reached in more than half a century, leading the Owls to two of the school's three 10-win seasons—their first was in 1949. 

During Bailiff's tenure (tied for the third-longest in school history), Rice players have regularly excelled off the field; eight players have been taken in the NFL Draft; and the school opened the $31.5 million, 60,000-square-foot Brian Patterson Center for coaches' offices and a locker and weight room in 2015. 

After going 3-9 in Bailiff's first season in 2007, Rice rebounded with a 10-3 year and won the Texas Bowl in 2008. But since winning the Owls' first outright conference title in 56 years in 2013, Bailiff's teams have done progressively worse.

Coach Bailiff was by all accounts a good guy - I've met him - who brought the Owls a measure of success the program hadn't experienced in a long time. But there's also little doubt that the program was trending downward under his leadership: from a 10-4 record (and Conference USA championship) in 2013, to an 8-5 record (and most recent bowl appearance) in 2014, to a 5-7 record in 2015, to a 3-9 record last season, to this season's 1-11 campaign. Given that trend, Rice AD Joe Karlgaard's decision is understandable.

The question now is who Rice will find to replace Bailiff. Rice is a hard place to win, due to a variety of factors including high academic standards and low fan support. It takes a special kind of coach to keep that program competitive, and even then coaching might not, by itself, be enough. As the Rice athletics program searches for their next coach, John Royal ponders the future of the program overall:

Is there a corner that the team can turn? Is there anything that can be done that will revitalize not only the dwindling Rice fanbase, but will somehow make the program relevant throughout Houston so that people will actually come out to Rice Stadium? 

These are all questions for another day. But they all need to be addressed sooner rather than later.

While Rice licks the wounds of a rough season and looks for a new coach, they might find inpiration from the team that beat them last weekend. Three seasons ago, the Mean Green had also limped their way to a 1-11 record. But Seth Littrell took over as coach following the 2015 season, and has now led North Texas to a 9-3 regular season record and a trip to the Conference USA Championship Game.

Zaxby's Heart of Dallas Bowl: North Texas 31, Army 38

Since the NCAA started allowing teams with 5-7 records (and high APR scores) to participate in bowl games last season, every team with a losing record had, remarkably, won their bowl game.

Of course, it had to be North Texas to come along last Tuesday and break that streak. 

The 2016 Zaxby's Heart of Dallas Bowl was actually entertaining. The Mean Green rallied from a ten-point deficit to send the game into overtime, but - alas! - couldn't answer the Black Knights' touchdown on their first overtime possession.

North Texas beat Army in the regular season, 35-18, but then went on to lose four out of their next five games and the Mean Green were clearly struggling as they entered this bowl game. UNT ends the season with a 5-8 record, which doesn't sound great but nevertheless represents as many wins as they've accumulated in the last two seasons combined. Here's to hoping that North Texas can continue improving next season.

Army, on the other hand, ends their season on a high note, winning their first bowl game since 2010 only a few weeks after breaking their 14-year drought over arch-rival Navy.

Incidentally, this isn't the first time a 5-7 UNT team has gone bowling. In 2001, they went to the New Orleans Bowl with that record because they won the Sunbelt Conference in spite of their overall losing record. They were then dispatched by Colorado State, 20-45.

North Texas hires a new football coach

Welcome to Denton, Mr. Littrell:

North Carolina offensive coordinator Seth Littrell will be named head coach at North Texas, the school announced on Saturday night.

Littrell and the Tar Heels are in their first ACC title game Saturday against Clemson.

Littrell, 37, has been at UNC the past two seasons. Before joining the Tar Heels, he was an offensive coordinator at Indiana (2012-13) and Arizona (2009-11). He also was an assistant at Texas Tech from 2005 to 2008.

Before Littrell was hired, the Denton Record-Chronicle's Brett Vito argued that this is a hire that North Texas must get right:

(Interim head coach Mike) Canales hinted at just how important UNT’s new coach would be to the program’s hopes to improve in his final appearance with the Mean Green.

“I wish the new coach the best of luck because this place means a lot to me,” Canales said. “I want to see it be successful and back to going to bowl games. They will do great things and this program will go right back to where it needs to be.”

