I honestly don't know a single person who likes him. He was hired 5 years ago to get us in a better conference and make us relevant. I'd say colossal failure on all counts. We are going nowhere soon and although we are spending 7 figures on a football coach he seems to be failing. On top of that he pissed off Bailiff that ruined Rice's reputation with high school coaches. Oh wait he did the same thing to the baseball program and does anyone need to be reminded of that cluster that was created entirely by him.

If the fish rots from the head then it is time to stop funding him. That means no more Owl club donations that never make it past deficit reduction anyway.

To cure cancer you need to kill it and this cancer is really bad.

+100000

He doesn't get a free pass or anything, but acting like Bailiff and last-few-years Graham were suddenly going to make us amazing and Karlgaard is why we aren't is an exercise in gymnastics (of the mental kind) that even Simone Biles would be astounded by.

I guess part of this depends on what the AD's job is. In a modern athletic department, the AD basically runs the business side of things and the coaches run their individual sports. Joe has really focused on trying to get the business side in better shape, and things in that area have improved substantially. One element of Stanford's program is far better performance in the back office than Rice has ever had, and that does have some not insignificant impact on overall program success.

I don't think he has done nearly as well with handling coaches. Giving Bailiff an extension with a big buyout, when nobody was chasing him, was a rookie mistake. I wouldn't have done that for a couple of reasons. Number one, I've said repeatedly that I would give coaches five year rollover contracts--so the appearance of continuity is always there for recruiting and other purposes--but with small buyout provisions--I'm thinking something like $100,000, or at most $100,000 for each remaining year. I don't want a coach who wants to be somewhere else but is trapped by a buyout, and I sure don't want us to be trapped by a buyout when we decide he needs to be somewhere else. Number two, Bailiff wouldn't have been there to extend, because I would have fired him after 2009, or failing that after 2010, or failing that after 2011. And I wouldn't have gotten overjoyed when he got lucky in the second half of 2012, and 2013 and 2014. Bailiff was simply a guy who could get the stars to align from time to time, but he was not a maintainer, and that was obvious at Texas State and it was reinforced in 2009-2011.

I've heard so many different versions of the Graham story from so many sides that it is impossible for me to say with any certainty how much fault lies where. Again, I've said for the record what I would have done. Wayne is the reason Rice has D-1 athletics today, and for that reason he deserved to go out on his own. I would have proposed a farewell year, with Wayne choosing his successor and that successor on campus and coaching. I think Wayne would have gone for that. I don't know that, I just think he would.

I don't really have an answer for basketball. I think Rhodes was a good hire at the time. I think it was pretty clear, or at least should have been, that VCU was going to come after him if he had any success here. I think we needed to have a contingency plan in place. Maybe we end up with Pera as that plan. I don't know how he could have played the hand that he was dealt last year much better than he did.

With both Pera and Bloomgren, I think the circumstances under which they took the jobs mean that one year is far too short a time to evaluate either of them. With Bragga, I think there should be higher expectations in year one, simply because the program has not fallen nearly as far before he came in.

I know what JK did and I know what I would have done differently. I'm not sure my way would have worked. I know his hasn't very well. One thing I find troubling is that I have contacts with several people who are closer to the program, and I've heard some pretty unflattering things about Bloomgren's attitude and approach. I could write that off to first year as a head coach, but I have heard enough to think there is room for considerable improvement.

JK also hired Tina Langley, just to provide some balance to this hate-fest.

Also, several of the same people who signed off on hiring Greenspan are still around and still involved. Given that this was the extremely-obvious-yet-still-happenned cockup of the century, IMO, this is a far bigger issue than lower on the totem pole.

Until the end of the 2020 football season. He overextended Bailiff and dropped the Wayne Graham fiasco. Basketball isn't his fault. He gets two years.

(11-05-2018 06:50 PM)Antarius Wrote:  He doesn't get a free pass or anything, but acting like Bailiff and last-few-years Graham were suddenly going to make us amazing and Karlgaard is why we aren't is an exercise in gymnastics (of the mental kind) that even Simone Biles would be astounded by.

The tenets of this are true.

(11-05-2018 07:15 PM)Ourland Wrote:  Until the end of the 2020 football season. He overextended Bailiff and dropped the Wayne Graham fiasco. Basketball isn't his fault. He gets two years.

It’s funny because from what I’ve heard he’s been by far the most critical of the basketball coaching staff (because of a single donor or two). It will be interesting if I hear that same treatment of his Stanford pal Bloomgren.

Pissed off Bailiff? Lolwut?

The fact that no one seems 100% sold on him after 5 years probably says enough. I’m not close at all to the athletic department or any of the specific teams. My impression is that things are better run than they were. I liked his hires on paper. But results have been generally dismal and changes seem to occur at a near glacial pace.

I think it depends on the results of Bloomgren the next two years. If Bloomgren is successful in the near future, JK stays. Otherwise, fire JK with Bloomgren if the football program after the next two years is still dismal. He made tremandous hires of Langley in WBB and Roades in MBB. We will see how MBB does this year even though I would have never hired Pera as the MBB.

