Brett Vito

Here’s a quick snapshot of what happened in the world of college football in the Dallas area over the weekend.

SMU inched to within one win of being bowl eligible by beating Rice, and TCU hammered San Diego State to set up a showdown with Utah that might help send one team to a BCS bowl.

And in other news, North Texas was beaten by Louisiana-Monroe.

Actually, UNT wasn’t just beaten, it was hammered 33-6 and didn’t reach the end zone in Sun Belt Conference game for the first time in the Todd Dodge era.

The loss guaranteed that UNT will finish with a losing record for the fifth straight year, and left the Mean Green facing an even worse fate.

UNT (2-7) is on the verge of becoming largely irrelevant in the Dallas area in a season when both of its neighbors look like they are going to post two of the most memorable campaigns in school history.

In the long run, becoming something more than an afterthought in the region is the fight UNT absolutely must win to get to where it wants to go.

Lately, it seems like every time UNT takes a step toward that goal, it takes another two steps back.

UNT came into the weekend off a momentum-building week that saw the Mean Green beat Western Kentucky and receive final approval to build a new football stadium.

There was a huge opportunity to build on that news and show that the program is headed in the right direction.

UNT promptly squandered that chance by falling to ULM, one of those schools most of the Mean Green faithful see as a small school from a town in nowhere Louisiana, one UNT shouldn’teven be in a conference with, let alone lose to at home.

Dodge said he was disappointed that his team couldn’t find a way to build on its win last week and acknowledged that his team missed out on an opportunity to take a big step in the right direction.

“You need every win, but this is one we could have really helped ourselves out by playing better than what we did,” Dodge said.

The story has played out several times in the last few years at UNT, where it seems as if the Mean Green never can capitalize on its opportunities.

Dodge took over a program that was on a downhill slide after the 2006 season and gave the Mean Green an immediate shot in the arm. The story of UNT hiring perhaps the most successful high school coach in the country put the Mean Green in the spotlight.

There were huge expectations for Dodge in his first two seasons at UNT.

The Mean Green failed to take advantage while winning just three games in those first two seasons combined.

Seeing a much-needed new football stadium approved by the Texas Higher Education Coord-inating Board provided another boost last week. The impact from that turn of events will last for years, but there is little doubt UNT missed a chance to at least build on that momentum when it was blown out on its home field against the Warhawks.

UNT will head into the last three weeks of the season not having won consecutive games since 2004, before most of the players on its roster had put on a UNT jersey.

“We are trying to build on what we did against Western Kentucky,” UNT junior linebacker Craig Robertson said. “We have three games left to try and do that, but it’s disappointing because I have never won two games in a row. Winning games in a row carries confidence, and when you have confidence you play better.”

UNT’s struggles are all the more costly in a year that has seen its rivals excel.

June Jones took over a 1-11 SMU team before the 2008 season and at 5-4 in his second season is closing in on taking the Mustangs to a bowl game for the first time since 1984. The Mus-tangs have already beaten Tulsa and Rice, the types of wins over regional rivals that can help build a program.

TCU, 9-0 and ranked fourth in the BCS standings, will host ESPN’s College GameDay next week when Utah comes to Fort Worth for a matchup of powerhouse teams not in BCS conferences.

Both of those programs have a whole lot more to work with than UNT at this point, including better stadiums and memberships in what are universally considered to be better conferences — Conference USA for SMU and the Mountain West for TCU.

Life isn’t always fair, and it certainly isn’t to UNT’s staff and players, who at this point are being asked to do more with less.

The bottom line, though, is this — SMU and TCU are on the verge of becoming big stories in this metropolitan area.

And that is going to be costly for UNT, which is quickly becoming an afterthought yet again.

BRETT VITO can be reached at 940-566-6870. His e-mail address is bvito@dentonrc.com .