Owl 69/70/75
Just an old rugby coach
Posts: 80,758
Joined: Sep 2005
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I Root For: RiceBathChelsea
Location: Montgomery, TX
 
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RE: Rice / UTEP - men's basketball thread
(03-11-2017 11:36 AM)tanqtonic Wrote: (03-11-2017 11:06 AM)Owl 69/70/75 Wrote: (03-11-2017 07:10 AM)texowl2 Wrote: (03-11-2017 01:41 AM)Owl 69/70/75 Wrote: (03-10-2017 10:04 PM)cr11owl Wrote: I've seen nothing to prove Leebron is committed to D1 athletics at Rice. He shows up to some games. Actually Idk what Leebron has really done at Rice besides raise tuition. I guess the billion dollar campaign was good. But it's not like our endowment has blown past our peers (think several have actually passed us).
Tudor and Patterson would not have gotten built under Gillis or Rupp or Hackerman.
Ok, but is Patterson's future to be the nicest facility, by far, in d3? Or in the MVC?
Or for use by St. John's, strake, st Thomas and/or Kincaid?
Fair question. I think the problem is that 40 years of not-so-benign neglect have left us so far behind that the benefits of catching up may not be worth the costs, unless some rich alum wants to subsidize a bunch of that cost. I'm not sure that anyone who inherited the situation that existed here in 2010 could catch us up, or prevent the inevitable fall.
Easily doable for one marquee sport. Much, much harder for two. Almost impossible for three. The 40 years of neglect covers not just any single sport, but NCAA Division 1 athletics as a whole at Rice.
And I agree with the "not-so-benign" modifier; when I was there (and after), based on snippets of conversations with the then-Presidents and trustees, it was clear that there were varying degrees of not-caring (and with some, bordering on antipathy) towards university Division 1 sports throughout the administration and governance bodies. Can't say about Leebron as I have not been in Texas for an extended period before moving back and never had the (albeit short) interactions I had with some of his predecessors.
Really starting to think that the way forward out of this quagmire (if baseball sinks too much in the next year and/or Graham stays on for 2018) is (as some others here have brought up and advocated) the push for excellence in non-marquee sports as exhibited in the Stanford model.
I think JK's plan, as was Chris's before him, is to turn basketball into Gonzaga. We could be generating $3-4 million a year more if both men and women were playing at a level where ESPN wanted us for preseason matchups. We'd be playing at 10 pm, but that's what Gonzaga did and we see where they are today. $3 million isn't much compared to $36 million, but it's pretty significant compared to the $12 million or so that the department is actually generating itself. Football has to play moneybag games. Play 2 SEC teams (my choices would be LSU and aTm on a 2-for-1 basis, with the 1's at Reliant, which I think is doable), plus UH (which we need desperately to develop into a citywide rivalry in all sports, not USC-UCLA, but s close as G5 can get), and one peer institution (service academies, Duke, Vandy, Northwestern, Stanford). In the years when the 2-for-1s leave us short a home game, replace the peer game by bringing in someone like TSU or PV or Grambling, any of whom should bring a decent crowd. Again, the $2-3 million more that would bring in isn't much compared to $36 million, but it is compared to $12 million. Once basketball is making money instead of losing it, football gets to keep a significant portion of the moneybag revenues in order to upgrade recruiting and coaching and facilities to the top of CUSA. The rest of that money goes to making a major push in the Olympic sports, like Stanford. One added benefit there is that lots of athletes in those sports tend to be good students, so that's a way that Stanford enhances the SAT scores and GPAs of its student-athletes, thereby finessing to some extent what has been a thorny issue for a long time here. Sustaining baseball involves two issues--the scholarship cost differential and a succession plan for Wayne. The baseball cost differential problem is real, but it is one that the likes of TCU and Vandy have obviously solved, so there has to be a way we can solve it too. I really like everything I know about Matt Riser, and any decision about Wayne would depend very much on his availability. I think I'd be trying to work out some sort of Associate AD/Baseball Coach Emeritus position.
Become a national player in basketball, dominate CUSA in football with an occasional win over a P5, make a name for ourselves in the Olympic sports, and keep baseball going to regionals regularly, super regionals often, and Omaha occasionally. That's not the same as P5, but it's not bad, and I think most of us would be happy with that. I think it is the way to get to P5, if there is one. I also think that's doable, but basketball is the key.
The first Rice AD to explain that to me that basketball was the key (and I believe the first Rice AD to understand it) was Homer Rice; he was a terrible football coach, but a good AD who built Georgia Tech into one of the top 5 or so all around programs in the country. Chris understood that, Joe understands that, but not too many others did. By the way, the first AD anywhere to explain this to me was Paul Bryant. He shifted resources from football to basketball, and Bama today is pretty successful across the board as a result.
(This post was last modified: 03-12-2017 07:49 AM by Owl 69/70/75.)
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