If I remember correctly, Sean McVay was offered by Ken Hatfield. McVay was an All-State quarterback at Marist School in Atlanta, a triple option quarterback. Hatfield recruited well at Marist and I had hoped that he would be able to land McVay. I am not sure how to research that, nor if it makes any difference at this day and time.

Whether Hatfield offered or not, the other part is certainly true; he was a very good HS option quarterback at a high school that runs the option.

Wasn’t Benji Woods a Marist grad?

(01-07-2018 02:28 PM)Tiki Owl Wrote:  Wasn’t Benji Woods a Marist grad?

Yes. And Robbie Beck and Andrew Cates.

(01-07-2018 03:44 AM)grOWLer Wrote:  If I remember correctly, Sean McVay was offered by Ken Hatfield. McVay was an All-State quarterback at Marist School in Atlanta, a triple option quarterback. Hatfield recruited well at Marist and I had hoped that he would be able to land McVay. I am not sure how to research that, nor if it makes any difference at this day and time.

I believe that you remember correctly. From the Miami of Ohio 2004 football recruits news release:

Quote:Sean McVay
Athlete 5-10 175
Marietta, GA (Marist)
Coach's Comments: Recruited by Shane Montgomery ... tremendous speed and aestheticism ...was a threat as both a runner and a passer ... excellent leadership ability. Notes: Led Marist High School to a 26-3 record as the team's quarterback ... was the first player in school history to run and pass for 1,000 yards each in back-to-back seasons ... accumulated 2,600 yards rushing and 2,500 yards passing in his career along with 40 rushing TDs and 18 passing TDs ... named team MVP as a junior and senior ... led the team to a Division 4A State Championship as a senior ... selected to play in the Georgia North-South All-Star game ... his grandfather, John McVay, Sr., is a Miami graduate and was the general manger of the San Francisco 49ers during each of their five Super Bowl Championship seasons.. Other schools interested: Tulane, Navy, Rice, Duke.

Possibly his famous grandfather, a Miami grad, and uncle (a former Miami football player) were influential in Sean becoming a Redhawk?

(01-07-2018 02:37 PM)grOWLer Wrote:  

(01-07-2018 02:28 PM)Tiki Owl Wrote:  Wasn’t Benji Woods a Marist grad?

Yes. And Robbie Beck and Andrew Cates.

FTR, a fourth Rice athlete from Marist is distance runner Amanda Reineck (letters in 2007-8).

(01-07-2018 03:44 AM)grOWLer Wrote:  If I remember correctly, Sean McVay was offered by Ken Hatfield. McVay was an All-State quarterback at Marist School in Atlanta, a triple option quarterback. Hatfield recruited well at Marist and I had hoped that he would be able to land McVay. I am not sure how to research that, nor if it makes any difference at this day and time.

(01-07-2018 02:37 PM)grOWLer Wrote:  

(01-07-2018 02:28 PM)Tiki Owl Wrote:  Wasn’t Benji Woods a Marist grad?

Yes. And Robbie Beck and Andrew Cates.

I spoke to McVay's HS principal this weekend. They are very proud of what he has accomplished to get to the pro FB head coaching level in so little time. Speaks to the superior intellect of the athletes from that particular private HS. In pro Basketball, Matt Harpring, who played for the Utah Jazz for many years, was also a grad of that same school.

Makes me think about when a Head coach of a Rice team limits his recruiting, for whatever excuse, to almost exclusively just Texas, then spends a decade running the program into the ground. In Atlanta area alone there are three Catholic HS programs (the aforementioned Marist, Also St.Pius X and now the relatively newer Blessed Trinity HS (who just beat Marist for the HS football State Championship this past season) with the kind of intellectually superior athletes and tradition of winning that would be very helpful to any Rice head coach of ANY sport-- Football, basketball, baseball, volleyball, tennis, golf, track, etc... I would hope that the new football and basketball coaches make use recruiting more potential of Rice-type athletes from outside of Texas in select key major city markets akin to what is available in Atlanta with these type of schools, and improve the overall quality of their teams where possible. One thing I did like about something Bloomgren said was that he was good at recruiting South Georgia, as well as Stanford had a kid from Roswell, GA (Atlanta area power) on their team.

