(09-29-2017 10:32 AM)mrbig Wrote: Can we agree on some baseline facts, before discussing how Coach Bailiff (or a potential replacement) might work?
(1) Rice will not make the kind of facilities investment seen at most P5 schools, or schools aspiring toward P5 status. We might want it to be different, but there is no indication that Rice will change.
(2) Rice will not make the kind of investment in coaching salaries and recruiting budget seen at most P5 schools, or schools aspiring toward P5 status.
(3) Rice will make enough of an investment in facilities, recruiting budget, and coaching salary budget that we are neither at the very top or very bottom of our current conference.
(4) Rice will always have some degree of recruiting restrictions in place that stop the program from recruiting a significant number of HS and JUCO players.
(5) Rice will always place more emphasis on running a clean program, building character, and graduating players than most FBS programs.
(6) Rice will not either cut football or drop to a lower division.
(7) Rice will continue to play at least 1-2 games per year against tough P5 opponents.
Given the above and as i've said for a decade.... to 'do what everyone else does' and expect anything other than mediocre (at best) results is the definition of insanity.
There is no evidence that we are simply better at identifying coaching talent than everyone else, but If you get a coach who is just better than everyone else, we will lose him. Loyalty is one thing, but a guy turning down 3+mm to coach at p5 to stay at Rice is incompatible with a coach who is just better than everyone else.
There are lots of things that could be changed that don't require running the wishbone and I have spoken about them at length...
My two favorites....
You can recruit differently (like the academies do, and we're different enough as a university that it should work)
You can read and execute the same plays differently (a la RUOWLS, and we're smart enough that it should work)
The PROBLEM is that there are some within the ear of the BOT (and perhaps members of the BOT themselves) who remember the SWC before the internet and believe that recruiting in our back yard and running the schemes that Texas 5 and 6a schools run because they're familiar to the players is a good strategy... OR that they ignore the marginal academic but exceptional athletic players that are the difference between UH and RU recruits (80+% of their players could get in, but perhaps only 60% of their 'stars')
I don't understand the disconnect. I don't understand the dogged insistence that we're on the right track. It's as if everyone has ignored and forgotten Brown, Goldsmith and Hatfield and what we should have learned from them... and instead we're so afraid of another TG that we're afraid of intensity and taking chances and being different.... and COMPLETELY ignoring Wayne's intensity and the results we've gotten there