McCarney had the Mean Green at that point back in 2013, when UNT produced one of the greatest seasons in program history — a 9-4 campaign capped by a win against UNLV in the Heart of Dallas Bowl.

UNT just couldn’t sustain that momentum, slid back to 4-8 and finally 1-11, leaving the 2013 season as the only winning campaign in the past 11 years.

The empty stands UNT played in front of for most of the year are a glaring indication that the Mean Green are going to do more than just field a team at a nice venue to convince all but their most loyal supporters to come out.

Miss on this decision, and UNT could be looking at an even longer stretch of floundering football, one that will further diminish what support the school has to work with in terms of support going forward at a time other programs UNT competes with in the state appear to be on the rise.

This is the key issue: North Texas has excellent facilities, most notably Apogee Stadium, completed in 2011 at a cost of $78 million. It is located in the recruit-rich DFW Metroplex. It has the 5th-largest enrollment in the state. There is no reason why this program cannot be competitive in Conference USA.

Yet the Mean Green continue to struggle, both on the field and at the gate. An announced crowd of 8,305 attended UNT's season-ending loss to UTEP, although as Vito reports (and as anybody who watched it on TV can attest) that the actual number of people in the stands was much lower. The program averaged 13,631 for its season just concluded - the lowest average, Vito reports, since 1998. That's not the type of return that UNT athletics expects on its investment, and it's not the type of return that makes the program sustainable.

UNT just can’t afford to miss on this hire. It’s been a long, long time since UNT was consistently successful back in the early 2000s under Darrell Dickey, who led the Mean Green to four straight conference titles beginning in 2001.

Ironically, Dickey was named the interim coach at Memphis on Sunday after Justin Fuente left for Virginia Tech.

UNT has to start stringing together winning seasons again like it did for a while under Dickey. The school and its supporters have invested far too much to see the program continue to flounder.

UNT has searched for an answer to how to spark its program ever since that run of winning seasons.

The school has a new stadium and a spot in Conference USA.

Soon it will have a new coach. For UNT’s sake, the school had better hope it will have the final piece of the puzzle with its new head coach as well.

What about Littrell's coaching experience?

Littrell has excelled while guiding UNC’s offense in 2014 and 2015. The Tar Heels are averaging 495.7 yards per game this season. Before UNC, he served as offensive coordinator at Indiana University, which finished ninth in the nation in total offense in 2013, averaging 508.5 yards per game. Littrell first became an offensive coordinator during a three-year stay at the University of Arizona from 2009-11. He was the co-offensive coordinator in 2010 and took over the job full-time the following season.

Littrell, an Oklahoma native, last worked in Texas from 2005-08, when he was the running backs coach at Texas Tech. He is a University of Oklahoma graduate and was a running back and team captain on the Sooners’ 2000 national championship team.

Littrell went into coaching after his playing days and has coached in seven bowl games.

Looks pretty good. Having been a Mean Green fan since I moved to Denton in 1999, and following the football program's ups-and-downs through the tenures of Darrell Dickey, Todd Dodge, Dan McCarney and Mike Canales (twice, in an interim capacity), I can only hope that Littrell succeeds. I guess we'll find out, starting in the fall of 2016.

Some 5-7 teams get to go bowling

Some teams with losing records will be going bowling this season:

It’s official: There will be multiple teams with losing records playing in bowl games next month.

With only currently 75 bowl-eligible teams to fill 80 bowl berths, at least two bowls will need teams with 5-7 records. And there could be as many as five teams with losing record earning bowl berths because not enough teams reached six wins to fill the record 41 bowl games, including the College Football Playoff title game.

I've always pushed back against the argument that there are "too many" bowl games. Nobody's forcing anyone to watch the ones they find uninteresting or unworthy, and as a college football fan I agree with something that former Sports Illustrated sportswriter Arash Markazi once said: "At the end of the day, it's still college football and what could be better than college football in December and early January? Saying there are too many bowl games is like saying there are too many presents under the Christmas tree."

