A story

By all accounts of alumni who were around to see him in UNT (back then, NTSU) uniform, Joe Greene was never referred to as Joe “Mean” Greene. In 1967 Sidney Sue Graham, wife of then Eagles sports information director, provided the hook to get the team some attention. “Big” Joe was only a junior back then, but was already getting All-America consideration and would go on to become one of the game’s all-time greatest players. Pittsburgh drafted him and the Steeler media confused it for “Mean Greene” and it just took off from there.

Even Hayden Fry writes in his autobiography that we took our name after Joe. Randy Galloway said of this, Hayden Fry “…was going on what happened after Joe became a huge NFL star, and actually his success was good for North Texas, so feeding off the Mean Green thing was not a bad P.R. thing, and Hayden didn’t mind milking that and I don’t blame him.”

Of course, the center of this entire argument is Randy’s article published by the Dallas Morning News in 1967.  I think you will find it tells the whole story.

Joe Greene still does scouting for the NFL, and is a proud Mean Green alumni.  I hear he is the nicest guy ever, and you can catch him - on the rare occasion he has free time - at a UNT game.

Thanks for reading!