People in Texas sometimes appear to act as if their state is the center of the athletic universe, and while there are certainly a plethora of good athletes throughout that state, it is far from the only place a school like Rice can or should be getting its players from.

We can speak about lack of budget, but I feel that any head coach making $1 million+ in CUSA certainly has the ability to allocate a portion of his personal gifted fortune to making his Rice teams (and thereby himself) more successful. It's not like they don't have an idea of the past history and attitude towards athletics here when they take the job. It might seem more impressive to those holding the purse strings so tightly here for whatever reason if a head coach showed his commitment to excellence and winning by demonstrating he is willing to put some of his own skin in the recruiting game and prove the tightwads wrong as a way of shaking loose some of their change for his future needs. But then again, that would take a head Coach with some vision of who he is and what he wants to do, and we haven't seen that much in the last 10 years on South Main.

As an aside, interesting list of famous alums here:


Bret Baier - Fox News correspondent (Class of 1988)
Marshall Brain - founder of HowStuffWorks
Disco Inferno - WCW wrestler, real name Glenn Gilberti
Andrew Economos - NFL long snapper, Tampa Bay Buccaneers
Kyle Farmer - Los Angeles Dodgers catcher
Omari Hardwick - former UGA football player; actor in movies and TV
Matt Harpring - NBA player, Utah Jazz
David Hasselhoff - actor, attended but didn't graduate
Will Heller - NFL tight end, Detroit Lions
Kathleen Hersey - Olympic swimmer; finished 8th in the 2008 Olympics in Beijing (Class of 2008)
John Hester - Los Angeles Angels catcher
Kit Hoover - TV personality
Ernie Johnson, Jr. - NBA TV announcer
Bobby Jones - golf legend, attended but didn't graduate
Ed Lafitte - MLB pitcher for the Detroit Tigers (1909–12), Brooklyn Tip-Tops (1914–15), and Buffalo Blues (1915)
Patrick Mannelly - NFL long snapper, Chicago Bears
Peter Marshall - world record-holding swimmer in 50 and 100 yard backstroke (class of 2000)
Sean McVay - NFL head coach of the Los Angeles Rams
Bob Olderman - NFL player
Bert Parks - longtime host (1955–1979) of annual Miss America telecast
Ryan Roushandel - NASL, Atlanta Silverbacks
Anderson Russell - NFL, Redskins
Leigh Torrence - NFL defensive back, New Orleans Saints
Mark Watson - MLB pitcher for the Cleveland Indians (2000), Seattle Mariners (2002), and Cincinnati Reds (2003)
Rob Woodall - US House of Representatives 7th District
Emily Young - tennis star (Class of 1990)
Christopher M. Carr - Attorney General - State of Georgia (Class of 1990)

(01-08-2018 11:12 AM)GoodOwl Wrote:  We can speak about lack of budget, but I feel that any head coach making $1 million+ in CUSA certainly has the ability to allocate a portion of his personal gifted fortune to making his Rice teams (and thereby himself) more successful.

I'm not sure I follow that. If you're talking about paying for business trips out of his own pocket, I don't expect any employee of any organization to do that, and the precedent that such an expectation would set is an awful one.

(01-08-2018 11:36 AM)georgewebb Wrote:  

(01-08-2018 11:12 AM)GoodOwl Wrote:  We can speak about lack of budget, but I feel that any head coach making $1 million+ in CUSA certainly has the ability to allocate a portion of his personal gifted fortune to making his Rice teams (and thereby himself) more successful.

I'm not sure I follow that. If you're talking about paying for business trips out of his own pocket, I don't expect any employee of any organization to do that, and the precedent that such an expectation would set is an awful one.

I'm not sure you're reading that correctly, as your statement appears different from what I was meaning. My understanding is that coaches have in the past allocated portions of their overall compensation towards things like assistant coaches (maybe they wanted to get one of their picks, but the stated budget wasn't there, so they moved some of their pay to increase the amount that could be paid to get their guy.) Similarly, could they not do the same in exchange for a larger recruiting budget? I guess it depends on how you look at "out of his own pocket," but surely there's a way for him/her to say to those in charge he/she will be willing to take less for him/herself in exchange for an increase in an area he/she feels strongly that needs a commensurate increase.