That being said, you have to wonder if we've reached the bowl saturation threshold. Bowl games are supposed to be a reward for teams that had a successful, winning season. More recently, the proliferation of bowl games has meant that anybody who manages a .500 record goes to a bowl. Now we've come to the point where teams with losing records get to go bowling.

While we've come a long way from when deserving teams were routinely shut out of bowl games - I used to keep tally of the winning teams that were Screwed and Shafted out of postseason play - it appears we've reached the point where bowl games are an award for participation, rather than an actual reward for success.

Unless, perhaps, it's success in the classroom, which will decide which schools with losing records make it to the postseason:

Teams with 5-7 records will become eligible for at least two bowl bids and as many as five, based on their Academic Progress Rates. The NCAA Division I council approved a recommendation made by the football oversight committee Monday to fill the record 41 bowls with five-win teams because not enough teams will meet the standard bowl-eligibility requirements.

To no one's surprise, a certain school on South Main has made the list of potentials:

Based on 2013-14, Nebraska has the best APR among 5-7 teams, at 985. Missouri and Kansas State are next on the list, with an APR of 976, followed by Minnesota (975), San Jose State (975), Illinois (973) and Rice (973).

Nebraska, as the first team in line for a bowl invite based on APR, announced Monday night it will play in a bowl if invited.

Missouri, however, will decline any potential bowl. In order for the Owls to make it into the postseason, other schools listed above will have to decline invites as well, and a couple of teams fighting for bowl eligibility will have to lose on Saturday:

Kansas State can become bowl eligible Saturday with a win at West Virginia, but the Wildcats should get in either way. Georgia State (5-6) visits Georgia Southern and South Alabama (5-6) hosts Appalachian State as those teams seek to reach bowl-eligibility based on record and shut out the 5-7 teams with high APRs.

In the past 20 years, only three teams with losing records have received bowl berths: Georgia Tech (2012), UCLA (2011) and North Texas (2001).

I remember that 2001 North Texas team well, because I lived in Denton at the time. They went 0-5 out-of-conference, but their 5-1 in-conference record was good enough for them to clinch the Sun Belt title and go to the New Orleans Bowl.

At the time, the idea of a team with a losing record going to a bowl seemed like a bizarre oddity, a once-in-a-generation fluke. But now it appears to be becoming commonplace.

North Texas fires Dan McCarney after inexcusable loss

Yeah... When you pay an FCS school $425k to be an easy homecoming win, and they instead come to your stadium and utterly humiliate you, it's time for a change:

Dan McCarney was fired as North Texas' head coach Saturday night following a devastating loss to Portland State in the Mean Green's homecoming game.

The Vikings hammered UNT 66-7, the largest margin of defeat for a Football Bowl Subdivision team in a game against a team from the Football Championship Subdivision ever.

The loss dropped UNT to 0-5 for the first time since the 2008 season and continued a rapid downhill slide following the Mean Green's Heart of Dallas Bowl win following the 2013 season.

UNT athletic director Rick Villarreal confirmed the school's decision to part ways with McCarney in a hastily called press conference that took the place of the Mean Green's regular postgame interview session.

"This football team has continued to struggle more and more each week in the last three or four weeks," Villarreal said. "It started at the beginning of the season. We are not in position where we are competitive really in any phase of the game."

After their nine-win season and bowl victory over UNLV a couple of seasons ago, I truly expected to see North Texas continue to improve. They had an excellent new facility in Apogee Stadium, Conference USA was a step up from the Sun Belt, they were located in the talent-rich DFW Metroplex and Dan McCarney had had some success at Iowa State. Instead of improving, the program has plummeted. The Mean Green went 4-8 last season, are winless halfway through this season, and as of right now  might very well be the worst FBS program in the nation; Sagarin ranks the Mean Green 195th out of 253 Divsion I football teams and dead last in the FBS.

Granted, Portland State is a good FCS team, having beaten the Pac-12's Washington State earlier in the year. But a 66-7 drubbing? Villareal did what he had to do to placate what's left of the UNT fanbase and to begin the search for somebody to right the ship.

