Hlas: North Texas squirt gun vs. Iowa Hawkeyes' bazooka

Dan McCarney couldn't and wouldn't say it two years ago, but we all knew it anyway. This isn't a fair fight.

The resources available to Iowa's football program easily dwarf those of the University of North Texas. If the Mean Green win Saturday in Kinnick Stadium or even comes close, UNT will have maximized its abilities while the Hawkeyes will have stumbled badly.

A more-likely result is one similar to when the two teams met at Kinnick in 2015. Iowa won, 62-16.

McCarney was UNT's coach that day. He has been on both sides of these sorts of games. He has lived the penthouse life of college football and worked in modest neighborhoods.

His coaching career began as an Iowa graduate assistant in 1977 and ended with his midseason dismissal at North Texas in 2015 when the Mean Green started the season 0-5.

McCarney was on the coaching staffs of two Big Ten champions at Iowa, a Rose Bowl winner at Wisconsin, and a national champion at Florida with Urban Meyer. There hasn't been a better Iowa State team since the 2000 Cyclones he coached went 9-3 and won the Insight Bowl over Pittsburgh.

As well as anyone, anywhere, McCarney knows what North Texas is up against Saturday afternoon.

'I was at Iowa with Hayden Fry, at Wisconsin with Barry Alvarez. I was at Iowa State, and at North Texas,' McCarney said this week from his Sarasota, Fla., home. 'At all four, I got there when they were bottomed out.'

All four arose during McCarney's time there. North Texas won nine games and the Heart of Dallas Bowl in 2013, his third year as the team's coach. The lumps his UNT clubs took over five years there came largely from the sacrificial-lamb games the Mean Green and virtually all smaller-conference FBS teams go on the road to play.

'We played at Alabama, at LSU, at Georgia,' McCarney said. 'We played at Texas. My last year, we played against an outstanding team at Iowa.

'Administrators, athletic directors sign contracts to go play Power Five schools for big paychecks. Meanwhile, it lessens to a great degree your opportunity to win games.'

Besides North Texas, Saturday's visiting teams in Big Ten stadiums include Georgia State, Bowling Green, Air Force, Army and FCS Morgan State. All are underdogs by at least three touchdowns.

'You as a coach try to make sure everyone inside your locker room has strong hearts and minds,' McCarney said. 'If the head coach isn't a ray of hope, I don't know who is. The head coach better be that guy.

'But those games are tough, and it takes a toll on everyone. You don't have some things the other team does, no matter how hard you work, no matter how your motivational side, no matter your schematic side, no matter your developmental side.

'You're a squirt gun going against cannons and bazookas.'

Such is big-time college football, where size matters. Five FBS teams went to bowls last year with 3-6 records against fellow Power Five conference clubs. They scheduled themselves into bowls with nonconference home games against smaller programs.

Purdue is the only Big Ten team playing two nonconference games against Power Five teams this season. Just one of Alabama's four nonconference games this season is against a Power Five foe.

That's almost like an NFL team playing three of its regular-season games against the Racine Raiders, Sussex Stags and Toledo Thunder.

In 2013, McCarney's team was North Texas' first with a winning record in nine years. But without major-college/major-conference resources, it's hard to sustain success.

'One of the many reasons Coach Fry came to Iowa was he was tired of winning games down there (at North Texas) and nobody really giving a damn. There were no bowls.'

The Mean Green went 9-2 under Fry in 1977 and 1978, but didn't get a bowl invitation. In 1979, he was the Hawkeyes' coach.

'Thank God Bump Elliott hired him at the University of Iowa,' McCarney said.

Iowa was a ham-and-egg program when Fry took over compared to now. Now, it will hand North Texas a check for $900,000 for being its designated victim and will still be able to afford filet mignon after the game.

l Comments: (319) 368-8840; mike.hlas@thegazette.com