Hayden Fry Sucks.

The truth hurts.

Hayden Fry was a terrible coach and North Texas deserved better results than he gave us.

Over the course of the six seasons between 1973 and 1978, Hayden Fry compiled an official record of 40 wins, 23 losses, and 3 ties. On the surface, that seems pretty impressive. But two of those official wins were actually losses on the field against Mississippi State. The NCAA forced the Bulldogs to forfeit 19 games because of discount clothing violations involving one player, Larry Gillard, and that turned two Hayden Fry losses into wins.

So on the field, Hayden Fry had an overall record of 38-25-3. Again, this is a rather impressive record at first glance. But consider who Fry played against to earn that record. During his six year tenure, Fry played shamefully weak schedules against pancake opponents.

Fry played five games against UT-Arlington, a team that never had a winning record while Fry was at North Texas. UT-Arlington was so woeful that the school disbanded the football program completely just 7 years after the end of Fry's North Texas tenure. Total Record vs. UTA: 4-1.

Fry played six games against West Texas State, now known as West Texas A&M. His overall record vs. the Buffaloes was 5-1. 8 years after Fry's departure, West Texas State dropped down to Division II. Five years after that, they shut down football entirely. Eventually, they relaunched the sport, once again at the Division II level.

Fry played two games against Long Beach State of the PCAA Conference, a school that shut down football in 1991. In their first matchup, Fry battled Long Beach State to a thrilling 0-0 tie. That season, LBS finished 1-9-1. Traditional football powerhouses California Riverside and California Poly-SLO scored a total of 64 points in their victories over Long Beach State that season. Under the brilliant tactical leadership of Hayden Fry, North Texas scored zero. The next season, Fry lost the rematch by more than two touchdowns.

Fry played four games against Drake, tallying three wins and one tie. Drake's total record from the four seasons in which those games were played? 9-34-1, a .204 winning percentage. Since then, Drake dropped their football program down into the Pioneer League, a non-scholarship Conference that has been their home for more than 15 years.

In 1970, Wichita State suffered a terrible tragedy when one of their team airplanes crashed, killing 16 players and disabling others. Also killed in that crash were Wichita State's Athletics Director, Associate Athletics Director, Head Football Coach, Booster Club chairman, and several members of the training staff. Three years later, Fry beat them by 10 points. The season after that, against a Shockers team that would finish the season with a 1-9-1 record, Fry could only manage a tie. In their 9 losses that year, Wichita State gave up 219 more points than they scored. Their only victory came by single digits against a 3-win Drake team. Fry led his team to 10 points for a tie. 8 years after Fry left North Texas, Wichita State disbanded their football team.

In 1974, Fry played a game against the (apparently, according to their student newspaper) Division II Lamar Cardinals. He lost, 27-7. For the sake of comparison, Lamar finished the season with an 8-0 win over the aforementioned 1-10 UT-Arlington Mavericks. In 1989, Lamar shut down their football program.

Fry played two games against Cal Poly-Pomona. He won them both. Four years after he left North Texas, Cal Poly-Pomona shut down football.

Fry also scored an easy win over a 3-8 Richmond Spiders team. At some point before the 1984 season, Richmond dropped down to Division 1-AA football.

If you take away the wins and ties that Fry tallied up against teams that haven't played Division 1-A football (or, in many cases, any football at all) for decades, Fry's record on the field drops down to a mediocre-at-best 22-25, a .468 winning percentage.

Fry's 22 wins came against traditional powerhouses like New Mexico State (6 of the 22), Memphis State (2 wins, one of which came by one point, and 3 losses), Louisiana Tech (3 wins, one by 6 points and one by 2), and UTEP (2 wins).

Of the six wins against New Mexico State, only one came against a winning team. NMSU finished 6-5 in 1978, their first winning season in a decade. Against that stout competition, Fry managed a one point victory.

Fry's two wins against UTEP were both over 1-10 teams.

Both single-digit wins over Louisiana Tech were against 6-5 teams. Fry also won a big game against a much better Louisiana Tech team, but more on that later.

Fry's one point win over Memphis State came against a 6-5 team. He also beat a 4-7 Memphis State team by a more impressive margin of 17 points.

Fry also tallied a 1 point win over a sub .500 Louisville team back in our mutual Missouri Valley Conference days. The next season, he lost to another sub .500 Louisville team.

In 1975, Fry beat up on a 2-8 Houston team by a final score of 28-0. In 1977, he notched an 11 point victory over a 4-win SMU team and a 13 point win over a .500 Southern Miss squad. And in 1978, he tallied a 12-7 win over 3-8 Oklahoma State.

So, out of the 22 wins Fry was able to manage against teams that still play Division 1 scholarship football, only 10 of them came against .500-or-better competition. Five of those were against teams that finished 6-6 or 6-5. And those 10 wins came against San Diego State, SMU, Southern Mississippi, NMSU, Louisiana Tech, and of course, Tennessee. Oh, and one of our beloved Sun Belt rivals- Louisiana-Monroe.

You can look back at Fry's tenure and notice that he only managed 5 wins in his entire North Texas career against teams that still play at our level and that finished better than 6-5. But you'll also see that one of those five wins came against mighty Tennessee. And nothing anyone says can ever take that away from the man.

Of course, it isn't quite as impressive when you stop to consider that the 1975 Tennessee Volunteers could only very generously be described as mediocre. They finished 7-5, with impressive single-digit wins over 3-6-2 Auburn and 2-8-1 Kentucky. They also nipped 4-7 LSU. Other notable highlights of Tennessee's 1975 season were wins over Hawaii and Colorado State, and of course a very impressive win over a 1-10 Utah team. But as any college football fan will tell you, the real power of the SEC is in how strong their weakest teams are. The '75 Vols can attest to that fact, as they took a spanking from Ole Miss, a team that lost to big bad Baylor in the same year. Tennessee also dropped an SEC game to Vanderbilt, which finished the season with 2 SEC victories... One over Tennessee, and the other over Ole Miss.

