Fine Becomes UNT All-Time Passing Leader
11/10/2018 7:05:00 PM | Football
NORFOLK, Va. - In general, passing records are broken on a regular basis. The NCAA's career-passing mark, for example, has been set eight times in 37 years.
But the North Texas career-passing record has not been built in measured stages by a succession of quarterbacks. Rather, it has twice been set at heights that lasted a quarter of a century, and few Mean Green passers have neared that summit.
So what makes Mason Fine's record-breaking career all the more impressive is that, barring injury, Fine still has a few games remaining in his junior season and his entire senior campaign yet to play. By the time he's finished, the bar is going to be nice and high for his UNT descendants.
Saturday, Fine threw for 240 yards against Old Dominion, elevated his career total to 8,743 yards and earned the title of the Mean Green's all-time passing leader. The record fell on a 23-yard touchdown pass to Rico Bussey, Jr., on the Mean Green's opening drive of the game.
The evolution of the North Texas aerial game didn't really begin until the 1960s. Emerging from football's early run-centric days, North Texas had only one 1,000-yard passer in program history until Vidal Carlin came along. In the decade prior to Carlin's arrival, the team's top single-season passing total was 700 yards by Don Baker. That changed when Carlin took over as quarterback five games into the 1965 season and went on to throw for 1,723 yards - surpassing the combined total of the leading passers from the previous four years. From 1965 to 1966, Carlin shattered the mark for career and single-season passing yards and became the first North Texas quarterback to throw for more than 3,000 yards in a career.
Carlin was the dawn of an era of North Texas football that embraced the pass, and his records were quickly eclipsed by his successor.
Playing 29 games from 1967 to 1969, Steve Ramsey recorded North Texas' first 2,000-yard season and its first 4,000-, 5,000-, 6-000- and 7,000-yard career marks. He amassed 7,076 yards and set eight NCAA career-passing records: passing yards, total offense yards, completions, attempts, touchdowns responsible for, points responsible for, touchdowns, and touchdowns by a passer/receiver combination (30 TDs between Ramsey and wide receiver Ron Shanklin); then added a single-game record to his resume, for yards per completion (33.3 against Cincinnati in 1968).
But the development of North Texas passing slowed after Ramsey. Carlin and Ramsey, both members of the North Texas Athletics Hall of Fame, were the last two NT quarterbacks drafted by the NFL, and Ramsey is the last North Texas alumnus to play QB in the NFL.
Ramsey's career record was finally overtaken in 1994 by Mitch Maher, who played during North Texas' time in Division I-AA. It took Maher 39 games over four seasons to break the record and to post UNT's first 8,000-yard career, finishing with 8,519 yards.
Even in the wake of Maher, Ramsey's yards-per-game average towered over all Mean Green quarterbacks. The Dallas native averaged 244.0 yards passing per game, dwarfing Maher's 218.4 and rivaled only by Giovanni Vizza, who averaged 234.7 yards per game during the wide-open offense of coach Todd Dodge.
But Fine has reset how UNT passers will be measured.
In Fine, North Texas has finally surpassed Ramsey's yards-per-game benchmark. Fine is averaging a program-best 257.1Â passing yards per game, a number likely to climb since Fine has averaged 298.8Â yards per game in his sophomore and junior seasons. Those numbers not only put him atop the UNT QB pyramid, it puts Fine among the elite quarterbacks nationally.
And it's been 50 years since North Texas could say that.
