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RiceOwls2019 Offline
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Post: #21
RE: AD Replacement Thread
(10-26-2019 03:57 PM)ExcitedOwl18 Wrote:  
(10-26-2019 03:49 PM)Frizzy Owl Wrote:  I'm not in favor of firing him. One bad hire compared to the good he's done isn't reason enough.

What good has he done? Our crowds are smaller than ever, our revenue sports as bad as ever... That’s what most people care about. I root for all the non-revenue sports but it’s football, MBB, and to a lesser extent, baseball that move the needle. And he’s failed there.

Yep. Total disaster in the big 3 men’s sports on his watch.
10-26-2019 06:22 PM
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texowl2 Offline
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Post: #22
RE: AD Replacement Thread
The reality is this debacle has deeper roots than just joe. Fire him fire mike fire scott do nothing about those deeper roots and there will be no improvement. Sad thing is that it just may be too late, but that may well have been the case in 95 or 97 (with no oilers) or 99 when the big wac imploded or 03 when a massive push was not made with the cws win or 09 when cusa melted away. Does anybody really believe that if nick saban or coach k was hired tomorrow that they would be able to coach what we have now and turn this giant mess around. But at any of those clear turning points, was there anything done and say enuf we are going to do something other than make a hire under the hope that he is the second coming of bear Bryant or John Wooden and that he would stay forever. We did have one, some Wayne something or other. And don't tell me the ezf or tudor was that something, that was just using opm for ego sakes and not a damn it we're gonna do something about this mess and not take no for an answer.
(This post was last modified: 10-26-2019 06:42 PM by texowl2.)
10-26-2019 06:28 PM
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Frizzy Owl Offline
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Post: #23
RE: AD Replacement Thread
(10-26-2019 06:22 PM)RiceOwls2019 Wrote:  
(10-26-2019 03:57 PM)ExcitedOwl18 Wrote:  
(10-26-2019 03:49 PM)Frizzy Owl Wrote:  I'm not in favor of firing him. One bad hire compared to the good he's done isn't reason enough.

What good has he done? Our crowds are smaller than ever, our revenue sports as bad as ever... That’s what most people care about. I root for all the non-revenue sports but it’s football, MBB, and to a lesser extent, baseball that move the needle. And he’s failed there.

Yep. Total disaster in the big 3 men’s sports on his watch.

On his watch? Basketball has been bad for decades. Graham couldn't coach forever, and even so, baseball isn't a disaster.

Talk about hyperbole.
10-26-2019 07:40 PM
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temchugh Offline
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Post: #24
RE: AD Replacement Thread
Quote:Does anybody really believe that if nick saban or coach k was hired tomorrow that they would be able to coach what we have now and turn this giant mess around

True. CUSA has some name coaches not doing very well.
(This post was last modified: 10-26-2019 07:42 PM by temchugh.)
10-26-2019 07:40 PM
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ExcitedOwl18 Online
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Post: #25
RE: AD Replacement Thread
It’s not just the bad teams.. it’s the fact that we can’t seem to pull off basic tasks like having a preseason basketball hype night.

Hell, my cousin coaches (not basketball but another sport) at Fairfield University, which is in the MAAC, and they had Fetty Wap at their “Red Sea Madness” last night. We can’t even get our lighting to work.
10-26-2019 07:53 PM
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Frizzy Owl Offline
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Post: #26
RE: AD Replacement Thread
(10-26-2019 07:53 PM)ExcitedOwl18 Wrote:  It’s not just the bad teams.. it’s the fact that we can’t seem to pull off basic tasks like having a preseason basketball hype night.

Hell, my cousin coaches (not basketball but another sport) at Fairfield University, which is in the MAAC, and they had Fetty Wap at their “Red Sea Madness” last night. We can’t even get our lighting to work.

That, too, has always been true. Rice wouldn't be Rice without IT ineptitude and that's not entirely in the athletic department's hands. OTOH, a lot of scoreboard, sound system, and IT upgrades and modernization has happened on Karlgaard's watch.
10-26-2019 08:47 PM
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tanqtonic Online
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Post: #27
RE: AD Replacement Thread
(10-26-2019 07:40 PM)Frizzy Owl Wrote:  
(10-26-2019 06:22 PM)RiceOwls2019 Wrote:  
(10-26-2019 03:57 PM)ExcitedOwl18 Wrote:  
(10-26-2019 03:49 PM)Frizzy Owl Wrote:  I'm not in favor of firing him. One bad hire compared to the good he's done isn't reason enough.

What good has he done? Our crowds are smaller than ever, our revenue sports as bad as ever... That’s what most people care about. I root for all the non-revenue sports but it’s football, MBB, and to a lesser extent, baseball that move the needle. And he’s failed there.

Yep. Total disaster in the big 3 men’s sports on his watch.

On his watch? Basketball has been bad for decades. Graham couldn't coach forever, and even so, baseball isn't a disaster.

Talk about hyperbole.

