(07-09-2018 08:06 PM)Ourland Wrote: There are second-tier P5 schools that may benefit from coming to Houston, but not many.
We don't need many We only need perhaps 5 rotating every few years... and I'd include the service academies as well. Yes, they want people to come to their home games, but a) not everyone can get tickets and b) kids and teams like to travel... works well with alumni.... hence why Navy, Air Force, Army etc would do a home/home.
This falls back into my idea that we're competing for a large part of a small cohort rather than a small fraction of the massive cohorts that others seek.
We absolutely want that large school with lots of alums in or near Houston who is good, but just can't quite get over the hump that 'the big boys' enjoy... and seek some sort of difference maker. I don't know who those schools are, but I know they exist and want to put them on our schedule. As I said, even if we're only talking about 10,000 seats, that's 9,999 more than we will generally get from our crossover game. If that's where we need to start, then so be it.... but I'm betting if we went to some local alums for schools like Ok St and said, we'll give you some of the gate to come play here... we'll co-host your fans and recruits in UT's back yard... we won't compete for your recruits, but we'd love to work with you on academic kids who don't work out for you for any of a variety of reasons or on kids that you just don't have room for and fit us, but you don't want going to conference rivals... heck, we may even live stream a watch party for the Ok St games before or after ours in the R room for your alums who come to our games but want to watch yours. Just spitballing ideas... don't claim to have all the answers or that mine don't have issues....
but remember that football coaching is still somewhat of a good ole boys club... and 'working together' has advantages for coaches.
(07-10-2018 06:29 AM)Rice FB Fan Wrote: I would respectfully assert that if you are the kind of kid that football is a big part of who your are - and you happen to be a really good student as well, Rice is the winner vs. HYP and certainly the other Ivys. If a player is good enough to use football to get into a good school, but football is not THAT important, then maybe it doesn't matter (and we need a team of the former).
Agree 100%.
Antarius, on the surface you are correct... but kids (like me and most players I know) want to compete against the better teams... even if the team loses, the kids have challenged themselves at the highest level. This is what Rice is and does, and we need to LEAD with that rather than run from it.
When I played, the lure of the SWC was huge. That's not the case anymore, but still FBS>FCS, especially Ivy league FCS from a competitive standpoint. That doesn't mean that we can't lose a kid to Harvard, but the reality is that Rice as an undergraduate institution is ranked higher than Harvard and most of the Ivies... who get most of their reputations from graduate programs. A Harvard degree has more global cache than a Rice degree, that is still true... but playing football against known and respected teams, even if you lost, makes vastly better water cooler conversation. I'd say that the respect I get from a Rice degree with football outranks some friends with Ivy degrees who also played football. Anecdotal for certain, but still true.