(06-02-2016 08:11 PM)Antarius Wrote:  

(06-02-2016 07:28 PM)seniorowl Wrote:  I never would have come to Rice if we weren't d1.

Sure, but my overall point is that this is a minority of a minority on campus now. The handful of us that frequent this board, the handful of us that go to games regularly etc. are just that, a handful.

We have to do something different. Because D1 isnt attracting people anymore. We need to do something different than we have - be it invest and act like a D1 program or walk away.

We are like United Airways Premium Service. The only thing premium about that is the name. Its no wonder that their Revenue per seat mile is lower than any other carrier in the country - eventually calling yourselves D1 while behaving like a D3 school isn't going to fool anyone.

Very true Antarius. I would also add that this has been a reality at Rice for a very long time. Long before the Bailiff regime. Evidence? See how we spurned the SEC invitation. See how quickly we were left behind by Texas, Texas A&M, Texas Tech, and Baylor. Observe the amount of remorse given by the Airport group that excluded us. Notice that our name was not called for the AAC yet Tulane was offered a spot. For such a visionary school, at times we don't seem to be able to see beyond our traditions (medical school, law school, HRS, the endowment, etc...).

Yeah, for too long Rice wasn't fully committed to D1. Bobby May was a good man, but he was part of the old guard. I don't think things started changing until CDC was hired. You've got to be all in, or not in at all these days. Competing at the highest level (FBS) is a very expensive endeavor. I think Rice finally started realizing that a few years ago.

(06-03-2016 12:14 PM)Afflicted Wrote:  Yeah, for too long Rice wasn't fully committed to D1. Bobby May was a good man, but he was part of the old guard. I don't think things started changing until CDC was hired. You've got to be all in, or not in at all these days. Competing at the highest level (FBS) is a very expensive endeavor. I think Rice finally started realizing that a few years ago.

I think the change started with Bobby. he's the one who brought us Goldsmith and Hatfield, and graham(?). I remember at an SMU game he announced we had just won cross-country titles - the first titles for Rice in any sport in over 25 years. he did a lot given the administration he had to work through. CDC did take it higher, and JK will do even more, I think.

Big 12 bringing back a conference championship game in football in 2017.

http://espn.go.com/college-football/stor...-game-2017

(06-03-2016 03:20 PM)OptimisticOwl Wrote:  

(06-03-2016 12:14 PM)Afflicted Wrote:  Yeah, for too long Rice wasn't fully committed to D1. Bobby May was a good man, but he was part of the old guard. I don't think things started changing until CDC was hired. You've got to be all in, or not in at all these days. Competing at the highest level (FBS) is a very expensive endeavor. I think Rice finally started realizing that a few years ago.

I think the change started with Bobby. he's the one who brought us Goldsmith and Hatfield, and Graham(?). I remember at an SMU game he announced we had just won cross-country titles - the first titles for Rice in any sport in over 25 years. he did a lot given the administration he had to work through. CDC did take it higher, and JK will do even more, I think.

Bobby was old guard, and did about as good a job as could be done without bucking the system. But the system needed bucking--and badly. And Bobby wasn't they guy to do that.

Todd did buck it--and badly, but much of it was needed. That gave CDC the opportunity to play a little good cop-bad cop with the administration.

Now, I think JK will do as good a job as can be done. The question is whether that will ultimately be good enough.

(06-03-2016 03:59 PM)Owl 69/70/75 Wrote:  

(06-03-2016 03:20 PM)OptimisticOwl Wrote:  

(06-03-2016 12:14 PM)Afflicted Wrote:  Yeah, for too long Rice wasn't fully committed to D1. Bobby May was a good man, but he was part of the old guard. I don't think things started changing until CDC was hired. You've got to be all in, or not in at all these days. Competing at the highest level (FBS) is a very expensive endeavor. I think Rice finally started realizing that a few years ago.

