From 2007 to 2012, I went to the University of North Texas for two degrees. In those years, my alma mater went a combined 17-55 for a .236 winning percentage and no bowl games. The Mean Green have 26 conference championships in 109 seasons of football, but none since 2004.
The year after I got my Master's, UNT had a pretty strong season under former Iowa State head coach Dan McCarney, going 9-4 and winning a bowl game for the first time since 2002. That 36-14 win over UNLV in the Heart of Dallas Bowl is still North Texas' most recent bowl win. Less than two years later, McCarney was fired immediately after a 66-7 walloping at the hands of FCS Portland State on homecoming in October. (I was there for both games.)
In the past decade, UNT has consistently made bowl games, but two of those were losing-record APR fill-ins, and another three bowls followed 7-5 or 6-6 regular seasons.
Despite being located in arguably the nation's best metro area for high school recruiting talent and upgrading conferences during realignment musical chairs, UNT is generally irrelevant in the grand scheme of FBS football.
This year, there was a little bit of promise in the preseason. Despite losing star quarterback Chandler Morris to the ACC and Virginia, head coach Eric Morris (no relation) brought in defensive coordinator wunderkind Skyler Cassity from Sam Houston State to invigorate a side of the ball that had grown a reputation to college football diehards as a unit that would mess up all of the offense's great work.
Through three weeks, it had been working. Week 1 was always going to be a walkover against Lamar (you know my position on playing FCS teams, but was a shutout nonetheless. Week 2 was an overtime win at Western Michigan, where the Mean Green somehow committed no turnovers, outgained the Broncos by over 100 yards, and still had to win with a "bottom of the inning" OT touchdown after never leading in regulation.
2-0 with a narrow road win against the MAC and a blowout home win against the FCS is what should be expected of an American Conference team where 6 wins and a lower-tier bowl is a pass mark. But the next game would tell a lot: Washington State coming to Denton.
Wazzu isn't exactly Power 4 or 5 anymore, but it's a program that was ranked for a few weeks last season. If North Texas were easy-schedule frauds, they'd lose and it wouldn't be particularly close. Win, and the possibility of American Conference contention — or at least competitive home games with South Florida and UTSA in October — beckoned.
Five first-half turnovers and a 42-3 halftime lead later, and I was as confident as I've been in years with the program.
Opening conference play with Army's option attack on the road would present a whole different set of challenges for the upgraded defense. And yet, the defense pounced for the second straight midday Saturday. For a second straight week, Cassity's defense chased the opposing team's starting QB.
The 21-point lead UNT built in the first quarter wouldn't last. Army's Dewayne Coleman came in at QB, and got the Black Knights to 31-28 early in the 4th. UNT answered with a touchdown, and a 38-28 lead with Army's timeouts gone looked safe. A quick touchdown drive by Army and a first down fumble from a backup UNT running back changed all that.
At that time, I realized that this game had real ramifications instead of merely an early season conference game played outside of the limelight.
The 12-team playoff is still a novelty, as is a guaranteed playoff spot for Group of 5 conferences. Last year, Ashton Jeanty and Boise State were so good and had national bonafides after a narrow loss in Week 2 at Oregon that the spot was theirs to lose by the start of November.
Currently, there's no G5 representative in the AP Top 25. That means the "outsider spot" in the playoff is truly up for grabs a month into the season.
To be clear, I don't think North Texas will get this spot. But it's much more of a discussion than it's ever been during the playoff era, with The Athletic's playoff odds giving UNT a 9% chance as of Sept. 22. But that hope would have gone up in smoke if the Mean Green had lost at Army.
UNT eventually blew the lead and probably got lucky that Coleman was hurt for OT. Still, my Mean Green punched the ball into the end zone for the first possession of OT and made a stop when they had to.
At 4-0, the Mean Green are now getting votes in the AP poll. A home game against 1-3 South Alabama is next. The oddsmakers have made UNT a double-digit favorite, but the Jaguars were a 2-point conversion away from taking American Conference favorite Tulane to OT on Sept. 6. G5 land is unpredictable, and very few games between teams on this level are foregone conclusions.
Yet, the Mean Green don't have to play Tulane or Memphis until a potential conference title game. The toughest games on paper are at home. And I've allowed myself to hope that my alma mater might actually have a chance to play in the playoff.
Pessimism is easy to come by in today's college football landscape. Conferences are massive, old rivalries are played too sparingly, and it seems like the SEC and Big Ten have become so powerful that an AFC and NFC of college football is inevitable in the next 10 years. But the G5 playoff spot is one change college football has made for the better in recent years.
Regardless of whether my alma mater falls flat on Saturday or goes into December with a win-and-in playoff opportunity, I'm thankful for the hope.
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