(09-19-2014 02:49 PM)WIowl Wrote:  

(09-19-2014 02:34 PM)Hambone10 Wrote:  

(09-19-2014 02:24 PM)WIowl Wrote:  I wish Leebron understood this.

I THINK he does, which is why Dr K is here.

Both Leebron and Greenspan publicly laughed at Houston and SMU moving to the Big East/AAC. Even when it was spread out between basketball and football schools, Rice should have seen that this was an obvious step up from the hyphenated replacement schools.

You don't think their attitudes hurt Rice when other AAC schools were needed and Tulane and Tulsa were selected at separate times?

I don't agree with this at all... no offense intended...

I think the decision was that the AAC was a 1 year wonder due to the expiring contracts... had significant cost increases and questionable revenue increases. They may have also felt that winning CUSA was better/more important than being in that OTHER g5 conference. Sure, it might be worth a little more money... but rather than focusing on moving ostensibly for the purpose of moving, we needed to focus on winning.

Nobody looking for a team to add is going to question Rice's academic credentials. There isn't anyone else in the country that has our CV and would look to move up. THAT isn't where these weaker academic schools hurt us. Where they hurts us is in our academic credentials vis a vis ACADEMIC schools...

Bottom line, I'm just not sure that winning CUSA in most sports isn't not only possible, but 'better' for us (cost vs benefit).

(09-19-2014 06:07 PM)Hambone10 Wrote:  Nobody looking for a team to add is going to question Rice's academic credentials. There isn't anyone else in the country that has our CV and would look to move up. THAT isn't where these weaker academic schools hurt us. Where they hurts us is in our academic credentials vis a vis ACADEMIC schools...

Exactly. This echoes a point I made in the USNWR thread: the post-SWC conferences we have been in (and especially the current one) have been killing us academically. Our USNWR ranking is as low as it's ever been, and if we keep slipping down, down, out of the top 20, then we're even less attractive as an invitee to a major conference. We'll have lost our main calling card, and probably wouldn't ever be able to regain it.

If the current plan is to win our way out of CUSA and into a P5 invite, how long can we give that plan to succeed or fail? Because every year we stay in this conference, our academic standing continues to suffer for it, and I think we are approaching a point of no return. Honestly, I don't know if we even have 5 more years to play around with, and there's probably no amount of winning in this conference over 5 years that could change our ultimate fate (just ask Boise).

As an entire University, academically and athletically, the latest USNWR rankings should have us at DEFCON 1. I'm having a hard time seeing how going independent (in football) could be worse for Rice, as a whole, than the present structure. At least if our ship is inexorably sinking, we could go down with some dignity intact.

(09-19-2014 06:07 PM)Hambone10 Wrote:  

(09-19-2014 02:49 PM)WIowl Wrote:  

(09-19-2014 02:34 PM)Hambone10 Wrote:  

(09-19-2014 02:24 PM)WIowl Wrote:  I wish Leebron understood this.

I THINK he does, which is why Dr K is here.

Both Leebron and Greenspan publicly laughed at Houston and SMU moving to the Big East/AAC. Even when it was spread out between basketball and football schools, Rice should have seen that this was an obvious step up from the hyphenated replacement schools.

You don't think their attitudes hurt Rice when other AAC schools were needed and Tulane and Tulsa were selected at separate times?

I don't agree with this at all... no offense intended...

I think the decision was that the AAC was a 1 year wonder due to the expiring contracts... had significant cost increases and questionable revenue increases. They may have also felt that winning CUSA was better/more important than being in that OTHER g5 conference. Sure, it might be worth a little more money... but rather than focusing on moving ostensibly for the purpose of moving, we needed to focus on winning.

Nobody looking for a team to add is going to question Rice's academic credentials. There isn't anyone else in the country that has our CV and would look to move up. THAT isn't where these weaker academic schools hurt us. Where they hurts us is in our academic credentials vis a vis ACADEMIC schools...

Bottom line, I'm just not sure that winning CUSA in most sports isn't not only possible, but 'better' for us (cost vs benefit).

+1

While I agree that the sandwich board comment was spectacularly inane, I don't think that it somehow hurt our chances at moving UP. The AAC would have been a lateral move with some upside and some serious downside; heck, this year the AAC looks awful.

Also, Im not sure our USNWR ranking is suffering due to C-USA. What makes people think that?

(09-22-2014 10:21 AM)Antarius Wrote:  Also, Im not sure our USNWR ranking is suffering due to C-USA. What makes people think that?

I don't think it is C-USA per se; instead, I think it would be more accurate to blame the relegation to the minor leagues in general that started 20 years ago. Not as the whole reason for the slippage, but certainly a reason.

None of our USNWR peers has ever had to combat that type of public rejection. The Ivies and the University of Chicago rejected big-time athletics, not the other way around as happened to us. MIT, Caltech, Johns Hopkins, and WashU were never in; it's never been part of their brands, so they've never had to deal with the loss. Vandy, Duke, Notre Dame, Northwestern, and Stanford are still in. For the last 20 years, we have been unique amongst the top 20, and not in a good way - and those chickens are finally starting to come home to roost.

As I have stated elsewhere, I believe our alumni giving rate would be better if we were still in the major leagues - that would directly help our ranking. And our overall reputation/Q rating would be better. USNWR surveys high school counselors from the top high schools in the country, and those rankings factor into the overall rankings. (We are T-22 on that list - tied with NYU, Emory, and Tufts. ) Well, those rankings are obviously subjective, and if you are a counselor your views are probably most influenced simply by where you see the best students from your HS choose to go to college. I believe that over the past 20 years we very likely have been slowly but steadily increasingly losing what are essentially recruiting battles for students to Vandy, Duke, Northwestern, and Notre Dame because those schools can still offer something that we no longer can. And then that gets reflected in the HS counselor rankings.

Now, to top it all off, the ignominy of our minor league surroundings has now gotten even worse, to the point where we have nothing, zero, nada in common with every other school in C-USA: not even SMU, Tulane, and Tulsa around to provide cover. But no, I don't think our situation would be fundamentally different if we were in the AAC or MWC. The minor leagues remain the minor leagues.

(09-22-2014 04:20 PM)illiniowl Wrote:  USNWR surveys high school counselors from the top high schools in the country, and those rankings factor into the overall rankings. (We are T-22 on that list - tied with NYU, Emory, and Tufts. ) Well, those rankings are obviously subjective, and if you are a counselor your views are probably most influenced simply by where you see the best students from your HS choose to go to college.

The counselors may want to pay more attention to the choices their best students are actually making regarding those schools. According to the data at Parchment.com, applicants accepted by Rice and Emory, NYU or Tufts chose to attend Rice by 80%, 70% and 57% majorities, respectively.