I think the change started with Bobby. he's the one who brought us Goldsmith and Hatfield, and Graham(?). I remember at an SMU game he announced we had just won cross-country titles - the first titles for Rice in any sport in over 25 years. he did a lot given the administration he had to work through. CDC did take it higher, and JK will do even more, I think.

Bobby was old guard, and did about as good a job as could be done without bucking the system. But the system needed bucking--and badly. And Bobby wasn't they guy to do that.

Todd did buck it--and badly, but much of it was needed. That gave CDC the opportunity to play a little good cop-bad cop with the administration.

Now, I think JK will do as good a job as can be done. The question is whether that will ultimately be good enough.

This. Bobby May did a helluva job in the old system. The difference in the athletics department between then and now is incredible. Rice actually cares something about athletics now, and it knows it has to invest to keep up. The culture is slowly changing. Slowly.

And meanwhile UH really is giving it their all. No matter what happens in the CFB landscape, UH can honestly say that they did all they could.
http://www.chron.com/sports/cougars/arti...957581.php

Asst coach Orlando is making roughly more than ~70% of Bailiff's salary and probably more than half the head coaches in the G5 and most of the other coaches in CUSA.

Well the daily cougar (fka the Houston chronicle) has another big 12 fantasy article. Tillman must really be spending the big bucks

Posted from my mobile device using the CSNbbs App

(06-03-2016 03:59 PM)Owl 69/70/75 Wrote:  

(06-03-2016 03:20 PM)OptimisticOwl Wrote:  

(06-03-2016 12:14 PM)Afflicted Wrote:  Yeah, for too long Rice wasn't fully committed to D1. Bobby May was a good man, but he was part of the old guard. I don't think things started changing until CDC was hired. You've got to be all in, or not in at all these days. Competing at the highest level (FBS) is a very expensive endeavor. I think Rice finally started realizing that a few years ago.

I think the change started with Bobby. he's the one who brought us Goldsmith and Hatfield, and Graham(?). I remember at an SMU game he announced we had just won cross-country titles - the first titles for Rice in any sport in over 25 years. he did a lot given the administration he had to work through. CDC did take it higher, and JK will do even more, I think.

Bobby was old guard, and did about as good a job as could be done without bucking the system. But the system needed bucking--and badly. And Bobby wasn't they guy to do that.

Todd did buck it--and badly, but much of it was needed. That gave CDC the opportunity to play a little good cop-bad cop with the administration.

Now, I think JK will do as good a job as can be done. The question is whether that will ultimately be good enough.

Regarding Bobby, I recall listening to him as he addressed the QB Club around 15 years ago. At the time we may have been in the WAC. I'm probably not getting the conference affiliations correct, or the exact timing of everything, but the gist of the talk was that TCU was looking to bail out of our conference - ideally improving their personal situation by moving to a conference that did not include Rice or SMU. These 3 schools had always been together, and were all slowly moving towards Division 1 irrelevancy. TCU surprised all of us by pursuing a move to either CUSA or a similarly-perceived "conference upgrade" - essentially saying goodbye to their long-time relationships with Rice and SMU. There was even some talk that they were trying to put money together to do major football stadium improvements. When Bobby was asked about the TCU situation, he somewhat joked about their aspirations, saying they had "illusions of grandeur". It's funny - I remember everybody chuckling with him, me included. At the time, TCU was not significantly better than us sports-wise. The prevailing attitude in the room was that TCU needed to get over themselves. They needed to realize that there was nothing about their school or athletic department that made them better than SMU and Rice. The thought that they would bail on their longtime rivals was viewed with disdain and not a small amount of mockery.

I look back on that now and realize that none of us, Bobby included, realized how forward-thinking TCU was being - and how clueless we were. That was when we needed to also to be taking significant steps to upgrade our Athletic Programs and facilities. My feeling is that Bobby did not have the foresight to realize that fact. Personally, I can't criticize him too much for that, when the rest of us in the room that night (who I considered to be the hard-core Athletic Department boosters and main financial supporters at the time) were all agreeing with him. That was when we really needed some aggressive, forward thinking people in positions of power on our side of things.

