(03-18-2018 06:13 PM)Antarius Wrote:  

(03-18-2018 05:49 PM)Owl 69/70/75 Wrote:  No, that’s not where I’m going and that grossly misstates the point I am making. It’s happening on their watch, so it’s clearly their fault, at least to some extent. Mine is a serious question. What should have been done differently? I’m asking for specifics. OK, we should be winning more games, graduating more players, and bringing in more money. So what specifically should be done to get there?

1. Opportunity cost - The influx of donations from sources should be compares to the long term sphere of influence wielded. For example, a donor may chip in 2 million USD a year. the question is, what does that 2 million get us? if the decisions that come with the 2 million result in Rice having to SPEND 4 million more due to lost revenue and declining Conference $$$, then maybe that 2 million isn't really a positive cash flow influx. Similarly, a buyout may cost you 1 million USD. Not making that decision could cost you a lot more. we always choose the simple decision... pay less up front with no thought about the long term ramifications.

Rice needs to stop behaving penny wise and pound foolish.

2. Keeping up with the Joneses - And I mean not doing that. At no point will anything we build even remotely compare to the P5 dollars. The EZF is nothing compared to heck, even what UCF has in their stadium. Tudor? far cry from a P5 stadium. The indoor Roost? clearly not taking us back to Omaha.
a. We will not be able to win the facilities battle
b. Investments made must be taken with the expectation of no result. Pinning your hopes on a magic bullet like an EZF is a terrible idea.

Summary: Build the facilities if you want. but the spending, decision tree etc. must be independent of other decisions such as personnel, strategy etc. It is akin to the CEO of Home Depot making his corporate decisions based on what building they have HQ in and what color of paint is on the walls. Just no. Facilities will not save us; we should stop acting like they can.

3. Corporate Sponsorship - We are woefully lacking in this regard. It may have improved recently, but a few years ago... it was a rounding error

4. Commitment - Are we going to try for P5? Or are we aiming for D3? Pick a direction and act towards it. Hiring a D3 level football coach at G5 money is not a smart use of resources. Would anyone here pay 200k USD for a Pontiac Aztec? Because that is what we did for the last 11 years.

There's more. But these are at the top of my head.

EDIT: couple more

5. Retreads - I think we finally stopped this, but it deserves to be said. Stop hiring retreads like Greenspan and Braun. If they got run off in the P5 with vastly more resources and control, they will unquestionably fail at Rice.

6. Succession planning - We are the bottom rung of a ladder; every one steps on us. As we move up, less and less so. But for now, we have to act like every coach is potentially going to leave at the end of the season. We all knew Rhoades would leave eventually.. we seemed to get caught with our pants down regardless. Same thing with the Toad. Now - with Langley, I hope to god we have a plan lined up because it is possible she gets poached. I hope not, but we must plan for the worst and hope for the best.

7. IT and Technology - I know JK, Tanner, Shu etc. have made strides in this like crazy. But our online presence is still ghastly. Small schools like St. Thomas (I think.. or maybe HBU) has a better online stream than we do for their MBB games. Our Owlvision is pretty terrible.. and we are not in a position to make it hard for fans to tune in. Same issue with the website.. Game 4 against Gonzaga had the wrong score for 7 innings on the website.

Fix the online streaming. Get a mobile app or platform to make it easy to follow. Create a better shared calendar for games so it isn't a CSV download and import (so when game times etc. change you have no idea). Make it easy to be a fan.

Check out this link: do you think a casual Houston sports fan is going to do this: http://www.riceowls.com/ot/rice-sched-download.html ?

I think these are all great, and badly needed, ideas. I can think of others. How to make it happen?

I don’t think many people realize just how bad our back office operations were. They’re still not great. But believe me, they were so bad that they had huge negative impacts on performance in the arena. There are two approaches available:
1) Somebody give the money needed to fix everything, or
2) Slog along and make whatever progress we can.

I believe Leebron really wants athletics to succeed. But he doesn’t have any expertise in the area. He has to put people in place and expect them to perform.

I’m not saying everything is wonderful and excusing everything. I think the way the Graham situation has been handled is unconscionable. It simply cannot be defended. And hiring Ranger Rick was idiocy taken to the gargantuan. But we aren’t going to fix anything without some mistakes along the way. I think the Stanford influence is great. There are few better examples of best practices for running a competitive athletic program at a top academic university. I just hope we can become more like Stanford.

