(03-15-2017 03:43 PM)illiniowl Wrote: I highly doubt that we have looked at Vanderbilt and Stanford and actually believed they were/are cheating. For Pete's sake, our AD is from Stanford.
Or put it this way: if we did actually do an analysis (do we not have a compliance office? do we not have a general counsel's office? do we not have access to outside firms that specialize in NCAA issues?) and come to the conclusion that what they are doing is illegal, we should have been petitioning the NCAA on a daily basis ever since to audit them, stop them, sanction them, etc. And if the NCAA cleared them or declined to act, we should have immediately taken that as a green light.
So now we're back to incompetence or gross neglect as the only explanations.
If you look at it from the perspective of the sports program, yes, incompetence or gross neglect
given the funding could be appropriated.
The causal question then becomes has that funding been or could it be made available. That is a trustee/administration question.
And there the perspective changes and the answer. The board and trustee's duties (legally) are not the same as a private enterprise (i.e. to maximize shareholder value, which requires some risk taking). In terms of a university, the priorities are reversed to protect the value of the assets (endowment). In short, when the question reverts to that level of decision -- then it is obvious *why* that step may not have been undertaken, as strictly speaking, to do so would undercut that duty. (or in the words of other posters, this results in an ultra-cautious approach to these types of expenditures, which seems to be the direction that Division 1 sports is on at Rice.)
We can make the argument that it is peanuts compared to the overall value, and I am sure other schools have taken that approach. But it seems to me that vis-a-vis sports, the Rice Board and administration have put themselves after a period of long neglect in the position that sports *has* to show that an investment of this sort will be productive in light of *any* investment above and beyond maintenance.
The outlier, of course, is in the stadium and sports center refurbishment.
The best to hope for is that basketball can be raised to where Rice has an impact, and after which, other types of investments in Division 1 sports can be more probably. In fact, my guess is that basketball is the sole thread remaining in which to pin hopes of competing in Division 1, and reviving investment in other facets of Division 1, after the next 5 years.
It is sad that Rice squandered the opportunity post Baseball championship to do that. In that sense, I think Rice seriously missed the next-to-last boat out. Using that analogy, I think the current trajectory of basketball is the last boat out, and will be determinative of whether Rice continues in Division 1 at all.