(06-05-2016 07:54 AM)Minnewaska Owl Wrote:  Regarding Bobby, I recall listening to him as he addressed the QB Club around 15 years ago. At the time we may have been in the WAC. I'm probably not getting the conference affiliations correct, or the exact timing of everything, but the gist of the talk was that TCU was looking to bail out of our conference - ideally improving their personal situation by moving to a conference that did not include Rice or SMU. These 3 schools had always been together, and were all slowly moving towards Division 1 irrelevancy. TCU surprised all of us by pursuing a move to either CUSA or a similarly-perceived "conference upgrade" - essentially saying goodbye to their long-time relationships with Rice and SMU. There was even some talk that they were trying to put money together to do major football stadium improvements. When Bobby was asked about the TCU situation, he somewhat joked about their aspirations, saying they had "illusions of grandeur". It's funny - I remember everybody chuckling with him, me included. At the time, TCU was not significantly better than us sports-wise. The prevailing attitude in the room was that TCU needed to get over themselves. They needed to realize that there was nothing about their school or athletic department that made them better than SMU and Rice. The thought that they would bail on their longtime rivals was viewed with disdain and not a small amount of mockery.
I look back on that now and realize that none of us, Bobby included, realized how forward-thinking TCU was being - and how clueless we were. That was when we needed to also to be taking significant steps to upgrade our Athletic Programs and facilities. My feeling is that Bobby did not have the foresight to realize that fact. Personally, I can't criticize him too much for that, when the rest of us in the room that night (who I considered to be the hard-core Athletic Department boosters and main financial supporters at the time) were all agreeing with him. That was when we really needed some aggressive, forward thinking people in positions of power on our side of things.

I remember more than one conversation with Bobby during that time frame, quite possibly including at that event before or after he spoke, since there were several events that went along the lines you are describing. What I said to him is that TCU was going the way we needed to go, and if we didn't pursue a similar path as closely as we could, we would find ourselves left far behind.

I agree that Bobby lacked the vision or foresight, but I can't hold that against him. Consider this. From the time he graduated HS until he retired, he spent a total of about six months of his life anywhere but Rice. I often thought how great it would have been if he had been able to spend a few years at Duke or Stanford, or at Don Canham's Michigan, and get some perspective on how an athletic program actually should be run, instead of the inbred mess that Rice athletics had become. He used to tell me, "We really aren't that far behind Stanford." Then he took a fact finding trip to Stanford, I'm thinking it was around 1990, just before the SWC breakup. He came back, as described by athletic department staffers, "Stunned," by the differences. I like Bobby, I respect Bobby, I think he did a hell of a job holding things together, when the boat could very easily have sprung a leak and sunk. I just wish that he had been better prepared to understand how things needed to be done, instead of how they had always been done.

We now have a president who understands the importance of athletics, and an athletic director who knows how it should be done. Both are distinct improvements. The biggest problem I see is that at this point, I just don't whether we can get there from here.

(06-05-2016 08:47 AM)Owl 69/70/75 Wrote:  