(03-18-2018 07:41 PM)Owl 69/70/75 Wrote:  

(03-18-2018 06:13 PM)Antarius Wrote:  

(03-18-2018 05:49 PM)Owl 69/70/75 Wrote:  No, that’s not where I’m going and that grossly misstates the point I am making. It’s happening on their watch, so it’s clearly their fault, at least to some extent. Mine is a serious question. What should have been done differently? I’m asking for specifics. OK, we should be winning more games, graduating more players, and bringing in more money. So what specifically should be done to get there?

1. Opportunity cost - The influx of donations from sources should be compares to the long term sphere of influence wielded. For example, a donor may chip in 2 million USD a year. the question is, what does that 2 million get us? if the decisions that come with the 2 million result in Rice having to SPEND 4 million more due to lost revenue and declining Conference $$$, then maybe that 2 million isn't really a positive cash flow influx. Similarly, a buyout may cost you 1 million USD. Not making that decision could cost you a lot more. we always choose the simple decision... pay less up front with no thought about the long term ramifications.

Rice needs to stop behaving penny wise and pound foolish.

2. Keeping up with the Joneses - And I mean not doing that. At no point will anything we build even remotely compare to the P5 dollars. The EZF is nothing compared to heck, even what UCF has in their stadium. Tudor? far cry from a P5 stadium. The indoor Roost? clearly not taking us back to Omaha.
a. We will not be able to win the facilities battle
b. Investments made must be taken with the expectation of no result. Pinning your hopes on a magic bullet like an EZF is a terrible idea.

Summary: Build the facilities if you want. but the spending, decision tree etc. must be independent of other decisions such as personnel, strategy etc. It is akin to the CEO of Home Depot making his corporate decisions based on what building they have HQ in and what color of paint is on the walls. Just no. Facilities will not save us; we should stop acting like they can.

3. Corporate Sponsorship - We are woefully lacking in this regard. It may have improved recently, but a few years ago... it was a rounding error

4. Commitment - Are we going to try for P5? Or are we aiming for D3? Pick a direction and act towards it. Hiring a D3 level football coach at G5 money is not a smart use of resources. Would anyone here pay 200k USD for a Pontiac Aztec? Because that is what we did for the last 11 years.

There's more. But these are at the top of my head.

EDIT: couple more

5. Retreads - I think we finally stopped this, but it deserves to be said. Stop hiring retreads like Greenspan and Braun. If they got run off in the P5 with vastly more resources and control, they will unquestionably fail at Rice.

6. Succession planning - We are the bottom rung of a ladder; every one steps on us. As we move up, less and less so. But for now, we have to act like every coach is potentially going to leave at the end of the season. We all knew Rhoades would leave eventually.. we seemed to get caught with our pants down regardless. Same thing with the Toad. Now - with Langley, I hope to god we have a plan lined up because it is possible she gets poached. I hope not, but we must plan for the worst and hope for the best.

7. IT and Technology - I know JK, Tanner, Shu etc. have made strides in this like crazy. But our online presence is still ghastly. Small schools like St. Thomas (I think.. or maybe HBU) has a better online stream than we do for their MBB games. Our Owlvision is pretty terrible.. and we are not in a position to make it hard for fans to tune in. Same issue with the website.. Game 4 against Gonzaga had the wrong score for 7 innings on the website.

Fix the online streaming. Get a mobile app or platform to make it easy to follow. Create a better shared calendar for games so it isn't a CSV download and import (so when game times etc. change you have no idea). Make it easy to be a fan.

Check out this link: do you think a casual Houston sports fan is going to do this: http://www.riceowls.com/ot/rice-sched-download.html ?

I think these are all great, and badly needed, ideas. I can think of others. How to make it happen?

I don’t think many people realize just how bad our back office operations were. They’re still not great. But believe me, they were so bad that they had huge negative impacts on performance in the arena. There are two approaches available:
1) Somebody give the money needed to fix everything, or
2) Slog along and make whatever progress we can.

I believe Leebron really wants athletics to succeed. But he doesn’t have any expertise in the area. He has to put people in place and expect them to perform.

I’m not saying everything is wonderful and excusing everything. I think the way the Graham situation has been handled is unconscionable. It simply cannot be defended. And hiring Ranger Rick was idiocy taken to the gargantuan. But we aren’t going to fix anything without some mistakes along the way. I think the Stanford influence is great. There are few better examples of best practices for running a competitive athletic program at a top academic university. I just hope we can become more like Stanford.

