Mean Green

As much as any other coach in the country, Darrell Dickey, the persevering and successful head football coach at the University of North Texas, lives with the reality of college athletics, where aspiring football programs like his, are locked on a collision course with 21st century fiscal reality. “We have an athletic department that’s really struggling for money, so we have to play a very demanding schedule year in and year out, go on the road and play what you call money games,” says Dickey. “We’ve done that in the six years I’ve been here to the most extreme, the furthest extent of anybody in the country.” Dickey and his boss, NT Athletic Director Rick Villarreal go nose to nose every day with this dilemma: at a time when television ratings and fees that drive big time sport appear to have flatlined, will they operate a program that will climb into the big time, or do