UNT football is experiencing a revival. At 7-5, the Mean Green have won their most games since 2018. Their six conference wins are their most since 2017. And Friday night, they have a chance to win their first conference championship since 2004 when they take on defending Conference USA champion UTSA in a rematch from October, which the Mean Green lost by four points.
The man—yes, man—at the center of this is Austin Aune, who has found a second chance at athletic stardom after six years in the minor leagues of the New York Yankees farm system. There has never been a quarterback like him, at UNT or anywhere else. At 29 years old, Aune is believed to be the oldest signal caller to ever start a game in the modern era of Division I and the Football Bowl Subdivision.
With one more touchdown pass, Aune will set a school record. Chip in a few of them, and he could have UNT celebrating a championship for the first time in nearly two decades.
It’s a most unlikely success story. Almost as unlikely as UNT’s success being born from Aune’s failure.
The journey began with a phone call. And vomit. It was June 5, 2012, and Aune was a freshman two-sport athlete at TCU coming off one of his first summer workouts on the football team, one brutal enough to make him sick. His ambitions were straightforward enough. In the fall, he hoped to quarterback the Horned Frogs to Mountain West titles. In the spring, he’d play shortstop and try to lead TCU to the College World Series.
Or he would if he didn’t get selected in the second round of the MLB draft, which had come and gone the day prior. His phone rang as he strolled campus after the workout. It was his agent, informing him that the Yankees had selected him in the second round of the draft but were willing to pay him $1 million—the equivalent of first-round money at the time—to sign. Aune packed up his dorm room that night.
Off to the minor leagues he went. And in the minor leagues he stayed. He did well in his first season of rookie ball, hitting .273/.358/.410 in 39 games. But it was downhill after that. When he put the ball in play, good things tended to happen. He just struggled to consistently make contact. The 2014 and 2015 minor league seasons were particularly difficult. He struck out 264 times in 171 games and 689 plate appearances.
“It didn’t go the way I wanted it to,” Aune says. “I struck out way too much. In the end, it caught up with me.”
Amid the struggles, Aune did his best to observe and learn what it means to be a professional. One luxury of being at the Yankees’ minor league facilities in Tampa, Florida, was the occasional cameo from a New York legend or two during rehab appearances. He ran into Derek Jeter and Mariano Rivera, and while both were too wrapped up in their recoveries to lend much advice, Aune kept a close eye on their routines and processes.
“They show up, do their thing, and then get out,” Aune says. “So when you’re there [Tampa], you get to see how they work.”
He gleaned even more from Alex Rodriguez during a chance meeting when Rodriguez was taking batting practice. Initially, Aune figured he’d sit back and observe as he did with Jeter and Rivera. Instead, Aune was thrown in to hit with him. Rodriguez gave the young prospect some guidance on hitting techniques, his approach, and how to find success at the plate through consistency.
“To learn from legends like that,” Aune says, “it’s super cool.”
Ultimately, he couldn’t translate advice into action on the diamond. On August 1, 2017, after Aune had spent six years in the organization, the Yankees cut him in favor of younger prospects. He never made it out of A ball.
“I kind of saw it coming,” he says. The same can’t be said for where he’d go next.
With baseball over, Aune turned back to football as a 24-year-old college freshman. Though older than his peers in age, he was football young. The last game he’d played was with Argyle High School in the 2011 Class 3A Division II state championship at AT&T Stadium. It was a game he lost. So out of curiosity and the dream of playing professional sports at the highest level, he gave the game he left behind another try.
He walked on at Arkansas in late 2017, only to find six other quarterbacks ready to compete with him. So he transferred to UNT in 2018. It was a familiar environment. Growing up in nearby Argyle meant that Aune maintained connections both to the coaches he worked with in the area in high school as well as the UNT coaching staff.
Aune spent his first two years sitting behind Mason Fine, the greatest quarterback in school history. When Fine graduated after the 2019 season, Aune began his slow ascent up the depth chart, splitting reps in 2020 and 2021 before finally making the job his own as a fifth-year junior this season. During those moments when he was waiting for his chance to prove himself, working behind the scenes to little adulation, he called on the lessons he’d learned from his baseball career. Failure taught him to take heart in the process and to fall in love with the daily journey. It’s a thinking pattern he credits to baseball.
“Baseball let me develop as a man,” Aune says. “Now I look at things from a different perspective of this is a job, you’re going to have to compete every day, and things aren’t going to go your way. And the whole Yankees experience helped me in the long run here at North Texas.”
UNT head coach Seth Littrell has been impressed with Aune’s poise since becoming the starter. He’s always prepared, taking on the task of being both a student and a teacher on the field.
“He’s had a lot more experience,” Littrell says. “He’s a very mature man. And he’s only gotten better and better each week.”
Underpinning Aune’s success, however, are the bonds he’s forged with teammates who can be more than a decade his junior. He doesn’t run from their jokes in the locker room or hotel rooms on the road: “Old head,” “Uncle,” “Grandpa.” He probably couldn’t if he tried as a married father of an 11-month-old daughter. He’s authentically himself, and as a result his teammates gravitate toward him.
But alongside the ribbing, Aune’s teammates learn from him as well. He’s vocal but not overbearing. Diligent but humble. Encouraging but realistic. He leads by example, using his perspective as a former pro athlete to showcase how to approach the sport with class and discipline.
“He’s already been a professional, so he knows everything,” senior linebacker KD Davis says. “He knows how to prepare. He’s been there before, and he allows us to follow in his footsteps.”
For all his arm talent, Aune’s greatest gift might be how, according to Davis, he also encourages his teammates amid difficult circumstances, inspiring them to reach the best versions of themselves as players.
“He challenges us, no matter what we are going through,” Davis says.
And to show for the 11-year odyssey, Aune has an opportunity to win a conference championship. After that, he’ll have a chance to lead UNT to its first bowl win since 2013. Win or lose, they’ll be his last chances at milestones in Denton. Though Aune has one more year of eligibility, he’s already declared that this will be his final college season. He’ll have his pro day in the spring, and after that, he’ll “see what happens.”
“Out of high school, I had a dream to play football or baseball,” Aune added. “The opportunity to pursue baseball came first. Now I am chasing another dream to play in the NFL. That’s why I have stuck it out for these five years. It’s not an easy path, but I didn’t want to go the rest of my life wishing I would have tried football. I want to give it all I can. And if it works out, great. If it doesn’t work out, great. I gave it all I had.”
However it plays out, it’s easy to imagine Aune finding his footing. He learned to fail forward a long time ago.