(01-08-2018 12:17 PM)GoodOwl Wrote:  

(01-08-2018 11:36 AM)georgewebb Wrote:  

(01-08-2018 11:12 AM)GoodOwl Wrote:  We can speak about lack of budget, but I feel that any head coach making $1 million+ in CUSA certainly has the ability to allocate a portion of his personal gifted fortune to making his Rice teams (and thereby himself) more successful.

I'm not sure I follow that. If you're talking about paying for business trips out of his own pocket, I don't expect any employee of any organization to do that, and the precedent that such an expectation would set is an awful one.

I'm not sure you're reading that correctly, as your statement appears different from what I was meaning. My understanding is that coaches have in the past allocated portions of their overall compensation towards things like assistant coaches (maybe they wanted to get one of their picks, but the stated budget wasn't there, so they moved some of their pay to increase the amount that could be paid to get their guy.) Similarly, could they not do the same in exchange for a larger recruiting budget? I guess it depends on how you look at "out of his own pocket," but surely there's a way for him/her to say to those in charge he/she will be willing to take less for him/herself in exchange for an increase in an area he/she feels strongly that needs a commensurate increase.

A fine line to walk there. Should any employee of any enterprise be expected to take money away from his family and children to pay for things his employer rightfully should pay for?

I realize many do -teachers for example. Key word is “expected”.

(01-08-2018 12:43 PM)OptimisticOwl Wrote:  A fine line to walk there. Should any employee of any enterprise be expected to take money away from his family and children to pay for things his employer rightfully should pay for?

I realize many do -teachers for example. Key word is “expected”.

Short answer:
Maybe the answer best comes from coaches who willingly took salary decreases to get their assistants paid more? Ask them if they thought it was worth it? I'd guess that most would reply that the answer is implicit in their decision/desire to do so in the first place.


Longer answer: (skip if you prefer USA Today and twitter-level depth)
In a way, you've hit upon the issue at Rice- attitude. It's one thing to have a program or field teams just for the sake of it or because of tradition. Quite another to field teams and leverage them as an investment opportunity for marketing your university as a competitive and well-rounded (not narrowly skewed) product in the marketplace of competitors and peers. Rice U is a product and a business plain and simple. To the extent it approaches things like athletic teams as such with a corresponding mindset of success, it will have the opportunity for superior results to be a more likely outcome. But frustrating to some alumns like myself, Rice seemingly turned away from that view of a well-rounded top-level university in favor of some strange and insufficiently articulated exclusionary ideal that merely tolerates athletics but starves it from the very support that would better help make it an asset for the university instead of mostly a liability.

In my estimation, Rice used to be a well-rounded top university like other top-level schools plus we were smart. I think that used to be one of the bumper stickers years ago: "I go to Rice, I must be smart." That attitude carried a bit of humility and everyman pragmatism as a way for our students, faculty, alums and the school itself to fit into American society, and all parties were well-served by that ethos.

Today it seems more like it's something closer to 'We're Rice and we're better than sports, but we don't really sincerely believe that because if we really did, we'd eliminate them altogether. So, since we keep them around, we'll just pretend we're better than you by starving them of any real chance at success on the same level as the rest of our university purports to be, so we can pretend to feel better about ourselves.'

Why not join the rest of American society and be a proud participant and an better, and successful example of the solution to the things that currently(and have at times in the past )ails big-time sports? I find myself thinking always of Rice's athletic potential and what the college sports world would look like if Rice really invested its formidable resources fully in becoming athletically elite in FB, Hoops and baseball on an ongoing basis. What if instead of Notre dame being the ultra-successful outlying school it was Rice? Would not that example be something the rest of the system (and the ones who violate its provisions with a wink and a grin) not be able to ignore like they do now.

Rice leaders have at times in the past intimated that we like to do sports the right way. I will never see how Rice being a loser, and roundly viewed as one, is ever the right way to attract positive attention. As an alum this is a source of derision and embarrassment that I find distasteful and wholly unnecessary. Apparently Rice thinks otherwise, as demonstrated by its athletic actions and decisions for decades of general ineptitude. I'll admit to not having fully researched and understood the Rice ethos of losing is okay before matriculating. I seriously doubt many athletes filly understand it before they get here either.

This is the game, as it is being played in university circles today. It involves business, marketing and an attitude of winning. Rice wants no pretend the sky is green and the grass is blue despite all evidence to the contrary. And that disappoints me, because I see the opposite potential and attitude is just as easily available here at Rice, if not more than most other universities.