One could go on contextualizing Fry's wins... But perhaps an even better illustration of his failures as a coach and a human being are his losses. His 25 losses at North Texas came by a total of 420 points. That's an AVERAGE of 16.8 points (or, two touchdowns and a field goal), and that average is skewed by the inclusion of the blown games against all the patsies mentioned above. It doesn't tell the full story of, for example, the 52-3 thrashing Fry got from a 4-7 Cincinnati squad.

Even more embarrassing is that Fry never even managed to lead North Texas to a single bowl game. Apologists argue that the realities of the time conspired against Fry. There were far fewer bowls available back then, and Fry was cheated. His 10-1 (with the benefit of the forfeit mulligan) record in 1977 should have earned him a bid. But the powers-that-been shut him out, because they wouldn't acknowledge a quality team that was an Independent and a refugee from the Missouri Valley Conference.

That's a very compelling theory. The only real problem with it is that in 1977, an Independent Louisville team (also a refugee from the MVC) earned an invite to the Independence Bowl. And that was a Louisville team that went into the bowl with a 7-3-1 record. Two of those losses came against the University of Dayton and the William and Mary College.

And those blackballing powers-that-been also didn't use their might to shut out teams like Wyoming, Tulsa, Rutgers (then Independent), Louisiana Tech, East Carolina, and McNeese State, all of which earned bowl bids in 1976, 77, and/or 78.

When you look at the total picture, it becomes obvious that North Texas wasn't cheated out of a bowl bid. Outsiders saw what apologists couldn't: A coach who racked up cheap wins against weak opponents, got blown out in his losses, and only managed one signature win in his entire North Texas career. One measly win that came against an arguably mediocre, arguably worse Tennessee team.

The rest of the world saw the truth. Hayden Fry was a terrible coach that held North Texas back from the school's true athletic potential.

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In reality, you'd have a very hard time finding any reasonable person with a full appreciation of Fry's results and the circumstances in which he achieved them who would listen to any criticism of Hayden Fry at all.

But for anyone with an ax to grind... Anyone willing to dismiss his successes and constantly hammer on his shortcomings... Hayden Fry can be painted as a total failure.

But to do so would be to deny the reality of North Texas football history. Fry wasn't a failure... He may have saved the football program. Fry came in and took over a program fresh off a 1-win season. A program that hadn't been to a bowl in almost 15 years. But Fry came in and made people believe they could win. That they could compete with anyone, and ought to expect success.

Then, Fry left. And in the 23 years after Fry left, North Texas had exactly one winning Division 1-A season: a 6-5 year in 1980. Coincidentally, the same year I was born.

In 1998, Darrell Dickey was hired to take over for a talented coach that nonetheless burned every bridge in sight on his way out of town. His first season at the helm was also my freshman year of college.

Dickey didn't have a shiny new Athletics Center to recruit to, but it didn't really matter in his first year because he was hired after national signing day had already passed. His first four games with that 100% inherited team? Oklahoma, Texas Tech, Arizona State, and Texas A&M.

And Dickey didn't have any history of bowl games or Division 1-A Conference Championships to help him recruit players, either. North Texas hadn't been to a bowl since 1959, and they hadn't won a Division 1-A Conference title since 1973.

But despite the fact that his new employer was almost 40 years removed from a bowl game and 25 years removed from a Conference Championship... Dickey somehow managed to pull in enough players in his first recruiting class to take down Texas Tech by a score of 21-14. That's the exact same score from Fry's signature win over Tennessee, and this was against a Texas Tech team that hadn't had a losing season in 8 years, didn't have a losing season that year, and hasn't had a losing season since.

That was a huge win, but it was one of only 8 total from Dickey's first three seasons. When the 2001 season started with 5 straight losses (the first three coming to TCU, Oklahoma, and a Texas Tech team hungry for revenge), the rumblings were that Dickey was on the verge of being fired, and the next loss would be his last.

So Dickey went out and won five straight games to secure the Sun Belt championship and earn a spot in the New Orleans Bowl. First bowl game in 42 years. First D-1A Conference Championship in 28 years. It was the start of a 26 game Conference winning streak that would span five seasons.

The next year, 2002, was my last year as a student at North Texas. Darrell Dickey led the team to an 8 win season and the first North Texas bowl win since the 1946 Optimist Bowl victory over Pacific.

Just to put that 56 year bowl win drought in perspective... Here are some other notable events from the year 1946. The United Nations held it's first meeting. Ho Chi Minh was elected president of North Vietnam. Hollywood held the 18th Academy Awards. The PREDECESSOR organization to the CIA was created. Winston Churchill gave his first speech warning people about the "Iron Curtain" of Communism. The movie "It's A Wonderful Life" screened in theaters for the first time. The San Francisco 49ers were founded. And President Harry Truman officially declared the end of World War II.

And the year after that milestone bowl win, Dickey led North Texas to the first 9 win season since... Hayden Fry in 1978.

He was named Coach of the Year by the Conference for four straight years. When he had a heart attack, he missed one game and that was only because his doctor refused to let him get out of bed.

North Texas hadn't had a winning season since I was a newborn baby. North Texas hadn't won a bowl game since before my parents were born. Then Darrell Dickey showed up and changed all that.

Anyone today who expects success, who demands wins, who feels entitled to championships... It's only because of what happened when Darrell Dickey turned this program around.

You can dismiss his achievements. You can dwell on his shortcomings or denounce him for the victories he couldn't quite reach. You can whine about perceived slights and anything else you can muster to tear the man down.

But when you do, you're spitting on my generation's Hayden Fry.