Lots to reply to. Sorry for the format
(11-06-2018 10:39 AM)fortheplayers Wrote: We are heading that direction regardless......Lets not sit back and watch it happen
This.
Our history is littered with indecisiveness and a lack of vision... while others made bold moves that we've often scoffed at.
CUSA is not getting better and if it does, those better teams will hit the first bid they get to leave. There is little to no history or rivalries in CUSA to keep people here
(11-06-2018 10:35 AM)cr11owl Wrote: (11-06-2018 10:25 AM)Middle Ages Wrote: I’m in. It just simply can’t be worse, and while there is risk, there is also significant upside, which I don’t see in our current situation
If we go independent we’ll be D3 in 5 years. The administration doesn’t support athletics and this would just be a convenient way to kill it for good.
Leebron’s lip service really shows through when he can shamelessly post congratulatory pics at an empty stadium when we get thrashed by directional schools.
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Agree with MA.... And while I won't debate your point, cr... all you seem to be saying is that going independent makes the inevitable happen sooner....
I think if we controlled our marketing and media, that the university would see value there. d3 really isn't an option though... scholarship costs given Rice's charter and recent decisions are a wash... and while you save on some overhead, you probably lose that much in many other ways.
(11-06-2018 05:10 PM)Baylorbears11 Wrote: (11-06-2018 03:44 PM)gsloth Wrote: For those curious about what conferences might be possible, there really aren't any tightly clustered conferences with teams in Texas. This Wikipedia page does a good job of also showing the geographic footprint of each non-football conference.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_NC...onferences
I'm ignoring the WAC, as the footprint is very wide, but comes to Texas. Schools in it don't jump out at you.
There's the Summit League - tight, upper midwest/Plains footprint, though Oral Roberts in Oklahoma is also a member.
There's the Horizon League - tight, upper midwest/Great Lakes footprint, with nothing close to Texas.
There's the Missouri Valley League - tight, upper midwest (between the other two), with nothing bordering Texas. Dallas Baptist baseball plays here.
That's probably it. (The Big East isn't going to be accepting Rice, between the nearly all-Catholic affiliation and the distances involved.) Those 3 have developed a decent rep in basketball, and maybe in some other sports. (UDenver, illiniowls possible model, is in the Summit.)
Rice would do well as an independent. I believe if New Mexico State, UMass, and Liberty can achieve it then Rice can also do so. The biggest obstacle, as demonstrated above, is finding a home for your Olympic sports. Unfortunately, there isn't a good solution for that in this area of the country. However, C-USA may find itself amenable to keeping Rice on in a non-football capacity as Rice's brand is, in my opinion, the strongest by far of the conference.
Rather than independence, Rice might consider weighing the option for creating a new conference. This might be the time to start laying the groundwork for a Magnolia Conference 2.0. This was attempted in the past by Tulane with the goal of establishing a "Southern Ivy" league of peer minded institutions. Schools like Baylor, TCU, SMU, Rice, Tulane, and Tulsa could create a solid core of programs for a smaller conference. With two more members, the schools would have plenty of teams for a round robin and aggressive non-conference scheduling with traditional rivals like Texas, TAMU, Houston, Arkansas, Tech, LSU, and the Oklahomas. It seems unlikely that Vanderbilt, Wake Forest, or Duke would wish to come along, but they might consider the option. Rice could start fostering stronger bonds with its fellow Texas privates by scheduling more marquee sports matchups in Football, Basketball, and Baseball (although this already does well enough). I'm surprised to see a lack of SWC teams on Rice's basketball schedule outside of Houston. Rice is a regionally interesting opponent. One idea that I've always thought would be fun would be a Southwest conference tournament in the non-con schedule where the old SWC could have an early tournament between the teams. That seems far more interesting for the average fan that watching a Bahamas based tournament of Baylor against Marquette and South Alabama.
In Rice's current state, it is difficult to see anything but a continued slide toward irrelevancy and dissolution of the athletic programs. Rice has a strong brand but is a complete mismatch with its current conference mates.
Southern Ivy won't work because all of the schools mentioned in addition to us have engaged in vastly more aggressive moves now for decades. I like the SWC tournament ideas
The model is actually the reverse... You go independent in football and join 'the big boys' in Olympic sports where they need/want close competitors... Join Texas in sailing and WLAX, maybe swimming, softball or women's soccer... Join the AAC in men's soccer and track (just making up affiliations, but I looked into it at one time and there were a number of possibilities)... Some of the big boys have uneven schedules.
The best way to join a p5 conference (imo) would be for us to get into a p5 conference with ancillary sports and then get good enough in football to put up a fight. Since we're already meeting with their ADs, it's a much easier point to press.
(11-07-2018 05:15 PM)Pimpa Wrote: (11-07-2018 04:13 PM)mrbig Wrote: (11-07-2018 01:46 PM)Frizzy Owl Wrote: Not all that many every year, and not enough to pay the bills, and not enough to fill the seats.