To a school with as long a history as this one, a decade of sustained and directed financial investment by the university would reap dividends far greater than adding incrementally to the endowment, but only if we put all the best Rice has to offer into becoming the elite program across the board athletically I believe we truly can and should be.

Can any of us do this for the university alone? I doubt any or even all of us put together at the full extent of our resources could. The university itself must lead this kind of change financially, or it is sure to be a half-measure at best, extended futility and embarrassment like we've more or less experienced for another decade at worst(qualifications and excuses added in for self-placating of course.) Rice has the ruby slippers, most other schools would envy our potential if we awoke the sleeping giant. Rice seemingly refuses to see or use them.

I will go with the short response (I cannot call that an answer).

I will repeat, the key word is expected. Should a coach be expected to use part of his salary for assistant coaches, or for recruiting travel, or to paint the offices?

sure, some coaches have do thiis voluntarily, and I am sure they think best in the long run for their family. But you assume they are all happy with the results, and I doubt that. In any case, it is not expected. does Bloomgren, Graham, Pera, Saban, the coaches at Notre Dame, Oklahoma, Houston, et al do this? Is it expected of them? If not, why should it be expected of the Rice coach?

Who makes the budgets for football?

Let's assume for a moment that had David spent $100,000 per year allocated to him instead on assistants or recruiting (something I know he did at least once) that he would have been more successful and either gotten another raise from us or a bigger offer from someone else. That would have been an 'investment' in his business and a smart thing for him to do, whereas keeping that $100,000 and failing and thus getting fired would have NOT been a smart thing to do. I certainly EXPECT our coaches to be 'smart'. Of course this is a pure hypo. If he took the job based on 'budget a' and on second thought, realized that 'budget b' would have been a better way for HIM to succeed... it should be up to him to reallocate within the existing contracted university budget... otherwise we're just hiring someone to do a job with a $3mm budget because he things he can succeed with that and then months later... he says... nope, I need $3.5mm.

Your point seems to be that we should set the budgets for all the underlying line items high enough for them to succeed... but isn't the HC supposed to be part of that decision? If we were at or near break-even, I'm sure it would be less of an issue.

I think the reality is that the University doesn't care that much about how funds are allocated within football, only with the 'total'. I am sure there are some 'political' limits i.e. they don't want the coach making more than the University President, but that obviously doesn't mean that the coach can't play with those numbers as both David and Ken (at least) did.

They're running a business, not working a job. The entire budget should be at least mostly at their discretion. I'm sure the coach knows how much his total budget is and while the 'line items' may have some guidelines on them, only has a few restrictions on how those funds can actually be allocated.

Maybe the better way to judge things is to look at what coaches do with those budgets. Give them a total budget and then a range for their own salary. If they are increasing their own salary when wins or attendance isn't rising, that may be a sign of bad things. If they're taking less themselves and investing more in assistants or recruiting and player comforts, that may be a sign of good things. If they're increasing their salary in the face of rising attendance/revenue... then they should be asking for (and getting) budget increases to support it.

A high head coaches salary makes him harder to hire away... but if the total budget is fixed, it also makes it harder for him to win.

(01-11-2018 04:32 PM)Hambone10 Wrote:  Let's assume for a moment that had David spent $100,000 per year allocated to him instead on assistants or recruiting (something I know he did at least once) that he would have been more successful and either gotten another raise from us or a bigger offer from someone else. That would have been an 'investment' in his business and a smart thing for him to do, whereas keeping that $100,000 and failing and thus getting fired would have NOT been a smart thing to do. I certainly EXPECT our coaches to be 'smart'. Of course this is a pure hypo. If he took the job based on 'budget a' and on second thought, realized that 'budget b' would have been a better way for HIM to succeed... it should be up to him to reallocate within the existing contracted university budget... otherwise we're just hiring someone to do a job with a $3mm budget because he things he can succeed with that and then months later... he says... nope, I need $3.5mm.

In weighing that investment, you also have to consider the precedent it would set, whether he could turn that investment into wins, and other issues. By the same token, Rice has to make exactly the same calculation... putting your coach in a position where he is not fully compensated for expenses would make it harder for the university to make the next hire, and could actually harm recruiting because it could be used to portray the program as being on shaky ground.