North Texas updates future non-conference football schedule through 2025

By Kevin Kelley -

The North Texas Mean Green have updated their non-conference football schedule through the 2025 season. The schedule was listed in their 2013 Spring Prospectus.

The most prominent addition to their future schedules is a game at Tennessee in 2015. North Texas will visit Neyland Stadium in Knoxville on Nov. 7, 2015. The game will be the first meeting between the two schools since the Mean Green upset the Volunteers 21-14 in 1975.

North Texas has also added several additional games against Army and SMU. The Mean Green will now play Army home-and-home each season from 2016 through 2021 for a total of six games.

The North Texas-SMU series, dubbed the “Safeway Bowl,” resumes next season in Denton and then each year through 2025. The two rivals will meet in Denton in even years and in Dallas in odd years.

According to news reports, the name “Safeway Bowl” was created in 1994 after then North Texas head coach Matt Simon became frustrated trying to schedule SMU. “I’d like to play because I think we could beat them, and my players feel the same way. If they’d like to play on a Safeway parking lot … just give us a date and time.”

North Texas is also scheduled to visit Texas and Indiana in 2014, Iowa in 2015, Florida in 2016, and Iowa again in 2017. Each of those games was previously announced.

The Mean Green are set to join Conference USA on July 1. They have been a member of the Sun Belt Conference since 2001.

Listed below are North Texas’ non-conference opponents through 2017.

2014

  • 08/30 – at Texas
  • 09/06 – SMU
  • 10/04 – at Indiana

2015

  • 09/12 – at SMU
  • 09/26 – at Iowa
  • 11/07 – at Tennessee

2016

  • 09/03 – SMU
  • 09/10 – at Florida
  • 10/22 – at Army

2017

  • 09/09 – at SMU
  • 09/16 – at Iowa
  • 11/18 – Army

Comments (13)

Why would No. Texas be scheduling SMU. Aren’t they both in Conference USA begining in 2014?

Say the ACC decides they want to take UConn and Cincinnati, and the Big 12 responds by taking UCF and USF to get into Florida… the AAC would most likely start replacing the 4 new slots with Southern Miss, Rice, and then who? Would North Texas be an option?

I don’t think there will be any changes within the big 5 conferences for a few years now. The ACC, BIG 12 & PAC 12 all have the conference media rights of their members tied to the conferences for years and no one is leaving the Big 10 or SEC. There may be a little movement between the lesser conferences, but the former BCS conferences should be settle for a while. The American is adding Navy and Tulsa in a couple years and if they decide to add anyone else, I would think they would add UMASS since they already have two teams in Texas already. The real story in the next few years will be this new College Football Playoff. There are only 4 spots and there are 5 major conferences plus Notre Dame so, someone is going to get shut out every year and maybe two conferences get shut out if another conference gets two teams qualified in a season. I would guess the playoff would have to go to 6 or 8 teams at some point in the future. It will be interesting to watch the wrangling for playoff spots when only 4 are available.

Whew! Last time North Texas played the Tennessee Volunteers the Mean Green came back to Texas victorious! to a huge contingency of Mean Green fans at Dallas’ Love Field! Whew!

REASON IS MONEY. ntsu will get a lot of money for the program by playing at IOWA AND Tennessee & smu.

SMU series could be disastrous unless coaches and players get serious about the rivalry.Too many view this as just another out of conference game when in reality it is a war for recognition in the metroplex. We need to treat the game with the importance it deserves every year of this series or we could be severly embarrassed.

I want to see UNT play Texas Tech….every year home/away… None of this “neutral ground” crap. Just like Texas and OU should be home/away series. Let them man up in hostile territories every other year. Otherwise, they’re just chumps.