North Texas battles perception, inconsistency

IOWA CITY - North Texas' football past resembles Jello in the summer heat. There's a slight formation at first but there's little to mold into something of substance.

The Mean Green's history begins with consensus All-American and Pro Football Hall of Fame defensive tackle 'Mean” Joe Greene. There also are connections with Iowa, which is important this week when North Texas comes to Kinnick Stadium. Hayden Fry coached the Mean Green from 1973-78 and led the squad to 10-1 and 9-2 seasons before accepting the job at Iowa. Fry's former defensive coordinator, Bill Brashier, still holds school records for interceptions in a season (10) and career (19). He played from 1949-51.

North Texas quarterback Andrew McNulty led Iowa City High to the 2009 Class 4A state title. North Texas Coach Dan McCarney played for the Hawkeyes in the early 1970s and coached under Fry in the ‘80s. He guided Iowa State from 1995-2006 and became head coach at North Texas in 2011.

Two games into his fifth season, McCarney has compiled a 22-29 record at North Texas. In 2013, he directed the Mean Green to a Heart of Dallas Bowl victory and a 9-4 season. It was just the sixth time in 100 football seasons the school won at least nine games. Half of those seasons have come from either Fry or McCarney.

North Texas' journey from FCS after 1994 to its current home in Conference USA featured one season as a Division I independent and three conference shifts. That has fed a stereotype that the program doesn't match the stature of its larger Texas competitors or even the history of comparable in-state foes like Rice, UTEP, SMU or Houston.

'When I got here the perception was it was just a small-time program,” McCarney said. 'It's one thing rolling up your sleeves and working like crazy, and it's another overcoming that perception. You're I-AA, you're Division I, you're big time, you're small time, you're making a commitment, you're not making a commitment. We heard all that stuff as soon as I took the job here.”

Part of that impression comes from the program's inconsistency. Since joining the Football Bowl Subdivision, North Texas has produced just four winning seasons. From 2001-04, the program finished 25-1 in Sun Belt Conference play and advanced to the New Orleans Bowl after each season. But then it took nine years before McCarney's 2013 breakthrough. In the middle, the Mean Green were 22-73.

McCarney's squads have won at least four games each season, which is more than any campaign from 2005-2010. This year's squad has dealt with its own version of inconsistency. In its season opener Sept. 12 against SMU, the Mean Green led 13-10 entering the fourth quarter. But North Texas committed three turnovers, was outrushed 69-0 and SMU scored 21 consecutive points in the final period.

Last week against Rice, North Texas gave up 562 yards on 90 offensive plays in a 38-24 loss. The Mean Green trailed 38-10 late in the third quarter before scoring a pair of touchdowns. They've struggled in most categories from scoring offense (119th at 18.5 points per game) and total offense (102nd, 359 yards per game) to scoring defense (109th, 34.5 ppg) and total defense (117th, 503 ypg). That's an unfortunate recipe when traveling to Iowa (3-0) this week.

'You have to be confident, you have to be good, you have to make some plays that maybe you have not made in your first couple of games and then you've got to try to make it a four-quarter football game,” McCarney said. 'We've not been able to do that in our first two games, unfortunately. You get into that fourth quarter and it's still tough, it's still tight, it's still close, then hopefully the confidence in the football team can grow. If you don't, then it can turn ugly. I've sure been on both sides of those games in my career.”

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