Just a few days ago, North Texas athletic director Rick Villarreal repeated the position he first took when he introduced Todd Dodge as the school’s football coach after the 2006 season.

Villarreal believed then that hiring Dodge would be the first in a series of events that would bring the Mean Green to a higher level. Dodge would improve the program and its visibility, students and donors would jump on board and before one would know it, UNT would have a rising college football power playing in a new stadium.

UNT will reach a key point in that plan this week when the school’s student body votes on a fee that would help build a new stadium to replace Fouts Field. At this point, the school’s student body is going to have to exhibit a whole lot of faith in the way this is all supposed to unfold because the results are not there on the field yet.

The latest piece of evidence came Saturday night when Louisiana-Lafayette blasted the Mean Green 59-30.

UNT is now 2-16 under Dodge and 7-34 since winning the last of four straight Sun Belt Conference titles in 2004.

And while no one is ready to say that Dodge won’t replicate the success he enjoyed at Southlake Carroll, there is little doubt the UNT is going to have some convincing to do when it comes to its student body.

UNT officials have said that a stadium is a key to turning the program around. They said the same thing when they hired Dodge.

So far that turnaround has yet to materialize.

UNT and Washington are the last two winless teams left among 119 in the NCAA’s Bowl Subdivision programs. Several ranking services have the Mean Green rated as the worst team in the country.

The ideal scenario would be to ask UNT’s students to vote for an athletic fee of $10 per credit hour when the Mean Green is riding high. UNT won’t have that luxury, or even the advantage of having won a game this season when the students start going to the polls.

UNT sits at an unsightly 0-6.

Fortunately for the UNT athletic department, there have been more than a few students who have championed their cause. Student body president Jeff Kline has gone public with is support of the effort to pass the fee as have other student officials.

The message is that if the students at UNT want to improve the quality of the school and the athletic program, voting for the fee is the right thing to do.

The point is hard to argue against.

UNT got more positive publicity out of its four-year run as Sun Belt Conference champions in football from 2001-04 and its trip to the NCAA Tournament in men’s basketball in 2007 than just about any other events in recent history.

The school would get just as big a lift if it opened a new football stadium.

The best high school players in the state want to play in the best venue possible. Fouts, which opened in 1952, doesn’t qualify.

Ask any high school coach in the area, and he will say that Fouts doesn’t even compare to most high school stadiums in the state.

UNT will still have a lot of money to raise even if a student fee is put in place. Estimates are the athletic department would still have to come up with upwards of $30 million to supplement the fee to build a stadium.

The fate of the program all goes back to whether students have faith in the UNT athletic department. UNT has gotten a lot done in the last five years, including opening a new softball field and soccer complex.

UNT maintains a student fee is critical to making the next step in the master plan and building a new football stadium.

The venue is supposed to be the last domino to fall in UNT’s plan that started with the hiring of Dodge and was supposed to continue with success on the field.

Step two has been slow in coming.

How quickly the key step of a new stadium arrives will depend on UNT’s students looking past what is going on today and seeing what is possible tomorrow.

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