McCarney finishes with a 22-32 record over four-and-a-half seasons at North Texas. Offensive coordinatior Dan Canales will reprise his role as interim head coach (he last led the team in 2010, after Todd Dodge was fired) for the rest of the 2015 season.

North Texas 21, Rice 41

With the Cougars taking the week off, and the Mean Green making a trip into town, I decided to go to Rice Stadium to watch them take on the Owls. However, Rice scored a touchdown on the very first play from scrimmage - an 88-yard pass from Driphus Jackson to Jordan Taylor - and that set the tone of the game.

The Good: The Mean Green managed to keep the game close - at least for a half - by managing some big plays of their own. Darvin Kidsy ran a kickoff back 100 yards for a touchdown, and North Texas also scored on a 51-yard touchdown pass. The Mean Green actually led this game at halftime, 21-14.

The Bad: The Mean Green fumbled the opening kickoff of the second half, which led to a Rice field goal, and it was all downhill from there. On the very next possession, the Owls picked off UNT quarterback Andrew McNulty for a sixty-yard interception return. The Owls scored 27 unanswered points in the second half, while the Mean Green offense sputtered. North Texas would manage only 23 rushing yards for the entire game.

What it Means: I was hoping that the Mean Green would be able to build on last season's bowl win and have a successful 2014. But they are now 2-6, meaning that they need to win out - not likely - in order to avoid their ninth losing season out of the last ten. The Owls, on the other hand, have won four games in a row.

Coming full circle with the Mean Green

The very first University of North Texas football game I ever watched was against Nevada - Las Vegas.

It was the evening of Thursday, September 2, 1999. I had finished grad school and begun working for the City of Denton just a couple of months before, and being the college football fiend that I was, Idecided to buy season tickets to watch the local team play.

(I ended up with seats on the 45 yard line, home side, of Fouts Field, if that provides any indication of just how sparse the Mean Green's fanbase was.)

The Rebels were playing their first game as members of the new Mountain West Conference. John Robinson was their head coach. And UNLV handily defeated the Mean Green, 26-3.

North Texas, which hadn't had a winning season in five years, would only win two games in 1999. They would see some success a few years later, winning the Sun Belt Conference four consecutive years between 2001 and 2004, but would return to the dregs of college football afterward. The Mean Green strung together eight losing seasons in a row between 2005 and 2012, including a three-season stretch where the team managed a 5-31 record. The North Texas program struggled with poor coaching and obsolete facilities.

That changed in 2011, when the Mean Green introduced Dan McCarney as their new head coach. That fall Apogee Stadium opened. Last year, UNT made the move from the Sun Belt Conference to Conference USA. And in 2013, the Mean Green put together their first winning season since 2004, notching an 8-4 record and a bowl appearance.

Needless to say, as I watched North Texas defeat UNLV, 36-14, in yesterday's Heart of Dallas Bowl, I couldn't help but think that things had come full circle for the Mean Green.

One winning season does not a trend make, of course, and only time will tell if UNT will become a good college football program in the years to come. But the ingredients for success are certainly there: a state-of-the-art stadium, good coaching and location in the talent-rich DFW Metroplex.

Both UNT and Houston still have open dates on their 2014 schedule, so there's speculation that the Coogs and the Mean Green could play each other. Which is fine with me, as I had a great time the last time the two teams met.

Houston 44, North Texas 21

My mixed loyalties: a Mean Green hat and a Cougar shirt.

AKA the Mean Green Cougar Red Bowl! This was UNT's first visit to Houston since 1980, and a game I had been looking forward to, for obvious reasons, since it featured my two favorite schools.

It was also the best game that the Cougars have put together so far this season, as they won handily. Running back Charles Sims had the best day of his career, rushing for 210 yards and scoring a touchdown on 21 carries. He also caught five passes for 55 yards and another touchdown. Quarterback David Piland, meanwhile, continued to show improvement, completing 31 of 41 passes for 321 yards and two touchdowns; he also rushed for another. Piland was, to be sure, helped by the fact that receivers are no longer dropping passes the way they were the first couple of weeks of the season, which speaks to the improvements being made by the team overall. Other good news: the Cougar offense gave up no turnovers, kicker Matt Hogan connected on all three field goal attempts, UNT kick returner Brelan Chancellor was held in check, and the team as a whole was only flagged four times for 30 yards.

