Mean Green

The football season is still several weeks away, but in a sure sign it will be here before you know it, Middle Tennessee announced its 2008 marketing campaign, "All In" last week.

Mark Owens, a good guy who runs the SID department at MTSU, sent the press release out to the Sun Belt's regular media crew last week. MTSU's marketing director Brad Smith said the school decided to kick off its campaign early this year to try to drive ticket sales. Part of the campaign will include wallscapes around Murfreesboro.

You have to give MTSU its due for starting early, but I am starting to wonder if this whole poker deal has jumped the shark.

UNT's theme last year was "It's wide open", a play on the Mean Green's switch to the spread offense under first-year head coach Todd Dodge. UNT is also off to an early start in the marketing game this year and has its schedule posters out. There is a link to them off the UNT athletic department site. One of the kinks of the new blog I still haven't figured out is how to post a link on here.

On the hoops front, one of the top players UNT has offered is off the board. Reginald Buckner, a 6-8 small forward ranked among the top 100 prospects in the country by Rivals.com, committed to Ole Miss yesterday. Buckner had eight scholarship offers, while Arizona, Kentucky and Memphis appeared as if they might offer.

Landing Buckner was probably a long shot at best for UNT, which still has several other good prospects it is pursuing for its next signing class, including Houston Smiley power forward Augustine Rubit.