SMU's Loss to UNT Its Worst Ever?

Covering last night's UNT-SMU game, Dallas Morning News columnist Gerry Fraley writes, "The alumni wanted coach Ray Morrison's head after the Mustangs lost the first game in school history -- at TCU in 1915."

SMU had no alumni in 1915. That's the year the school opened.

Speaking as a UNT homer, the rest of Fraley's commentary is equally sloppy. The North Texas team that beat SMU as a five-point underdog Saturday is one season removed from four consecutive Sun Belt championships. Though the Belt's deservedly the worst-ranked conference in I-A, SMU is nine years removed from its last winning record. The Mean Green have been a better team than SMU for most of the last decade. It's no shock they're the better team this season.

Besides, if North Texas is lowly enough to hang the "worst loss ever" on SMU, a better choice for Fraley would've been 1990. During that season, SMU came to Fouts Field to play UNT when the school was still in Division I-AA and lost 14-7.

As a North Texas alumnus, that's my favorite game to have witnessed in person. The rivalry was so heated between crosstown schools that players and coaches exchanged a few punches at halftime in an incident that came close to being a full team-on-team riot. The incident would have been in heavy rotation on SportsCenter for days if it happened at a bigger school. Because it didn't, the media missed it entirely.

Sports · North Texas · 2006/09/10 · 2 COMMENTS · Link

Comments

Vote for Rogers, he can do nothing better than anyone!

#1 · Nephew Dewey · 2006/09/10

I still say we beat UT back in '89 (or whatever, not sure about the year) when the refs gave that UT guy a TD when he caught a pass out of the end zone in the last seconds of the game. Cheaters

#2 · Uncle Mikey · 2006/09/16