(12-06-2016 11:35 AM)illiniowl Wrote: You know, UAB "dropping football" actually turned out to be the catalyst for raising $40 million: "To live, the UAB football program first needed to die."
I am beginning to wonder if we do not need a similar near-death experience to spur us to change our ways (my fantasy is that we would decide to come back as an independent with a vastly upgraded schedule and a clear goal and plan of returning to P5 within 10 years). Some people think Rice would collectively respond with a big "bye Felicia" if we dropped football. I'm not so sure. We see apathy now but that is because nobody really believes in the current mission, the very first element of which is, expressly, "conference championships" that amount to tallest midget contests. JFK stood in our stadium and asked, "Why does Rice play Texas?" Never in a million years would he have come here and asked, "Why does Rice play Middle Tennessee State?" Our mission, our essence, is to be the small, elite school that goes toe to toe, in all endeavors, with anyone in the country. We are not doing that right now, haven't been for years, and have no real plan to fix that, so of course there is apathy.
But a place like Rice clearly has a wealth of potential (not to mention just plain wealth) and perhaps the key to unlocking that is giving people a do-or-die mission they can rally around. For darn sure I bet we could shake loose way more than the $40 million UAB managed to.
It would be great if we could get back into a P5 conference.
I believe the problem cannot simply be solved by our own 'will' to do so though. This dates back to the breakup of the SWC. As far as the networks are concerned, we bring no additional value to the table. The networks told the Big 8 (plus Texas and A&M) that the TV contracts would be the same whether the whole SWC came, or whether the Big 8 only added Texas and A&M.
I go to the games because Rice is my college team. I don't look at who we are playing. It doesn't matter to me. My attendance is impacted only by my kid's athletic endeavors. I will watch them first.
But I won't stay home to watch anyone else on TV. I know there are other Rice fans that are in the same boat with me. But it's becoming clear to me that I'm in the minority on (what's left of) the Parliament.
This thread itself is evidence of that.
Our alumni base is small. In order for us to have a large enough, dedicated following to move the needle for the networks, Rice would have to have a much higher percentage of alumni who care more about Rice than watching other games than our competition (Texas, A&M, Houston) for the Houston market. They have so many alumni that tune it, even when the team stinks, that the networks know they have an audience.
In fact, I'm not sure that the percentage of Rice alumni who care at the requisite level is not LOWER than most P5 schools. Judging by the attendance even during our 10-win seasons, I don't know whether we could generate our own alumni's interest sufficiently unless we were good enough to be one of the 4 playoff teams (a huge hurdle for a G5 program). I think even Wayne Graham could comment some on this fact.
I'm not blaming people who will not come out to watch a product they don't want to watch. That's market-based economics. But why would you expect the networks to care about us, when we have alumni, who say they can't stand to watch our product (and from what I can tell that even impacted attendance for some during 2013) and even when we're good, complain about the conference and our opponents? When I was a student, I wanted to see my fellow students line up and compete. Why is that not important now? (When I was a freshman there were still 3 all-male colleges, SRC, Lovett and Wiess, and I think that motivation was higher for us than for co-ed colleges, but that's my opinion - - no frame of reference to compare now, obviously)
I mean from a P5 conference's perspective, why should they want to add a school whose fan's main reasons for wanting to be P5 are (1) we want more money to cover our program's losses (what G5 wouldn't), and (2) we want to play the name schools because our alumni don't care as much about their own team as who we play.
I mean, the networks look at #2 and laugh and say "Great, we know half of them are already staying home to watch Alabama every weekend anyway."
It's a Catch-22, but until we learn to care about our team and our conference, I'm not sure anything can ever change. We need to be Rice-centric, and not P5-centric. That's the only possible route to the P5 anyway. That's JMHO. And again, I'm not blaming anyone here for how they choose to support or not-support Rice football. The Parliament is clearly a group of extremely loyal Rice fans. But it's clear that a number of us care more about our opponents than our team, or at least that's what I get out of the constant talk about directional public schools and the dregs of the G5.
I think JK is doing everything he can, and perhaps at some point we might move up to AAC or MWC. But we need to think about why every move in the conference alignment has been down (even in 1997 when we clearly were in a pretty good position athletically. SWC, WAC16, WACleftovers, WAC-minus TCU, CUSA, CUSA post AAC.