North Texas Mean Green football | |||
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First season | 1913 | ||
Head coach |
Seth Littrell 2nd year, 5–8 (.385) |
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Stadium | Apogee Stadium | ||
Year built | 2011 | ||
Seating capacity | 30,850 | ||
Field surface | Field Turf | ||
Location | Denton, Texas | ||
Conference | C-USA | ||
Division | West | ||
All-time record | 493–489–33 (.502) | ||
Bowl record | 3–6 (.333) | ||
Conference titles | 24 | ||
Consensus All-Americans | 1 | ||
Colors | Green and White |
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Fight song | UNT Fight Song | ||
Mascot | Scrappy | ||
Marching band | Green Brigade Marching Band | ||
Rivals |
SMU UTSA |
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Website | meangreensports.com |
North Texas Mean Green football program represents University of North Texas in the sport of American football. The Mean Green compete in the Football Bowl Subdivision (FBS) of the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) and the West Division of Conference USA (CUSA). They are coached by Seth Littrell, who started in 2016. North Texas has produced 24 conference championship titles, with 8 postseason bowl appearances and four appearances in the I-AA Playoffs. The Mean Green play their home games at the Apogee Stadium which has a seating capacity of 30,850.
Though coach Hayden Fry left the school in 1978 with a 9–3 season, he also left it with a mounting athletics debt, and the team was subsequently demoted to Division I-AA status by the NCAA. In 1982, the university recognized that the athletics program had a deficit of $1.6 million and voted to join the Southland Conference. The program experienced little success in subsequent years, but in 1995, a coordinated campaign by donors to purchase large blocks of seats at Fouts Field spiked the average attendance enough for the school to enter Division I-A once again in 1995.
After the school joined the Sun Belt Conference in 2001, Darrell Dickey briefly revived fortunes in Denton, winning four straight conference championships. The Mean Green played in the 2001 New Orleans Bowl despite a regular-season finish at 5–6 after winning the Sun Belt title with a 5–1 conference record. After going 2–9 and 3–9 in his eighth and ninth seasons, the athletic department fired Dickey on November 8, 2006.
The school then hired Todd Dodge, who had been offensive coordinator at UNT from 1991 to 1992, on December 12, 2006. Dodge had been one of the nation's most successful high school football coaches, amassing a 98–11 record overall at Carroll High School in Southlake, Texas, including a 79-1 record over his last five years. His teams at UNT struggled to win, however, compiling a 6-37 record overall and a 3–23 record in conference play. After a 1–6 start to the 2010 season, the school fired Dodge. He was replaced by offensive coordinator Mike Canales as interim head coach. In 2011, the university hired Dan McCarney as head coach. McCarney was the head coach at Iowa State from 1995 through 2006; he then served as defensive line coach for both the University of South Florida and the University of Florida just prior to his hiring at North Texas.