RE: Hello old friend (ESPN Bottom 10)
Liberty's not really a useful comparator for how independence could go for Rice. They didn't choose independence as a way to launch themselves to greater relevancy and ultimately a P5 conference (which is what I envision Rice could aim for). They would have been content with a regional G5 conference (CUSA or Sun Belt), but their nature and mission are controversial to the public schools and that has kept them out. Rice would face no such barrier in marketing itself to any conference.
They (and NMSU, and UMass) are also choosing to play schedules that basically look like a typical G5 schedule: 2-3 P5 or equivalents, and the rest G5s. Again, not what I would advocate for Rice, since we obviously we already have that. To me, the point of independence would be to upgrade our schedule to approximate that of a typical P5 school -- since in my view that's what we'd be auditioning for. We'd keep 3-4 lower-visibility games (NMSU, Liberty, UMass, other G5s of the ilk we play in CUSA now anyway), and aim to schedule 8-9 higher-visibility games (P5s, BYU, Army and the other academies, ND, UH, G5 state flagships, etc.). Attendance and interest in Rice games goes up, recruiting goes up...and if we can do this for a solid 5+ years, then we should have some attractive conference options open up to us.
A key to getting those P5 opponents would be for Rice to make the case to the P5s that we should be considered the equivalent of a P5 for purposes of satisfying those conferences' mandates that teams play a certain number of P5 schools out of conference. I believe the academies have been given this deal, along with Cincinnati, UConn, and perhaps others. Obviously in recent years this case has gotten harder for us to make from a competitiveness standpoint (an entirely foreseeable consequence of continuing to ignore that Rice folks simply will not abide this conference), but we still may be able to draw on past relationships, legacy points, etc., and make it happen.
Finding another conference(s) to host the rest of our sports would be doable. Baseball could likely write its own ticket, and if basketball and the rest had to go someplace like the Summit, I fail to see how that is materially worse than CUSA.
The remaining objections are usually TV, bowls, and cost. Our current TV revenue and exposure for conference games is negligible and literally couldn't be missed. A beefed-up schedule gets us on TV more for away games, I'm pretty sure we could sell our high-profile home games, and we can stream the others which may be the future anyway. Bowl tie-ins might be hard to come by (especially at 6-6) but I don't see this as an insurmountable issue.
And as for cost, well, I think to do this right would absolutely require a major increase in investment -- which hopefully would pay dividends 5-10 years later with P5 readmission. I'll grant there is no sense in trying to do this on the cheap, which of course is how we see cash-strapped public schools like NMSU & UMass trying it (and Idaho decided against trying). So, let's not emulate them.
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