DENTON, Texas (AP) – He’s the nation’s leading rusher. His team has a 16-game conference winning streak that is the longest in the country and will probably finish the season with a bowl game in New Orleans.

Yet, few people even know his name or about his team.

Meet Patrick Cobbs, the 5-foot-9, 189-pound junior from North Texas, which has already clinched a share of its third straight Sun Belt Conference title.

Cobbs has run for 1,126 yards and a school-record 13 touchdowns, even while missing two games and parts of two others because of a bruised thigh. His 140.8 yards-per-game average is best in NCAA Division I-A, ahead of Michigan’s Chris Perry (131.3) and Northern Illinois’ Michael Turner (130.5).

“From day one, we knew we had a good player,” North Texas coach Darrell Dickey said. “As a true freshman, it came down to almost a coin flip whether to start Kevin Galbreath or Patrick Cobbs. It was neck and neck.”

Galbreath got the edge two years ago because of experience, and responded with the only consecutive 1,000-yard seasons in school history, with Cobbs pushing him the whole time. Cobbs had 1,160 yards and 11 TDs as a backup. This year, he has a school-record streak of six straight 100-yard games with a pair of 200-yard games.

Not bad for a running back who had no other Division I offers, even after he rushed for 2,354 yards and 32 touchdowns as a senior at Tecumseh High in Oklahoma.

Cobbs was prepared to go to Division II Missouri Southern before a late visit to North Texas, best known as the alma mater of NFL Hall of Fame defensive tackle “Mean” Joe Greene and the setting for the 1991 movie “Unnecessary Roughness” that featured Kathy Ireland as a place kicker.

“When I was little, we’d drive to Dallas, and I’d see it on the left hand side of the highway. That was it,” Cobbs said. “I knew there was a stadium and I knew that is where they filmed “Unnecessary Roughness.’ Besides that, I didn’t know nothing about North Texas football. I had never been to a game, nothing.”

While Oklahoma knew about Cobbs, he wasn’t recruited by the Sooners because they felt he was too small. One of Oklahoma’s coaches mentioned Cobbs to UNT recruiting coordinator Kenny Evans. But persistent calls and mail from the running back’s high school coach, who knew Evans, led to the initial visit.

The shunned recruit is trying to show other teams what they missed.

“I felt like I did everything that I could do to try to make myself a big-time recruit, but I guess my height and my size didn’t measure up to everybody else’s expectations of a running back,” Cobbs said. “Yeah, I wanted to show everybody what I could do.”

Cobbs’ only game this season with fewer than 100 yards was when he had 38 in the opening 37-3 loss at No. 1 Oklahoma, when he sustained the bruised thigh. He had 131 yards in just more than a half the next week against Baylor despite reaggravating the injury that then forced him to miss two games, both Mean Green losses.

Even when he sprained his right ankle and played just more than a half against Troy State on Oct. 30, Cobbs ran for 106 yards and two TDs and returned a blocked punt 8 yards for the other score in a 21-0 win. Despite the still-sore ankle, Cobbs had 35 carries for 107 yards in last week’s 28-26 win at Louisiana-Monroe that gave North Texas a share of the Sun Belt title.

The Mean Green wrap up the outright Sun Belt title and a berth in their third straight New Orleans Bowl by winning either of the last two regular season games, the home finale Saturday against Arkansas State or Nov. 25 at New Mexico State.

“I want to leave North Texas with four Sun Belt Conference championship rings,” Cobbs said. “The people that came in with me, that’s our goal, to leave with four rings. We’re well on pace.”

Along with a rushing title or two.