MGN Open Thread #5
You do not need to like Oklahoma State
Being a part of Mean Green Nation is a choice. You do not need to root for North Texas, support the athletic programs, or anything you do not want to do. It is not an obligation in any sense other than cultural. Will your humbler MGN proprietor think less of you? Yes.
So your continued support for North Texas is possibly contingent on whether that means much to you. Such mechanisms are how we keep a society running functionally, folks. Subtle markers of civility and social control.
You do not need to root for Oklahoma State football next season. The players — something like 9 of them so far — have left North Texas’ football program and signed on to the OSU project. I will root for them individually, but I never have cared too hard about the Oklahoma State football program, nor the individual players there — and I went to high school with one!
See, as part of this fiction we have, the rules are that I care about the North Texas football program. Eric Morris was great for the program in this last year, and he has now left. The program was compensated for that leaving, and so ends our relationship. He is actively recruiting for Oklahoma State and that has caused hard to North Texas’ football program. In that way, I am rooting against him. Not because I do not like him, but simply because I root for the North Texas program.
Similarly, I will not be rooting for Oklahoma State next season. The success of their offense and team does not help North Texas directly, and whatever indirect help is so negligible as to mean little to me. For example, consider the 6 guys who left Sam Houston for North Texas. How much of the squad winning the New Mexico Bowl helped the Bearkats this season? Did you think, as Trey Fields intercepted a pass, “wow, this is a credit to Sam Houston State’s football program”? If you did not, you can see how Drew Mestemaker throwing a pass to Wyatt Young in Boone Pickens will not benefit the North Texas program at all. 1
The benefit in winning with Morris et al., was in the accolades and trophies and money and ability to recruit the next set of guys who can do the same wearing the North Texas gear.
Go Mean Green.
SEC sucks now
GRRM, the artist, is dead. The man lives.
Also, I’m trying to steal X’s CSG_UNT to the MGN fold. What does that mean? Well doing what he does under the MGN banner. So it goes.
As always, this thread is yours to do with what you will. I am a Millenial and so will always hold close the forum, and I encourage you to use it for your own purposes. I realize doing a newsletter/blog (one-to-many) publication doesn’t necessarily attract the kind of folks who like to do some web2.0 type things (user-created content) but also the forum is blessedly free from algorithms, spam, and auto-play videos. So that’s nice.
Similarly, how much of Cignetti winning with some former JMU guys (and a Cal QB) have helped those programs?
Those players are dead to me now
I’m rooting for the players to do well because it reflects positively on G5 (which even then we probably don’t get our due respect) but I’d be giddy if we had a better year than them for many reasons.