David Piland directs the UH offense in the first half. He had a good outing, but RB Charles Sims was the player of the game.

This isn't to say that everything went well; the Cougar defense showed a disturbing inability to tackle or pressure Eagle quarterback Derek Thompson as they yielded 483 yards of total offense to North Texas. The defense was particularly embarrassed late in the first half when Mean Green running back Jeremy Brown broke six (!) tackles on his way to a 48-yard touchdown run, and North Texas rammed the ball down the Cougars' throats for another easy score early in the third quarter. North Texas didn't see the endzone again after that; I'm not entirely sure if that's because the Cougar defense made adjustments or UNT's offense just packed it in (they didn't seem to play with much of a sense of urgency in the second half, and they also threw two interceptions). Hopefully it's the former, but the defense still remains very much a work in progress. Proper tackling is a fundamental aspect of defensive play and I just don't understand why this defense is having such a problem with it.

The Green Brigade performs at halftime. They were larger, louder and had a more interesting show than the the UH band.

North Texas can take pride in the fact that they won halftime; the Green Brigade is a much better band than the Spirit of Houston. I know the bands are entertaining, not competing, I know that UNT is known for its music curriculum, and I know that caring about halftime at all is lame, but still...

The Spirit of Houston has new uniforms this season and a lot of people I know don't like them. I haven't formed an opinion.

The really disappointing aspect of the game was the attendance. The crowd was announced at 25,746 but considerably fewer than that number were actually in the stands, and the number would have been even worse had it not been for the two or three thousand fans (and band) that North Texas brought. Student turnout was particularly disappointing. It just goes to show that Houston's fanbase is among the most fickle and fair-weather in the nation: if you're not winning, they're not coming. A lot of people sat through the first two losses at Robertson and decided that it just wasn't worth their while to return. The pregame tailgating scene was as desolate as I had ever seen it.

The stadium was only about two-thirds full for this game. A lot of people have given up on the Coogs after their 0-3 start.

That being said, the Cougars are now on a two-game winning streak and can even their record if they get past Alabama-Birmingham next Saturday. This is a home game against a team whose only win is against an FCS school, so the Coogs should be expected to do so, especially since the team is inarguably improving from week to week. The Eagles, meanwhile, fall to 2-4 and continue to struggle.

UNT quarterback Derek Thompson rolls out. He ended the day with 252 yards, two interceptions and no touchdowns.

In spite of the fact that the Cougars have won the last four meetings against the Mean Green, UNT still leads the all-time series between the two schools, 6 games to 7. This is the end of a one-off home-and-home series with North Texas, but I hope the two schools schedule each other again in the future.

North Texas to join Conference USA, and other realignment news

The conference realignment dominoes continue to fall. Conference USA, which is losing Houston, SMU, Central Florida and Memphis to the Big East after the 2012-2013 season, is back-filling its ranks by picking up a handful of schools, including North Texas:

Conference USA commissioner Britton Banowsky today announced that the University of North Texas has been extended and accepted an invitation for Conference USA membership, effective July 1, 2013.  UNT is one of five schools that will be joining Conference USA, along with the University of Texas-San Antonio, Louisiana Tech University,  Florida International University and the University of North Carolina-Charlotte.

"This is validation that the progress we have made in our athletic programs in conjunction with our university's academic reputation has made us a suitable fit for the high standards of Conference USA," Director of Athletics Rick Villarreal says.  "Conference USA provides a great partnership with several schools in our geographic proximity and will help all of us create outstanding regional rivalries.  It is a tremendous opportunity for North Texas athletics."

Each new member will join the league in all sports for 2013, Charlotte will begin conference participation in football in 2015. The metro area population of these schools is nearly 18 million. Existing members are East Carolina University, Marshall University, Rice University, University of Southern Mississippi, Tulane University, The University of Tulsa, University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB) and University of Texas El Paso (UTEP). Divisions will be set in the near future.