We’ve all given you dozens of actions that could have and should have been done for a decade now. When are you going to stop asking the same question and expecting different answers and results. We don’t need more money to be better at fundraising, selling tickets and winning conference USA. We just need to be better at what we do with the money. When that becomes the case, more money will come. Until then, simply saying 30 years ago Rice was the worst you’ve ever seen doesn’t mean anything. Heck at least back then we’d beat Middle Tennessee State and Western Kentucky.

(03-18-2018 08:24 PM)BufflOwl Wrote:  We’ve all given you dozens of actions that could have and should have been done for a decade now. When are you going to stop asking the same question and expecting different answers and results. We don’t need more money to be better at fundraising, selling tickets and winning conference USA. We just need to be better at what we do with the money. When that becomes the case, more money will come. Until then, simply saying 30 years ago Rice was the worst you’ve ever seen doesn’t mean anything.

What you've actually given is results, not actions. We need to be better at this. We need to do a better job of that. So how do you get there?

We need better results. We all agree. So what changes do you make to processes to get there?

(03-18-2018 08:29 PM)Owl 69/70/75 Wrote:  

(03-18-2018 08:24 PM)BufflOwl Wrote:  We’ve all given you dozens of actions that could have and should have been done for a decade now. When are you going to stop asking the same question and expecting different answers and results. We don’t need more money to be better at fundraising, selling tickets and winning conference USA. We just need to be better at what we do with the money. When that becomes the case, more money will come. Until then, simply saying 30 years ago Rice was the worst you’ve ever seen doesn’t mean anything.

What you've actually given is results, not actions. We need to be better at this. We need to do a better job of that. So how do you get there?

We need better results. We all agree. So what changes do you make to processes to get there?

Why is this so hard for you?

1. I and others have given you dozens of those actions the people who get paid to make Rice relevant could have taken to be more successful since this message board started. I’m not repeating them again. Antarius just gave you another half dozen. How many do you need? At this point, the answer is anything. Do anything.

2. Being good at making Rice relevant isn’t a “let’s do this, not that” thing. It’s being really good at what you choose to do. We are not good. At anything. Yes, even now. Just because we have marketing and say we look at data, doesn’t mean are marketing is good or bad. The lack of people at games, or watching games, or knowing games are happening does. There’s no secret trick to selling tickets or raising money. The people collecting the paychecks just have to be good at what they’re getting paid to do.

So...for the final time. I’m not giving you any more ideas or things we should have done, until the people running this dumpster fire get better at their jobs.

And by the way, when they’re great, you won’t have to tell people they are. The results will show it.

I voted that Rice will be an upper G5 program. I think people on the Board of Trustees and throughout the Rice inner circles understand now that money has to be spent on athletics. None of it will be enough to get into a power conference, but the athletics programs will be relevant.

(03-18-2018 09:33 PM)BufflOwl Wrote:  

(03-18-2018 08:29 PM)Owl 69/70/75 Wrote:  

(03-18-2018 08:24 PM)BufflOwl Wrote:  We’ve all given you dozens of actions that could have and should have been done for a decade now. When are you going to stop asking the same question and expecting different answers and results. We don’t need more money to be better at fundraising, selling tickets and winning conference USA. We just need to be better at what we do with the money. When that becomes the case, more money will come. Until then, simply saying 30 years ago Rice was the worst you’ve ever seen doesn’t mean anything.

What you've actually given is results, not actions. We need to be better at this. We need to do a better job of that. So how do you get there?
We need better results. We all agree. So what changes do you make to processes to get there?

Why is this so hard for you?
1. I and others have given you dozens of those actions the people who get paid to make Rice relevant could have taken to be more successful since this message board started. I’m not repeating them again. Antarius just gave you another half dozen. How many do you need? At this point, the answer is anything. Do anything.
2. Being good at making Rice relevant isn’t a “let’s do this, not that” thing. It’s being really good at what you choose to do. We are not good. At anything. Yes, even now. Just because we have marketing and say we look at data, doesn’t mean are marketing is good or bad. The lack of people at games, or watching games, or knowing games are happening does. There’s no secret trick to selling tickets or raising money. The people collecting the paychecks just have to be good at what they’re getting paid to do.
So...for the final time. I’m not giving you any more ideas or things we should have done, until the people running this dumpster fire get better at their jobs.
And by the way, when they’re great, you won’t have to tell people they are. The results will show it.

OK, so we need to get rid of the people we have and replace them with better people. Fine. So who are these better people? And how do we find them? And how do we get them to come to Rice?

