Note: This story is featured in the 2026 edition of Dave Campbell's Texas Football's Summer Magazine, which you can order here.

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North Texas is a modern tale of life as a G6 program. The Mean Green won 12 games and reached the American Conference Championship game in a fairytale Year 3 under head coach Eric Morris. They did so with a redshirt freshman quarterback, a true freshman running back, and two young, hot shot play callers – Morris on offense and Skyler Cassity on defense – who are just now entering their prime.  

A decade ago, 2025 would’ve been the start of something special in Denton, America. Now? The reward for posting the best season in program history was a mass exodus to the Power Four, starting with Morris, who became Oklahoma State’s head coach in the offseason. He took most of the team with him, including Cassity and stars such as QB Drew Mestemaker and RB Caleb Hawkins. 

But the success at North Texas piqued the interest of Neal Brown, who was working a few hours south on I-35 as an assistant to head coach Steve Sarkisian following a six-year stint at West Virginia that included a nine-win season in 2023. He was dominant at a G6 school prior to that, winning 31 games over his final three seasons at Troy.  

Brown says the year at Texas was the “halftime” of his career, and that the freedom of not leading a program of his own allowed him to look around the college football landscape for the perfect landing spot.  

“I really felt like the American Conference was where my landing spot was going to be,” Brown explained in the spring. “And so, you start looking at places and doing research. As the season progressed, (North Texas) was having the best season in school history so you start paying more attention.”  

The more attention Brown paid to the Mean Green, the more he wanted the job. Brown chose North Texas for three reasons. The first was location. Not only does the Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex offer fertile recruiting grounds in the high school ranks and in the portal, it’s also home to a major airport with direct flights to everywhere in the nation, a luxury that Brown couldn’t use in recruiting while at Troy or West Virginia.   

Another reason was alignment, specifically at the top with university president Dr. Harrison Keller and athletic director Jared Mosley on the same page about how important football is to a school.  

And the third reason was resources. The wind turbines outside of North Texas’ indoor practice facility – the only one in the G6 ranks in Texas – illustrate that the Mean Green are all-in and well-resourced to compete at the top of the American. And as Tulane proved last year, winning the American can be a Golden Ticket to the College Football Playoff.  

“We’re going to figure out how to maximize in this modern era of college football and to maximize North Texas’ place in it,” Brown said. “We have built-in advantages that other programs at this level don’t have. We’re going to lean into that and maximize this place’s potential.”  

Brown doesn’t plan on needing multiple years to rebuild in Denton. He signed 59 new scholarship players, including 51 from the transfer portal to get the Mean Green operational in 2026. The staff focused on the trenches, heavily investing in offensive and defensive linemen because Brown says the common denominator for the programs that win consistently in the G6 is strong play along both lines of scrimmage.  

That formula will be put to the test early as North Texas opens the season at Indiana, the defending national champions. UNLV comes to Denton in Week 2, and the Rebels are considered one of the favorites to claim the G6 playoff spot. A trip to Texas State happens in Week 3.  

“We’re going to learn a lot about ourselves early,” Brown admits. “It is our job to handle the good and the bad that comes with it and then focus on conference play.”