North Texas Mean Green sport American football
Nickname
The name "Mean Green" was adopted by fans and media in 1966 for a North Texas football defensive squad that finished the season second in the nation against the rush.  That school year, Joe Greene, then a sophomore at North Texas, played left defensive tackle on the football team and competed in track and field (shot put). There are conflicting accounts for the origin of the nickname. Two possible origins are two separate cheers that supposedly developed during North Texas' 1966 game against UTEP. One cheer was by Sidney Sue Graham, wife of the North Texas sports information director. In response to a tackle by Greene, she blurted out, "That’s the way, Mean Greene!" However, Bill Mercer, former North Texas play-by-play announcer, states Graham's thought behind the nickname was the Mean Green defense. Her husband began including the nickname for the team in press releases and it caught on with the media. Meanwhile, in the student section, North Texas basketball players Willie Davis and Ira Daniels, unsatisfied with the unenthusiastic crowd, began to chant "Mean Green, you look so good to me." The rest of the crowd soon followed. "After that we did it every game," Davis says. "A lot of people later on started associating it with Joe because his last name was Greene, but it actually started with that simple chant that Saturday night at Fouts Field. And that's the truth." By 1968, "Mean Green" was on the back of shirts, buttons, bumper stickers, and the cover of the North Texas football brochure. Even the band became identified as the "Mean Green Marching Machine."
athletics competitive physical activity physical competition