http://www.riceowls.com/genrel/041316aaj.html

Nice work overall by the athletic department. Something we all know and love about Rice athletics. A little troubling the football team isn't in the top 10%? Seems wrong unless we have some big APR hits I don't know about. I know last year was a little lower than usual.

Also we should be showing this to every parent of Texas recruits. Look how poor some of those programs are...

(04-13-2016 03:02 PM)cr11owl Wrote:  http://www.riceowls.com/genrel/041316aaj.html

Nice work overall by the athletic department. Something we all know and love about Rice athletics. A little troubling the football team isn't in the top 10%? Seems wrong unless we have some big APR hits I don't know about. I know last year was a little lower than usual.

Also we should be showing this to every parent of Texas recruits. Look how poor some of those programs are...

I hope I am not the only one that finds this list comical. The bottom 5 on the Texas list put a big grin on my face .

Football, Men's basketball, Baseball and Women's swimming are the four sports who didn't get recognized, I believe.

I think what is most jarring is just how far apart we are from the rest of CUSA. I know that we don't have a lot of academic peers in the conference, but the stats really bring that difference to the forefront.

My daughter is claiming victory over me because ND has more total teams recognized.

(04-13-2016 03:20 PM)Pimpa Wrote:  I think what is most jarring is just how far apart we are from the rest of CUSA.

How far apart we are from all other programs in the nation*

(04-13-2016 03:34 PM)Bailiff_Lingo_Bingo Wrote:  

(04-13-2016 03:20 PM)Pimpa Wrote:  I think what is most jarring is just how far apart we are from the rest of CUSA.

How far apart we are from all other programs in the nation*

Exactly. It's not like any schools in Texas other than UT are closer than CUSA schools.

(04-13-2016 03:37 PM)cr11owl Wrote:  

(04-13-2016 03:34 PM)Bailiff_Lingo_Bingo Wrote:  

(04-13-2016 03:20 PM)Pimpa Wrote:  I think what is most jarring is just how far apart we are from the rest of CUSA.

How far apart we are from all other programs in the nation*

Exactly. It's not like any schools in Texas other than UT are closer than CUSA schools.

Southwest Conference

Rice (10/14) 71.4%
Texas (6/18) 33.3%
Houston (3/15) 20.0%
Texas Tech (1/15) 6.7%
Arkansas (1/17) 5.9%
Texas A&M (1/17) 5.9%
TCU (1/17) 5.9%
Baylor (0/15) 0%
SMU (0/15) 0%

Persons in the AD or general administration should use whatever clout they have, and lobby HARD to get this above the fold in big type, on the front page of Chronicle sports. Or really, should demand to know why it's NOT.

(04-13-2016 05:11 PM)Barney Wrote:  Persons in the AD or general administration should use whatever clout they have, and lobby HARD to get this above the fold in big type, on the front page of Chronicle sports. Or really, should demand to know why it's NOT.

Maybe, if any of the three highest profile sports had been included.

(04-13-2016 03:21 PM)loki_the_bubba Wrote:  My daughter is claiming victory over me because ND has more total teams recognized.

Then presumably she also acknowledges Stanford's superiority over Notre Dame?

One startling fact about Stanford is that while it has more recognized sports than any school, it also has almost as many unrecognized sports as Rice has sports.

(04-13-2016 09:46 PM)georgewebb Wrote:  

(04-13-2016 03:21 PM)loki_the_bubba Wrote:  My daughter is claiming victory over me because ND has more total teams recognized.

Then presumably she also acknowledges Stanford's superiority over Notre Dame?

One startling fact about Stanford is that while it has more recognized sports than any school, it also has almost as many unrecognized sports as Rice has sports.

Cornell lists 37 Varsity sports while Stanford lists 36.

(04-13-2016 03:21 PM)loki_the_bubba Wrote:  My daughter is claiming victory over me because ND has more total teams recognized.

Absolutely correct. Rice fields fewer teams than ANY of the schools we claim as peer institutions.

(04-13-2016 03:21 PM)loki_the_bubba Wrote:  My daughter is claiming victory over me because ND has more total teams recognized.

(04-13-2016 11:05 PM)exowlswimmer Wrote:  

(04-13-2016 03:21 PM)loki_the_bubba Wrote:  My daughter is claiming victory over me because ND has more total teams recognized.

Absolutely correct. Rice fields fewer teams than ANY of the schools we claim as peer institutions.

Schools we claim as academic peers, but we just don't have the student body to have that many sports teams. As things are, I think about 10% of Rice students are varsity athletes. If we had all the sports ND has without increasing enrollment, we'd be looking at closer to 25% of all students.