(06-05-2016 07:54 AM)Minnewaska Owl Wrote:  Regarding Bobby, I recall listening to him as he addressed the QB Club around 15 years ago. At the time we may have been in the WAC. I'm probably not getting the conference affiliations correct, or the exact timing of everything, but the gist of the talk was that TCU was looking to bail out of our conference - ideally improving their personal situation by moving to a conference that did not include Rice or SMU. These 3 schools had always been together, and were all slowly moving towards Division 1 irrelevancy. TCU surprised all of us by pursuing a move to either CUSA or a similarly-perceived "conference upgrade" - essentially saying goodbye to their long-time relationships with Rice and SMU. There was even some talk that they were trying to put money together to do major football stadium improvements. When Bobby was asked about the TCU situation, he somewhat joked about their aspirations, saying they had "illusions of grandeur". It's funny - I remember everybody chuckling with him, me included. At the time, TCU was not significantly better than us sports-wise. The prevailing attitude in the room was that TCU needed to get over themselves. They needed to realize that there was nothing about their school or athletic department that made them better than SMU and Rice. The thought that they would bail on their longtime rivals was viewed with disdain and not a small amount of mockery.
I look back on that now and realize that none of us, Bobby included, realized how forward-thinking TCU was being - and how clueless we were. That was when we needed to also to be taking significant steps to upgrade our Athletic Programs and facilities. My feeling is that Bobby did not have the foresight to realize that fact. Personally, I can't criticize him too much for that, when the rest of us in the room that night (who I considered to be the hard-core Athletic Department boosters and main financial supporters at the time) were all agreeing with him. That was when we really needed some aggressive, forward thinking people in positions of power on our side of things.

I remember more than one conversation with Bobby during that time frame, quite possibly including at that event before or after he spoke, since there were several events that went along the lines you are describing. What I said to him is that TCU was going the way we needed to go, and if we didn't pursue a similar path as closely as we could, we would find ourselves left far behind.

I agree that Bobby lacked the vision or foresight, but I can't hold that against him. Consider this. From the time he graduated HS until he retired, he spent a total of about six months of his life anywhere but Rice. I often thought how great it would have been if he had been able to spend a few years at Duke or Stanford, or at Don Canham's Michigan, and get some perspective on how an athletic program actually should be run, instead of the inbred mess that Rice athletics had become. He used to tell me, "We really aren't that far behind Stanford." Then he took a fact finding trip to Stanford, I'm thinking it was around 1990, just before the SWC breakup. He came back, as described by athletic department staffers, "Stunned," by the differences. I like Bobby, I respect Bobby, I think he did a hell of a job holding things together, when the boat could very easily have sprung a leak and sunk. I just wish that he had been better prepared to understand how things needed to be done, instead of how they had always been done.

We now have a president who understands the importance of athletics, and an athletic director who knows how it should be done. Both are distinct improvements. The biggest problem I see is that at this point, I just don't whether we can get there from here.

Interesting. Thanks for the history. By the way, I love your Footer.

Bobby told me once that one of the ath dept's hurdles was that Rice did not need athletics to attract academic talent to the school, unlike other institutions. This was way back when. Therefore there was never a priority to have athletics succeed for us (quite the opposite). TCU, Baylor et al were on the other side of the fence, and funded athletics commensurately.
Now the situation is different of course, in that the population of the state has increased dramatically, A$M and UT are top 10 percenters, etc, and so the frogs and bears are turning applicants away for a change. However, the earlier investment in sports paid huge dividends, as we can see.
Doesn't hurt that the Ann Richards coup saved Baylor (and Tech) from Rice and SMU's fate.

I think everyone also laughed when TCU, not based on their record, kept saying that they were a major power. This is as they first went to CUSA and had the contract with ESPN to show their games on the aux channels DTV and cable had. Then they had the good fortune to play a .500 USC team that had zero interest in being in El Paso (several players ran afoul of the law while there) and crushed them on national TV. The rest is history as the interest in donors ponying up money for the program swelled. They used their "sandwich board" to drive interest and that helped to improve the program to where they could go after really big steps. They also lucked out when Coach Fran took off for Bama leaving them with Patterson. (Makes you wonder what would have happened had Fran stayed.)

http://www.frogsowar.com/2016/6/6/118609...cincinnati

(06-06-2016 12:12 PM)westsidewolf1989 Wrote:  http://www.frogsowar.com/2016/6/6/118609...cincinnati

If they're suddenly ignoring TV markets, that's either extremely forward looking or short sighted.

Forward looking if cord cutting and a la carte is the way of the future. Short sighted if they wind up with a small market team they want to cut in 10 years. These possibilities are not exclusive.