Saturday, February 13, 2010

North Texas - 2/13/10

DENTON, Texas - Just a few weeks ago, we were talking about never seeing snow during a Sun Belt Conference road trip. The number of times doubled today.

The Denton area got nearly a foot of snow in the past few days. Fortunately, it's been warm enough that it's been melting, although that seems to be making a slushy mess on the roads and sidewalks. The city seems to be running as normal, as opposed to a certain town in northeast Arkansas a few weeks ago.

The team stayed at the hotel in Murfreesboro after the game on Thursday night, something that does not often happen often after games. After a quick breakfast in the lobby at around 7:30 a.m. on Friday, the team headed to the Nashville airport for a flight to Dallas/Fort Worth and a short drive north to Denton.

In the last blog, we mentioned that the Murphy Center was only 36.1 miles from the Nashville airport. The Super Pit in Denton is 35.0 miles from DFW, just 0.6 miles farther than the Ritchie Center is from DIA.

Both Denver and North Texas arrived at DFW at roughly the same time, as UNT had played at New Orleans on Thursday night.

After a quick lunch in the hotel lobby, the players had a few hours to relax before practice at the Super Pit at 6 p.m. The team then went to Texas Roadhouse, which of course was founded in Clarksville, Ind., and has become legendary, according to the back of the menu.

Aside from freshman Blake Foeman, who has been suffering from food poisoning during the trip, everyone appears to be in high spirits and ready for tonight's game.

Watch Out for Skeeters: Brothers Travis Hallam and Chase Hallam are making a sort of homecoming at Saturday's game. The Hallams grew up in Mesquite, Texas, home of the Mesquite High School Skeeters, which is just over 50 miles southeast of Denton.

According to Travis and Chase, they have already lined up tickets for several family and friends, and dozens of others have told them that they'll be making the trip. In all, they expect in the neighborhood of 100 people at the Super Pit cheering for them, which is especially nice in enemy territory.

Among those, of course, will be their father, Doug, and mother, Debbie, who have traveled from Mesquite to nearly every game this season. The have said that it's easier for them now that their sons both are playing for Denver, even if "home" games 700 miles from their home, which is why they expect to miss no more than 3-4 games this season (they have or will watch them on television or Pioneer Vision, of course).

When the boys were in high school, Doug said that they went to 233 of their sons games during one year when Travis and Chase were in high school.

Our friend Richard Chapman in the DU Communications Department wrote a great story about the Hallam family. You can find it here.

Worth Repeating (from last year's North Texas blog): North Texas really has a way with names. That includes the Mean Green.

As I've heard it, North Texas has always used a screaming eagle as the school's mascot (if you go to www.meangreensports.com you can hear the scream of the eagle - I don't recommend doing so at work), but at some point after Mean Joe Greene graduated from North Texas in 1969 and headed to the Steel Curtain in Pittsburgh, the school renamed its teams. As a side note, according to Wikipedia (which everyone knows is the foremost reference point when checking accuracy), there was a movement a few years ago to add the albino squirrel as a second mascot. I cannot be the only one in favor of the school adopting the albino squirrel. However, the web gurus might have trouble adding the scream of the albino squirrel to the website.

Here are a few more famous names that graduated from North Texas: Norah Jones, Pat Boone, Ray Wylie Hubbard, Roy Orbison, Dr. Phil and "Stone Cold" Steve Austin.

The New Stuff: While browsing the Mean Green Athletic Hall of Fame, one of the plaques jumped out.

College Football Hall of Fame coach Hayden Fry was the coach and athletic director at North Texas (then North Texas State) from 1973-78, when his teams compiled a 40-23-3 record, before he took over at the University of Iowa.

And a few impressive alumni not previously mentioned: singers Don Henley (The Eagles) and Meat Loaf, actors Thomas Haden Church (Wings, Spiderman 3 and Sideways) and Peter Weller (Robocop and 24), and former Majority Leader of the U.S. House of Representatives Dick Armey.

Never Gets Old: When we landed in Nashville on Wednesday, a woman walked up to associate head coach Mike McKee and asked if he was the coach of the team, he told her he was one of them.

Her reply was one that we hear often and probably take for granted: "Your players are the nicest guys. They were all polite throughout the flight, and a few of them in the back entertained a child the entire time."

McKee thanked her. It's always nice to hear, regardless of the fact that we hear similar things often.

Yearly travel totals:       

Total Flights - 15

Total Mileage Flown - 10,971

Total Bus Miles - 1,487

Total Number of Hotels - 11

Total Number of Different Airports - 12

Total Number of Airline Delays - 1

Total Number of Cancelled Flights - 0

Total Number of Bags Lost This Year - 1

Total Number of Times DU Has Encountered Snow on Sun Belt Road Trips - 2


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