RE: Non Conference Scheduling
With respect to all of the opinions I'm going to disagree with (and those that I will agree with)...
OOC games mean nothing to winning the conference and in this day and age, the conference champ basically goes undefeated in conference... So if you're good enough to win CUSA, that means you're the best/highest ranked team in CUSA and that generally puts you around #50 in the country.
A top 50 team might lose, but doesn't get 'beat up' by a schedule that includes 3 top 20 teams and two more in the top 40. In fact, a top 50 team is competitive in most of those games and wins a few of them. The problem is that we're almost never a top 50 team, but instead we're closer to #100.... so while I'm not suggesting we schedule 5 'body bag' games... I AM suggesting that the value of playing 'on the big stage' (or in Australia) plus millions in revenue and losing (even badly) is not the polar opposite of playing a home/home in front of 15,000 or fewer against a team nobody knows or cares about.
MANY of us have suggested things like the following.... UTEP, UTSA, UNT, Tulane, SMU, UH, Navy, Army, Air Force as regulars. 1 from UT, A&M, LSU per year (likely away or at Reliant) and then find another large state school such as Michigan or OU that has a large alumni group in Houston but doesn't get to come here often and might be willing to do a home/home. Every one of that last group is going to be top 50... but only rarely will two be in the top 20. It will happen sometimes. It's only marginally dis-similar from what You suggested, Taylor.... and most of us would be fine with adding SWTx State or some other good, local 1AA (who would play at our house AND bring some fans) especially in those years where we're 'away' at the 'michigan or ou'
My problem with 'what we do' now is that we do functionally what everyone else in our league does in terms of schemes etc, but somehow we expect to consistently be better at it than schools that don't have our recruiting restrictions, ethics or academic commitments. Even if you eliminate the financial constraints, that's not a good business model.... even with the best people at the helm. That doesn't mean you have to do the wishbone... but you have to find SOME way to either coach differently, or recruit differently (or both).
I've suggested numerous avenues to attack all these obstacles as a fairly cohesive plan... and I won't waste time expanding on it here....
The kids we want can go anywhere they want. We have to give them a reason to want to come to Rice. We have to out-recruit (or out-coach) teams without out restrictions.
The biggest advantage we have is that we can give a UT/Stanford education without needing a guy to be a sure-fire 5 star just to get a look... and that regardless of WHOM we play, we should win more often (really against the same teams) as Duke and Kansas and Vandy.
We need to be recruiting guys who want to play football at UT (or other solid academic p5 schools with good football) but aren't quite good enough to play there and end up trying to decide between 'bowl games' at Mississippi State or 'academics' at Vandy. As usual, we seem to be engaging in part, but not ALL of the equation. We shouldn't be recruiting very often against other g5 schools. With rare exceptions, they aren't remotely similar to us academically and have no better 'path to the NFL' than we do. That's a big part of why I focus on Cali. ALL of the p5 schools out here are strong academically AND in football... if a kid doesn't get that nod, then they're looking at a MAJOR step down academically to stay remotely local. It's a $99 flight from LAX to IAH.
(This post was last modified: 08-24-2017 04:28 PM by Hambone10.)
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