(10-10-2017 08:55 PM)Antarius Wrote: (10-10-2017 07:58 PM)Owl 69/70/75 Wrote: He's not going to fired during the season.
One question. Things have really gone downhill since 2013--almost straight down. What has caused that?
I mean, after 2013 we were coming off a conference championship, and after 2014 we were coming off 3 bowls in a row, plus we had the EZF coming. You would have thought that was, at least relatively, the catbird's seat, and that things should immediately get better. They didn't, so why?
Despite my best efforts to avoid this dumpster fire.. someone alerted me to 1. A thread asking where I went 2. This discussion
Point is..regression towards the mean. Imagine you lift someone like Miss State or NC state and drop them into CUSA. Initially they will beat up on people by better talent. Then people realize that CUSA sucks monkey nuts and your recruiting slides. Then you move from being average in a better conference to good in a poor conference to average in a poor conference to, if you're coached by a no talent space occupier, to terrible in that poor conference.
This of course assumes you are a Miss State or NC state. Rice was more like a Cincinnati or UVa. Drop either of those in the Sunbelt and watch a few years of "unprecedented success" and other frou frou bull**** terms get thrown around. Then watch them fade into the same level of crap that they currently are, albeit relatively worse.
Point is, Bailiff has been happily cashing his checks and beating up against bottom 20 competition for 2012 and 2013 all while CUSA dropped from being a top 2 G5 to basically the sun belt.
Many of us saw this coming. But the BOT and his supporters shouted us down. Leebron, our BOT's Kerry Jones and your Ilk congrats- you've successfully passed the point of no return. Youve basically played with someone else's money - wasted it towards this clown we have in charge- and paid no consequences for your stupidity, short sightedness and fiscal malpractice.
The war is over. We lost.
Yes, yes, a thousand times yes. With apologies to Bill Clinton, "It's the
economy conference, stupid." We and CUSA 3.0 are particularly ill-suited for each other and this result -- where we have sunk to a bottom 10 program -- was, really, inevitable, despite our initial success.
You see, it is not just that recruiting, i.e., the physical talent on the roster, degrades due to being in this conference. It is that
psychologically we -- fans, alums, players, everyone associated with Rice -- simply cannot make ourselves
care about competing in this conference, composed of schools we have
absolutely nothing in common with. Why would a Rice person walk across the street to see any of these schools play? Much less drive across town, much less drive or fly in from out of town? And don't argue that they should just because Rice is involved. These are basically meaningless exhibition games. We have literally been shunted off into a ghettoized subdivision of Division I that cannot, repeat cannot, compete for the Division I championship.
So who cares? And so apathy/disgust lead to sparse crowds at HRS, no buzz or excitement on campus during the week (except the rare occasion when we get a recognizable opponent at home, like Baylor last year). Well, football is an emotional game. Players feed off of home energy. When that energy is not there, they underperform. And our players are Rice students also, of course. They know, deep down, just as their classmates do, that there is something deeply incongruous about striving for excellence at an elite institution Monday through Friday, and then competing against decidedly non-elite institutions/programs on Saturday. Quite simply, their hearts and minds - along with the hearts and minds of everybody on this campus - are not invested in this project, and never will be. (Maybe we could develop some massive augmented reality app that makes all of us see full crowds and all of our opponents as Longhorns, Aggies, etc.)
Frankly, our conference mates do not have this problem. For every single other school in this conference, with the possible exception of UTEP, CUSA is either a step
up from where they used to be or no worse than where they've always been. For us, it is a massive step
down and over the last 20+ years our administration has either been too shortsighted to realize this could never work here, or too accepting of mediocrity/dismissive of athletics to care, or too cheap/not ambitious enough/not creative enough to do what would have been necessary to achieve a different outcome. Or all of the above.
I do not say what I am about to say next to absolve Bailiff or say that facilities/amenities don't matter. Bailiff is a failure and yeah we could always do better in the facilities/amenities department (although I think we're definitely not shabby). But no coach or building or greater amenity for our athletes could ever fix this. Because regardless of those things, as long as we are in this conference and really in G5 football overall, the fundamental problem of not being psychologically invested in this competition will remain.
Some people think we can hire a new coach, have him start winning, then when he gets hired away (which he will), we find a replacement for him to keep it going and take us up a level (including better facilities/amenities), and then the same thing when he gets hired away, and we become a CUSA/G5 dynasty, and then I guess someday we get a call from Mike Slive inviting us to the SEC. And if that process breaks down along the way, we don't wait so freaking long to fire the guy who failed to get the next stage of the rocket to fire, and we try again.
That's all well and good, and it almost worked for Boise (might have worked if they were not a former junior college located in Boise) and it might just work for Florida Atlantic, but it won't work here. We will never bootstrap our way out of this mess. The plan requires season after season of 9 wins, 10 wins, 12 wins -- except, again, who is going to switch bodies with us and provide the consistent effort (players) and support (fans) against the Middle Tennessee States and the Louisiana Techs and the UABs and the other dreadful conference games that are the clear bulk of the schedule?
And so, always lacking any sort of real will to compete and excel at this level, with no compelling objective to strive for, I believe you will always see our program oscillate around .500, no matter who the coach is. A
phugoid oscillation, if you will. We can always win some games in spite of our lack of caring, and we should be able to occasionally punch above our weight against opponents that we do care about.* Conversely, we will
always be prone to laying eggs against teams with equal/lesser talent.
Absent a real and massive shift by the administration in how it conceives of and supports football on this campus, with a set objective of returning to the P5 level -- and doing this NOW, without waiting for football to provide the wins BEFORE providing the support -- nothing will change. The phugoid sequence will continue, because our admin looks to be committed to providing at least minimally adequate thrust in the form of subsidizing athletics just enough to keep the lights on. And since they will probably do so in perpetuity, at least those who fear the loss of football here will not have to worry about our phugoid sequence ending like
this one. Of course, some would say it already has.
*In this regard, Bailiff has been an especially poor fit for us because he is a typical, unimaginative football traditionalist who believes conference games are paramount and nonconference games are "preseason" nuisances, and this has showed in our abysmal results against any team your neighbor has actually heard of. Please at least let the next coach bring that "anyone, anywhere, anytime" mindset and rallying cry that Fresno State and Southern Miss and others have used to good effect!