I think this is a good move for the Mean Green. However weak C-USA might be perceived nationally, it is still a step up from UNT's current home in the Sun Belt Conference. As of right now, Conference USA has more bowl tie-ins and a better television contract than the Sun Belt. Furthermore, the geographic compactness of the new western C-USA - Tulsa, Louisiana Tech, Rice, and Texas-San Antonio are all relatively easy drives from Denton, and Southern Miss, Tulane and Texas-El Paso are doable for the more adventurous - reduces travel costs to the program and allows the Mean Green faithful to see more road games than they were able to do in the Sun Belt, which had no other schools in Texas and whose nearest school to UNT was in Monroe, Louisiana.

In addition to North Texas, four other schools will be joining Conference USA in 2013. Louisiana Tech won the Western Athletic Conference football championship last year but had never been a good geographic fit for the WAC. Texas-San Antonio has only been playing college football for one year but, given that it is the only FBS football program in the nation's seventh-largest city and plays in an outstanding facility in the Alamodome, has a lot of potential. The addition of Florida International University allows C-USA to keep a presence in the recruiting hotbed of Florida, and the Panthers have gone bowling the last two seasons. UNC-Charlotte was a non-football member of Conference USA from 1995 until 2005. It will rejoin C-USA for all sports except football in 2013 and its nascent football program will begin conference play in  2015.

In other conference realignment news, Utah State and San Jose State are leaving the WAC to join the Mountain West Conference, while South Alabama, Texas State and Georgia State are becoming members of the Sun Belt. Sports Illustrated's Stewart Mandel notes that one-fourth of the Football Bowl Subdivision's teams will have changed conferences during this current round of realignment and provides a handy recap for those who might be confused. He also notes that this current reshuffling of programs will leave the WAC with only two members, both of which might be forced to drop down to the Football Championship Subdivision. Brett McMurphy of CBS Sports plays taps for the once-proud WAC while simultaneously noting that its demise will mean more money for the remaining ten FBS conferences.

Wrapping up the 2011 college football season

The 2011 college football season came to an end last night with Alabama's 21-0 victory over LSU in the BCS National Championship Game. Kudos to the Crimson Tide; not only did I predict last September that Alabama would not be in the national title mix, but I was also among those who thought that Oklahoma State, rather than Alabama, was more worthy of facing LSU in the national title game. I was proven wrong on both counts. Although Oklahoma State fans might beg to differ, in terms of crowning a champion I think the BCS got it right this year.

Rounding out the top five in both the AP and Coaches' polls are LSU, Oklahoma State, Oregon and Arkansas.

The season also ended on a happy note for the University of Houston Cougars and new head coach Tony Levine. They convincingly defeated the Penn State Nittany Lions, 30-14, in the Ticketcity.com Bowl in Dallas last week. Case Keenum ended his college career with another record-setting day, completing 45 of 69 attempts for 538 yards, three touchdowns and no interceptions. Penn State fell behind early - the Coogs were up 17-0 by the end of the first quarter - and the Lions' anemic offense simply couldn't catch up.

The naysayer might argue that Houston's victory over Penn State means little; that the Nittany Lions were unfocused after suffering through a devastating sex abuse scandal that resulted in the unceremonious firing of legendary coach Joe Paterno. However, the fact remains Penn State was ranked, had finished the regular season with a 9-3 record, and was a Big Ten powerhouse: one of the most historically-storied programs in all of college football. As the Houston Press's John Royal argues, this truly is a big win for the Coogs:

There will probably still be doubters. Those critics who say the Cougars season was a fluke. That they would have been demolished if they made a BCS Bowl. And the detractors will probably say this game proves nothing, what with all of the distractions going on around Penn State this season.

But the Cougars were beset by distractions this past month, too. And they set aside those distractions and played their game of the season, demolishing a ranked opponent before a national audience. They beat a squad that should have been able to dominate them physically, and probably had the better players, more highly recruited players.

