illiniowl
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RE: Golf - Ninth Place in Conference USA
(04-26-2017 12:06 AM)georgewebb Wrote: (04-25-2017 09:22 PM)franklyconfused Wrote: (04-25-2017 07:48 PM)Rice93 Wrote: So, we could cut men's golf. Then, as George Webb has championed multiple times, add men's and women's lacrosse. Travel costs may kill this as I'm not aware of any D1 lacrosse schools within reasonable proximity. George?
For the men's team, if independence isn't an option, we'd have to go to the Southern Conference: schools located in Tennessee, Alabama, Georgia, and the Carolinas, with men's lacrosse associate members also in Virginia, Florida, Kentucky, and Colorado (! Air Force).
The women's team would have to be in the Atlantic Sun: Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Tennessee, South Carolina, and New Jersey, with associate members also in Michigan (! Central Mich.; Detroit Mercy), Delaware, DC, and Virginia (ODU). Alternatively, the women could play in the Big South, which is entirely in Virginia and the Carolinas. So help me God if we ever associate with Liberty "University." That's about the one thing that I'd rather we just dissolve athletics than choose to do.
It looks like we've missed out on a chance to branch west and associate with the PAC-12 over women's lacrosse. Cal, Colorado, Oregon, USC, and Stanford have their women's teams in the Mountain Pacific Sports Federation (which I was entirely unaware of before tonight) along with Fresno State, UC-Davis, Saint Mary's, and SDSU. From the MPSF wiki, though, it looks like the PAC is leaving, maybe to bring the sport in house. Their schools are still in the federation for other sports, like indoor track.
Rice lacrosse would not have to be in one of the football conferences. Heck, Univ of Denver became a national champion in men's lacrosse, and Northwestern became not just a champion but a dynasty in women's lacrosse, without a conference affiliation that mattered.
Yes a Rice team will need to travel -- and it will also need to entice teams from colder states to come here to compete in February and March.
No, a Rice lacrosse team will not make money -- but neither does any other Rice team.
But a winning team in an on-campus field sport will bring excitement, TV appearances, and good exposure, particularly in geographic areas and demographic segments that are extremely desirable.
And being in Texas is an opportunity more than a hindrance: the first Division I university in Texas that plays lacrosse has an opportunity to become the next Denver -- the star team and magnet of an entire region. Being the second team in Texas, or the 20th team in Pennsylvania, does not offer that opportunity.
And Denver and Northwestern have proven that it doesn't require a particular conference, or much else at all in the way of structural assets. All it takes to be a national power is an EXCELLENT coach.
You could probably say similar things about ice hockey (except the part about being on campus). Rugby is also a great spectator-oriented field sport -- but for anomalous reasons, men's rugby is not an NCAA sport, which is a definite disadvantage with respect to media coverage, TV opportunities, and public awareness generally.
In my view, the bottom line is this: lacrosse offers a rare opportunity to quickly become a regional magnet and national winner in an on-campus, spectator-oriented NCAA field sport. If you think that having an on-campus field sport that competes for NCAA titles and is the dominant power in our region would be a good thing for Rice, then lacrosse is absolutely worth looking into. And for reasons of timing and geography, I'm not sure there is any other sport that offers such an opportunity quite as ripe for the taking. Again, the ONLY real necessity is to hire a great coach. But of course, if you want to list reasons why it might not work, or why success would not be guaranteed, that's easy to do also.
Conversely, if the primary goal is to have a sport that costs as little as possible, then a great coach and a big team sport like lacrosse or hockey are clearly not the way to go.
If you want to make an omelet, you gotta break buy some eggs.
FIFY -- I do agree wholeheartedly with your post, just making the point that IMO Rice has the wherewithal to mount any level of athletic program in any sport and in any number of sports that it wants. To the extent we have constraints, they are largely self-imposed and artificial. Rice subsidizes athletics to the tune of $23 million a year (out of a budget of $37 million). Is there something magical about $23 million that makes that a hard ceiling? Have we actually determined that $25 million or $30 million or $40 million would be too heavy a drain on the endowment? Doubtful; rather, I suspect that $23 million is more or less the inflation-adjusted equivalent of what we've always done and basically what it takes to maintain the status quo...now that doing what we've always done has sunk us to our current level.
So, theoretically, adding MLAX & WLAX would not ipso facto require dropping any current sports; we could also stay in compliance with Title IX through addition of even more women's opportunities rather than subtraction of current men's opportunities. Obviously, that would require more money, but I suspect our endowment could handle it. Alternatively, if we are not going to spend what it would take to get us back to P5 in football (my first preference), then I think dropping football, which is now in a ghettoized lower division for all intents and purposes, needs to be on the table, and then we add LAX, soccer, etc.
Bottom line is that we need inspired and inspiring leadership that envisions something radically different than just maintaining the status quo. I have posted about the Univ. of Denver approach before (no football but pouring resources into being nationally competitive in all the other Div. I Olympic sports) and I really think this is something we need to study.
By the way, DU has good golf teams as well. To the extent our golf program is underperforming, we should be trying to fix it rather than chloroform it. There is no inherent reason we cannot have an excellent golf program.
(This post was last modified: 04-26-2017 12:38 PM by illiniowl.)
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