Given the 25(0), how much control did he have over bailiff? And the fact that LSU sucked and hired the VCU coach is his fault? Help me understand what would have kept Rhoades here? Fire him if that makes u happy, but the underpinnings if horror are still there. Granted that fb has been awful this year and maybe folks have memories of the 2006 turnaround, but that team got every break that Ken's teams never seem to have gotten. The UAB win that year was a gift along the lines of the miracle of the meadowlands (look it up if u don't know-sole reason for today's victory formation). We were awful in an awful conference and due to the current transfer rules lost some real players. How many times in the last 40 years did we have a o lineman that could immediately start for tu? I see no chase or Jarret or quintin Smith or sendejo or raines on this roster as toad had in 2006. Or hollas, brigance, or Eric Henley, others as did Fred in 1989? This is an issue of lack of real commitment from the very highest. Remember that a fish rots from the head......

(11-05-2018 06:21 PM)interwebowl Wrote:  If the fish rots from the head then it is time to stop funding him. That means no more Owl club donations that never make it past deficit reduction anyway.

I quit threeyears back, following the advice of those who said we needed to stop funding Bailiff.and force JK to fire him. Working out well

Keeping Rhoades would have required $2 million a year, if he was willing to stay at all. Who thinks he's worth that?

I think it would have been worth it. Rhoades was a very good coach here and likely would’ve paid off that $2 million easily in tournament credits and earned media.

This is my biggest complaint with Rice in general. We try to be world class in most everything else yet run our athletics department as if, in the words of Mike Leach, it is a “JC softball team.” Karlgaard’s job is/was to change that and he has failed.

(11-05-2018 09:32 PM)ExcitedOwl18 Wrote:  I think it would have been worth it. Rhoades was a very good coach here and likely would’ve paid off that $2 million easily in tournament credits and earned media.
This is my biggest complaint with Rice in general. We try to be world class in most everything else yet run our athletics department as if, in the words of Mike Leach, it is a “JC softball team.” Karlgaard’s job is/was to change that and he has failed.

If you are going to define Karlgaard's job as convincing the university to pay $2 million a year for a basketball coach, then he will always be a failure, because this university is not going to pay that kind of money to a coach in any sport for a long, long time into the future.

(11-05-2018 09:36 PM)Owl 69/70/75 Wrote:  

(11-05-2018 09:32 PM)ExcitedOwl18 Wrote:  I think it would have been worth it. Rhoades was a very good coach here and likely would’ve paid off that $2 million easily in tournament credits and earned media.
This is my biggest complaint with Rice in general. We try to be world class in most everything else yet run our athletics department as if, in the words of Mike Leach, it is a “JC softball team.” Karlgaard’s job is/was to change that and he has failed.

If you are going to define Karlgaard's job as convincing the university to pay $2 million a year for a basketball coach, then he will always be a failure, because this university is not going to pay that kind of money to a coach in any sport for a long, long time into the future.

I’ve yet to see a coherent explanation as to why we shouldn’t. If we want to get back to playing our peer institutions and engaging the Houston community, that’s what it’s going to take.

Take SMU for example, a quasi-peer with similar market positioning. Their football games are just as much ghost towns as ours. Their basketball games on the other hand, hate it or love it, are not. SMU went out there and paid big money for a dirty coach. We could’ve paid money to RETAIN a clean coach. Last time I checked, Rice has a larger endowment, higher median income amongst alumni, etc... All signals that we could afford to do it if we wanted to.. The only thing that SMU has is a higher median income for the parents of its students.

I think a basic pillar of any job is to make the place better than when you found it. With that loose of a metric,

women’s basketball is better now than it was. We have a new EZF and some new locker rooms for Olympic sports. Presumably, the athletic department endowment and annual fund numbers are higher. Does anyone know by how much?

In turn, baseball and football went from a super regional and conference championships to as bad as it’s been in 30 years. Other sports have shown glimmers of success but nothing sustainable. We’re further from relevancy in conference conversations than ever before. Crowds are worse than ever before.

After 5 years, it’s worth asking these questions though. It’s fair he probably gets to see Bragga and Bloomgren through 3+ years. However, I wonder if even he planned on being here for 8.

(11-05-2018 09:54 PM)BufflOwl Wrote:  I think a basic pillar of any job is to make the place better than when you found it. With that loose of a metric,

women’s basketball is better now than it was. We have a new EZF and some new locker rooms for Olympic sports. Presumably, the athletic department endowment and annual fund numbers are higher. Does anyone know by how much?

In turn, baseball and football went from a super regional and conference championships to as bad as it’s been in 30 years. Other sports have shown glimmers of success but nothing sustainable. We’re further from relevancy in conference conversations than ever before. Crowds are worse than ever before.

After 5 years, it’s worth asking these questions though. It’s fair he probably gets to see Bragga and Bloomgren through 3+ years. However, I wonder if even he planned on being here for 8.

Does the casual fan care if our accounts payable are processed quicker than they were six years ago?

Does ESPN or the AAC or the Big 12 care that Rice already built a facility that looks like what every other FBS university of our stature had 10 years ago?

Does Prez of XXX FBS University respect Karlgaard’s accomplishments enough to hire him away?

Bottom line is that football and men’s basketball have sucked during his tenure and that he killed the one good thing (baseball) that we had going for us. That’s all that matters in college athletics these days.