marked the first game in the history of the Safeway Bowl with rival SMU, with North Texas falling to the Mustangs 66–0. The next few seasons saw average performances on the field. In 1929, the university hired Jack Sisco to coach the program. Sisco lead the team through some of its first years as a consistently-winning college football unit. The program won its first conference title in 1931 as members of the TIAA. In 1932, North Texas became a charter member of the new Lone Star Conference, compiling an 8–1–1 record, winning eight straight games after a 0–1–1 start, six of them via a shutout while allowing just 12 points against in that span. Sisco's tenure continued with conference championships in 1935, 1936, and a three-peat from 1939–-1941. Sisco was replaced by Lloyd Russell in 1942, who would only spend one season at the helm before the school temporarily disbanded its football program from 1943 to 1945 as many students went off to fight in World War II. Odus Mitchell era (1946–1966) The revival of the program after the war turned out to be one of the most successful stretches in school history. North Texas hired Odus Mitchell from Marshall High School to lead the team. In his first season, the Eagles went 7–3–1, winning the Lone Star Conference Championship and earning a bid to the team's first ever bowl game and victory, a 14–13 win over Pacific in the 1946 Optimist Bowl. The year was the first of seven consecutive winning seasons, which remains a school record. In his 21 years as head coach, Mitchell compiled 122 wins, and 10 conference titles, all of which still stand as school records for a single coach. Mitchell also coached North Texas to their first AP Ranking in school history (No. 16 during the 1959 season), and oversaw the transition from Eagle Field to Fouts Field in 1952 (North Texas won its first game 55-0 at the new stadium over North Dakota). He also recruited Abner Haynes and Leon King to North Texas in 1956, where the pair eventually broke the color barrier for college football in the state of Texas the next season. His second to last recruiting class in 1965 included future NFL Hall of Famer Joe Greene, who went on to become the only All-American in North Texas football history, and a four-time Super Bowl champion with the Pittsburgh