Scheduling considerations for successful teams, the kind of opponents needed to make independence work, are
1) Money
2) Money
3) Money
...
57) Padding the schedule to get enough wins to get to a good bowl, in order to make more money.
Rice helps with the last item on that list.
The current schedule doesn't make much money and doesn't fill many seats. I fail to see how going independent makes the situation any worse. Does it really matter if Rice is playing NMSU or UMASS instead of WKU or ODU from a money standpoint? No. But if going independent allows Rice to schedule 1-2 additional games against interesting opponents, that could allow Rice to attract some additional fans or make some additional money. Or at least be just as broke but trying something new for a change.
Also, I'm just shy of advocating that Rice go independent. I do think Rice should spend some good money/time/effort analyzing the possibility.
This is where I am at right now. I'm not all in on Rice as an independent, but I do think a current study should be made to see if it could help our current lot. I don't know if this was covered by the McKinsey study or not.
This. Obviously we're all guessing and making logical inferences... but 'where we are, as we are' is untenable and anyone who thinks otherwise hasn't been paying attention.
Independence is vastly more 'in our control' than CUSA is.
(11-07-2018 05:32 PM)Almadenmike Wrote: I don't see any realistic benefit to Rice by being independent, unless we're willing to resign ourselves to money-game defeats or contests with folks who make CUSA teams look like P5 powers.
We might make some money as a football independent if we can get P5 teams to play us here in recruit-dense Houston (ideally @HRS). Otherwise, we're looking at money games against name teams who will clobber us in their stadiums. If we ever get good enough to have a chance at beating them, they wouldn't schedule us at all, here or away. (Unless we got so good that beating us would improve their status. I wish!)
In basketball, our currently high RPI deters most good teams from scheduling us. When we get better, then we'd be a more attractive opponent ... as long as we're still not a real threat to win our games. Does anyone think we could schedule a full slate of quality, audience-attracting games -- especially during the large part of the season when most of the good teams are playing their own conference schedules?
BTW ... as the poster-folks for independents, aren't NMSU, UMass and Liberty all interested in joining a conference ... usually a better conference than has offered an invitation? Or is this year's NMSU-vs-Liberty home-and-home series the wished-for template for success as an 21st Century independent?
They obviously aren't the poster folks... Notre Dame is... but we are vastly more comparable today to them than to ND. They are the 'worst case scenario'.
(11-07-2018 06:11 PM)Owl 69/70/75 Wrote: When NMSU and Liberty are playing each other twice this year to fill out a schedule, that speaks volumes about scheduling as an independent.
No. It speaks volumes about scheduling to New Mexico. One of few states whose flagship universities aren't part of a p5 conference.
Liberty being in VA is a bit surprising as Va is a pretty solid hotbed, but given their rather stringent qualities, maybe that speaks to it. Maybe they have chosen to help support NMSU rather than to get hammered by Clemson or play James Madison.
It seems rather obvious that if we were independent, they would likely happily fill two of our games.
(11-09-2018 08:13 AM)Owl 69/70/75 Wrote: If being independent meant a schedule of Army, Navy, Air Force, Stanford, Northwestern, Duke, Vandy, Wake, TexasU, aTm, Baylor, and SMU, then that would be one thing. If means playing NMSU and Liberty twice each to get 12 games, then that is something else. And I think it way more likely means the latter than the former.
So let's look into it and find out?
I think it rather obviously means playing PVA&M, Nicholl's State, Lamar and/or Tx State, all of which we're doing now...
and of course, UTEP, UTSA, UNT and La Tech will all have holes to fill.
An alternative would be a complete revamp of CUSA.... eliminate all cross-over games and put us in a 7 school division (or 6, moving UAB to the east) with 5-7 OOC games... and ELIMINATE conference control over brand marketing etc (without that, it's pointless). Just don't let them CONTROL our marketing as a lump-in with all these other schools.
As a final point.... to those of you who keep scoffing at the idea that Rice is different....
Take away sports for a moment. Which of our current CUSA schools would you rather attend and why? To downplay this is ridiculous.... especially in the context of sports, where as the worst team in football, we are STILL closer to Alabama in athletics than we are to the next best rated school in CUSA in academics. I'm not talking about individuals... every school has their leaders and mistakes.... but as a whole.
We make jokes about being 3-0 vs Alabama and many make jokes about the LSU score... Academically, that's where we are vs our conference peers.
This is not about being 'better' than they are..... it's about being different and attracting a different student and fan. By some measures it IS better, academically, but that isn't to say we're better people... which of course is what is implied when we talk about it and someone wants to put us down for it.
And Houston versus Lynchburg or Las Cruces matters. Having an empty 50,000 seat stadium matters. Being in a city where 'the big boys' have more alumni than some of our peers have ever graduated matters. Having easy access to I-45, I-10 and 2 airports matters. No, it isn't a deciding factor... lots of things come first... but it matters.