It's really bad methodology, but I took a quick look at the enrollment numbers on Wikipedia to come up with a rate of students per varsity team (no consideration for size of teams/number of scholarships). Rice's rate is over 25% greater than NDs by undergrad (277 Rice undergrads per team vs 352 ND). Including grad students, the gap closes (473 Rice vs 507 ND), but you can't exactly build a sports program around graduate transfers. If a donor wanted to match ND and endow 10 new varsity programs at Rice tomorrow, the administration would have to turn it down just to keep the student body reasonably balanced.

(Who knew that ND has almost twice the Rice endowment, too ($10B vs $5.5B)?)

(04-13-2016 10:20 PM)Tiki Owl Wrote:  

(04-13-2016 09:46 PM)georgewebb Wrote:  

(04-13-2016 03:21 PM)loki_the_bubba Wrote:  My daughter is claiming victory over me because ND has more total teams recognized.

Then presumably she also acknowledges Stanford's superiority over Notre Dame?

One startling fact about Stanford is that while it has more recognized sports than any school, it also has almost as many unrecognized sports as Rice has sports.

Cornell lists 37 Varsity sports while Stanford lists 36.

Yikes! One could say Cornell : APR-recognized sports :: India : Olympic medals

Amherst College, at the DIII level and with 1,795 students, has 25 varsity sports. Obviously there are differences, because at the DIII level you can play multiple sports, but still makes us look bad.

Cornell just won the women's polo national championship, beating Texas A&M for the national title. Interestingly, A&M doesn't say they compete in polo on its athletic web site (but they do claim Equestrian as one of their sports).

When I was at UCLA, I competed in badminton and we won the national title my freshman year over Arizona State. The department officially cancelled our sport (and moved it to club status) the next year. I recall our top women's player was always bitter she played badminton over tennis. She would say all the time she was one of America's top female badminton players and that didn't mean anything. If she was a tennis player, she'd be making millions.

(04-13-2016 11:41 PM)georgewebb Wrote:  

(04-13-2016 10:20 PM)Tiki Owl Wrote:  

(04-13-2016 09:46 PM)georgewebb Wrote:  

(04-13-2016 03:21 PM)loki_the_bubba Wrote:  My daughter is claiming victory over me because ND has more total teams recognized.

Then presumably she also acknowledges Stanford's superiority over Notre Dame?

One startling fact about Stanford is that while it has more recognized sports than any school, it also has almost as many unrecognized sports as Rice has sports.

Cornell lists 37 Varsity sports while Stanford lists 36.

Yikes! One could say Cornell : APR-recognized sports :: India : Olympic medals

Speaking of Cornell...Dr Tiki received this the other day. Collecting the money is Andy Noel, Cornell AD, who was contacted by the Rice search committee when CDC left. Andy said the committee wanted him to fly to Houston within two days and he didn't feel that he could even begin to evaluate the opportunity that quickly.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zMKRRxgX...e=youtu.be

(04-13-2016 11:05 PM)exowlswimmer Wrote:  

(04-13-2016 03:21 PM)loki_the_bubba Wrote:  My daughter is claiming victory over me because ND has more total teams recognized.

Absolutely correct. Rice fields fewer teams than ANY of the schools we claim as peer institutions.

This has bothered me for some time. I don't know why really. Maybe because we have the minimum necessary. Doing the minimum isn't really what I expect from Rice.

(04-14-2016 08:54 AM)loki_the_bubba Wrote:  

(04-13-2016 11:05 PM)exowlswimmer Wrote:  

(04-13-2016 03:21 PM)loki_the_bubba Wrote:  My daughter is claiming victory over me because ND has more total teams recognized.

Absolutely correct. Rice fields fewer teams than ANY of the schools we claim as peer institutions.

This has bothered me for some time. I don't know why really.

The answer seems pretty simple: because we already lose plenty of money on the teams we have. As a sports fan, I'd love to see more sports -- particularly team sports that would be good spectator sports on campus (even though not revenue-generating) -- but I can certainly understand why adding more cost centers in athletics is not at the top of anyone's agenda, including the trustees, the administration, or the department.

Of course, if someone were to endow a particular sport, that might change the equation...

(04-14-2016 08:12 AM)Tiki Owl Wrote:  Speaking of Cornell...Dr Tiki received this the other day. Collecting the money is Andy Noel, Cornell AD, who was contacted by the Rice search committee when CDC left. Andy said the committee wanted him to fly to Houston within two days and he didn't feel that he could even begin to evaluate the opportunity that quickly.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zMKRRxgX...e=youtu.be

Another tidbit for the nomination for Worst Committee Ever.