It may just be the TicketCity Bowl, but the Cougars are winners. And they won this game without a single doubt. So criticize all you want because right now, the Cougars don't care. Instead, the question should probably be: How in the hell did Penn State manage to win nine games this season?

The Cougars ended the season ranked 18th in the AP poll, which is a pathetic travesty but which probably speaks to the fact that the national sportswriters were unimpressed by Houston's weak schedule as well as their crushing defeat at the hands of Southern Miss on national television. The coaches were a bit more generous, placing the Cougars 14th in the final USA Today poll, and I think that's probably more accurate. Regardless of their placement, the Cougars end their season with a national ranking for the first time since the 1990 season. The Coogs also end the season with 13 wins for the first time in school history (LSU was the only other program in major college football to do so this season) and a victory in a bowl game for only the second time since 1980.

It's true that no team ended the season with a winning record. It's also true that the Southern Miss team that handed he Coogs their only loss of the season was pretty good (the Golden Eagles ended the season with a 12-2 record, a bowl win of their own, a #20 ranking in the AP poll and a #19 ranking in the USA Today poll). Nevertheless, the Cougars and their fans will forever look back at last December's C-USA title game and wonder what could have been.

The North Texas Mean Green, under new head coach Dan McCarney, ended the season with a 5-7 record, which is a two-win improvement over the 2010 campaign. It's a step in the right direction.

Anyway, on to the offseason. Sigh...

Houston 48, North Texas 23

Last weekend I took Kirby up to Denton to see the Houston play North Texas in the inaugural game at Apogee Stadium. The $78 million stadium is a sorely-needed replacement for Fouts Field, which was built in 1951 and which was where I watched many a Mean Green football game when I lived in Denton.
As the University of Houston continues to move towards constructing a replacement for aging Robertson Stadium, there are definitely a lot of lessons they can learn from Apogee's design. The sightlines were good and the concession areas were well-planned. I especially liked the width between the seating rows, which made it possible to walk past people without bumping into their knees.
The Mean Green were clearly pumped up to be playing their very first game in their new stadium and gave the slow-starting Coogs all they could handle in the first half. Mean Green quarterback Derrick Thompson, pictured above, completed 21 of 33 passes for 172 yards and ran for another 41 yards. The Cougars did a decent job keying in on UNT's most potent weapon, holding Mean Green running back Lance Dunbar to 62 yards and a touchdown on 18 carries.
The Cougars clung toa 20-17 lead at halftime, but took over the game in the second half by scoring 28 unanswered points. In the picture above, Case Keenum stands in the shotgun flanked by running backs Michael Hayes and Bryce Beall. Keenum had an impressive outing, completing 26 of 41 passes for 458 yards and five touchdowns. Hayes led the rushing attack with 13 carries for 76 yards and a touchdown.
Kirby had a dilemma: he could either cheer for his father's undergraduate alma mater or his mother's graduate alma mater. At first he cheered for the Mean Green, but as the Cougars began to pull away he appeared to switch loyalties... The Cougars won handily, 48-23.
The Green Brigade performs at halftime (due to budgetary limitations, Houston did not bring a band or even cheerleaders in spite of the relatively short distance between Houston and Denton). The "home" side of Apogee Stadium features a nice provision of club seating and luxury boxes that simply didn't exist at Fouts Field and will hopefully generate income for the program.

A rather unique view of the stadium can be seen in this cool "gigapan" photograph. A decent contingent of UH fans were on hand for the game, as the photo shows. (Kirby and I are in the photograph, if you zoom in to the lower right side of the stadium and look carefully...)

I had expected this to be a tough game, given the circumstances, so the fact that the final score wasn't a "blowout" does not surprise or concern me. The Mean Green, meanwhile, are a team in rebuilding mode but played admirably. They will improve, and Apogee Stadium is one of the reasons why. The new stadium is attractive to fans as well as recruits and, with a seating capacity of about 31,000, is well-suited to the program's current needs. The 28,075 in attendance, in fact, is the third-largest crowd in Mean Green football history.

Kirby and I spent the night in Denton. It was a bit eerie waking up the following morning of September 11th, because Denton was where Kirby's mother and I were living when it all happened ten years ago.