I probably should address Antarius's points more directly:

Opportunity cost--As far as being penny wise and pound foolish, I totally agree. But that is part and parcel of the university's way of doing everything, not just athletics, and has been seemingly forever. No athletic director is going to change that. For that matter, it will be extremely difficult for a president to change that, so long as it is embedded into the fabric of the system. I have found myself being incredibly frustrated at so many decisions--both academic and athletic--over the years.

For instance, take the Baylor Med issue. It is pretty clear that Rice's academic ranking, for those who care, would be more positively enhanced by adding a medical school than anything else. So we take the easy way, or at least try to, buy acquiring an existing and well-respected institution. Unfortunately, the reason that institution might have looked like an acquisition target was in part because it was having some significant internal and financial issues of its own. It was moving its anchor hospital, attempting to build a costly hospital of its own, and a number of its leading doctors were frankly pissed off. For what it would have cost to acquire Baylor Med, we could have started a medical school of our own, with excellent facilities and prominent faculty actually pretty readily available. But buying it was the easy way, building a med school would have been hard. So the Rice way--if you don't know where you are going, the easy way will get you there--took over and we had a debacle.

Keeping up with the Joneses--The Rice approach is if you give us the money, we will build it. It seems as if all operational decisions, university wide, are made based on who gives money for what. It's a logical consequence of the first point. I agree that it makes no sense to accept a $2 million gift that comes with strings tat will cost $4 million in lost revenues. But I don't really see that happening. And people are not going to give $2 million without wanting some control over the outcome.

By the way, I ave been in frequent conversation and correspondence with several members that I believe to be part of what has been as the group of 25(0). Their point was not so much keeping David Bailiff as it was that we needed a lot more operations and maintenance spending on football. Basically it was that we need to give any coach adequate resources before holding him too much to account. I think Joe traded one more year of Bailiff for a commitment to give Mike Bloomgren those resources, or at least a bunch of them. I think we have already seen that with staff and with recruiting. I just hope we see that on the field--and I think we will, maybe sooner than people expect.

Corporate sponsorship--This is probably the lynchpin to making substantial improvement. Todd Graham probably got more done in this regard than anyone, and was he got was peanuts and brother-in-law deals like the scoreboard tat was never properly bricked in and didn't work because it wasn't properly maintained. It's relatively easy to get individual donations for brick and mortar. It's much harder to get individual donations for operations and maintenance. And that's were Rice does not spend enough as a university. It is easier to get corporate money for that sort of stuff. And frankly it's probably easier to get big corporate bucks, for athletics as well as the academic side, if that comes with suites for athletic events and advertisements at well-attended such events. But Rice doesn't seem to understand that.

Commitment--Again, if you don't know were you are going, the path of least resistance will get you there. I think nothing less than a major paradigm shift will work. And like it or not, that takes a Todd Graham. I don't like him, I'm glad he's gone, and there were major elements of HIS paradigm that I did not buy into. But it is going to take a transformative character to bring about what is needed. I don't think Joe Karlgaard is willing to rock the boat to that extent, nor is David Leebron. I'm not sure how we get someone with that bull in the China shop approach into a position of sufficient power to make things happen. I still hope that some alumni billionaire will decide to take it on. But so far, it isn't happening.

Ant's other comments pretty much flow from these. I agree that all the things he suggests need to be done.

I'm not saying that things are hunky-dory, and I'm frankly getting tired of having my comments misconstrued as such. I'm pissed off about the same things you are. The difference is that I see them as institutional issues rather than personality issues. We are going to have to change the institution to change them. So who is capable of effecting institutional change?

(03-12-2018 06:07 AM)Fort Bend Owl Wrote:  This poll would be more interesting if you allowed people to see the results of who voted for each category. Otherwise, it's tough to tell if it's just being completed by trolls. I voted a top performer in G5 based on the fact that I think Bloomgren will succeed.

I can see that info and can verify that only one so-called troll has registered a vote. Almost all of the votes cast are by board regulars, and the rest are by known users.

(03-12-2018 11:30 AM)flash3200 Wrote:  I voted for G5 bottomfeeder. Rice admin is still not committed to anything more than paying out the contracts of coaches on staff. Until the 1 step forward 2 steps back approach changes, I will not even harbor anything resembling cautious optimism.

Which way did the troll vote?

(03-19-2018 07:26 AM)Owl 69/70/75 Wrote:  OK, so we need to get rid of the people we have and replace them with better people. Fine. So who are these better people? And how do we find them? And how do we get them to come to Rice?

A lot of them have been around here for decades. We put out some pretty good graduates who have been successful in academia and in running businesses.

I know you know this (you're one of them)