There was a time not too long ago when North Texas head coach Todd Dodge seemed larger than life.

One would hear Dodge talk about his plans for the Mean Green and taking it to heights it hadn’t seen in years and believe every word.

That was certainly the case when he was introduced as UNT’s head coach in December 2006 in a meeting room at the Mean Green Athletic Center full of cheering fans who were all on board with his plan.

That moment came to mind on Saturday as Dodge tried to explain how UNT managed to blow yet another game, this time against Army, which escaped Fouts Field with a 17-13 win.

All that confidence, all that bravado that was Dodge’s calling card just a few years ago, seemed to have vanished into the cool night air at Fouts Field.

“I am just devastated for this team,” Todd Dodge said.

From the looks of it, Dodge was devastated as well.

The harsh reality is Dodge is 5-30 heading into the final game of his third season at UNT, and for the first time in his tenure, legitimate doubts are starting to creep in as to whether or not he will coach a fourth season in Denton.

Only the select few who thought it was a risky move to hire a high school coach had a suspicion UNT might be in the situation it faces now. Most everyone else from UNT’s administration to a lot of its boosters was won over by the confidence Dodge showed while talking about where he could take the Mean Green.

Dodge walked to the podium in the Mean Green Athletics Center the night he was hired and talked about his plan. He told everyone that it wasn’t a high school plan, a college plan or a pro plan. It was just a football plan, one that had worked for him at Southlake Carroll and would work for him at UNT.

That confidence and self assurance seemed to be gone when Dodge and UNT needed it most in its game against Army.

UNT had a 13-10 lead when it faced a fourth-and-5 situation from the Army 16-yard line with 3:06 left in the game.

Dodge called a timeout, sent his offense on the field, called another timeout and then sent out Jeremy Knott for a 33-yard field goal attempt, despite the fact Knott had missed an extra point earlier in the game.

Army defensive end Marcus Hilton came right through the middle of UNT’s line and blocked the kick, setting up the Black Knights’ game-winning touchdown three plays later.

When asked if anyone had influenced his decision to kick in that situation, Dodge would only say that the decision was his.

“I was going to go for it on fourth down at the end of the game, but then decided to go ahead and go for the field goal, hoping that we would make it and then be able to kick it off and pin them deep,” Dodge said. “The worst thing that could happen did happen.”

It wasn’t so much the decision that was troublesome. It was the way the sequence unfolded. The waffling was what made one wonder what was happening on the sideline.

Teams draw confidence from their coaches, and UNT didn’t give anyone involved in that sequence much of a boost.

“I thought we were going to go for it,” running back Lance Dunbar said. “We called a timeout and I thought we decided to go for it. Then they decided to kick a field goal.”

UNT didn’t express confidence in Dunbar, its best player, to convert in short yardage on that fourth-down play or on third-and-1 the previous play when quarterback Riley Dodge lost four yards.

Knott must have been wondering what the deal was while waiting to see what Dodge would decide to do.

Either call -- going for it or kicking the field goal -- makes football sense.

What doesn’t make a whole lot of senses was waffling about the decision.

Maybe Dodge was confident in what he decided to do. Maybe that bravado is still there and we just didn’t see it in that instance.

After what unfolded in another loss, though, one has to wonder if the opposite is true.

Dodge is a great ambassador for the program and has brought UNT a lot of publicity, not to mention several talented players. The school also thought it was getting a coach whose larger-than-life persona and ability to win games at Carroll would translate to UNT.

Lately, that confidence Dodge showed just a few years ago has seemed to take at least a temporary hiatus.

The loss wasn’t the result of one key decision in the game. UNT just didn’t execute all day offensively.

The bottom line is Saturday was a terrible time for the Mean Green to collapse yet again, just hours after the school had broken ground on a new $78 million football stadium in front of a crowd of 23,647, the fifth largest crowd ever at Fouts Field.

“Right now I don’t have any explanations about what happened as far as the meltdown there at the end,” Dodge said. “I am very hurt right now for that group of players. There have been a lot of gut-wrenching losses, but this one just kills me for them.”

One could tell it killed Dodge as well at a time he appeared he could use a confidence boost just as much as his team.

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