On JK's watch:

FB --- bonfire in the dumpster, and to be blunt, my estimation of Bloom's ability as a head coach is taking an utter pummeling this season. Count this as Incomplete (-) for me (i.e. incomplete but leaning negative).

Baseball --- did not manage the Graham episode nearly as well as it could have. But, Graham himself added to the divisive nature of what happened. On Bragga for a hire, the pudding there is still being baked. 2019 was a dumpster fire.

Kudos to JK for grabbing the hot new flavor of the year with Bragga; but we will see if Bragga is a long term 'good coach', or if his 'big bat style with a lot of jucos' either doesnt transplant to Rice well, or if Bragga can recruit to Rice well, or if the first option is a bust (transplanting big pine baseball to Rice), if he can adapt and overcome.

I had a lunch with a potential investor that a client is seeking out for an equity investment --- I cant name names but the individual was an 8 year MLB pro player, and has ongoing ties to Rice baseball personnel, as well as other fairly deep ties to others in NCAA Div. 1 coaching community. Overall, the viewpoint that he relayed to me is that there is a huge amount of doubt whether Bragga can dig the way out of the pit that borders the corner of South Main where a solid Rice baseball program stood.

Of course, this is third hand, and probably very subjective. But it was disheartening and in line with my feeling about a mismatch between Bragga Ball and whether Bragga can recreate that at Rice.

Call Bragga an Incomplete

Men's Basketball --- JK went with Pera, and at the time I thought it a desperation half court shot. The resulting diaspora and the second diaspora on the first year's recruits didnt help that feeling. But the second half of last season really gave me a dose of optimism.

Truth be told I expected Pera to do no better than the 4-14 of his year one in CUSA, thought he would win 2 in CUSA. Instead he did 8-10 and upped the total wins from 7 to 13.

I am actually positive on Pera with two seasons under his belt --- truth be told really only one season due to the really screwed up way that he pulled into the position. Call Pera for me an Incomplete, but leaning positive.

Rhoades is actually a positive here -- JK picked someone who brought life into the Rice basketball after Braun. I cant hold the Rhoades departure and the manner of the (expletive deleted)'s manner of departure agains JK.

So all in all, JK really in the last three years has had to revamp every single mens money sport at Rice.

Tina Langley was an out of the ballpark success as a hire under his tenure.

Coach Lee will also be an Incomplete, as this is his first year at the helm, and Coach Adams predated JK. And Coach Volpe with volleyball predates JK.

I think the story will be clear in two years as to the success of the three men hires. If they all go belly up, then that wold undoubtedly take the success of the women's major programs off the very positive side of the ledger there.
10-26-2019 09:13 PM
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OldOwl Offline
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Post: #28
RE: AD Replacement Thread
I agree. Fire the President who doesn’t care about football and then the AD could be let go but that will never happen at Nerd U
(10-26-2019 04:23 PM)greyowl72 Wrote:  Great thread to use for ventilation.
But I’d save a lot of my time and energy getting too over-wrought....Rice is not gonna fire our AD any time soon.
(This post was last modified: 10-26-2019 09:23 PM by OldOwl.)
10-26-2019 09:22 PM
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Owlman49 Offline
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Post: #29
RE: AD Replacement Thread
How and what do we need to do to fire Bloom! Time to move on, if I was this crappy at m job this far in I would be walked out the door!
10-26-2019 10:06 PM
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Buho00 Offline
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Post: #30
RE: AD Replacement Thread
I would've liked if the end of Graham's career had been handled a little better. The Bloomgren hire hasn't worked out at all so far, not surprisingly for the philosophy on offense, something the AD foolishly bough into as being a good fit for Rice, maybe because he was from Stanford. Major women's sports has thrived. And men's basketball has been somewhat stabilized. Everything rides on the Bloomgren hire, 20 games in, results are not good for the AD.
10-26-2019 10:25 PM
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owl40 Offline
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Post: #31
RE: AD Replacement Thread
JK would have been the perfect hire in 90's when SWC imploded. A steady, competent, 'incrementalist' hand that could have implemented a similar approach to what TCU did at the time. Unfortunately there was incompetence at the helm back then (and prior) that through a variety of bad moves already discussed ad nauseum on other threads drove things into the ground.

Fast forward to the 2010's and what is needed at the AD level is a risk taking change-agent willing to blow things up and take bold risks with conference affiliations/independence, bolder coaching hires, buy-in from alums/admin, etc, not an incrementalist/textbook AD type. So I don't really blame JK for this. He is what he is. A smart, data driven, AD type that is going to run a textbook AD gameplan for what Rice needed back in-the-day but not for what it needs now. While hiring Pera was a bad knee-jerk in the moment thing and Bloom was one of his Stanford guy hires, I don't think that is JK's biggest mistakes. It has been the inability to find a solution to C-USA. I think he could find eight-figures from folks to a better lot in life whether that is SWC old schedule as independent or to AAC/MWC. That would lead to better recruits, exposure, and relevance vs. the empty stadiums of USM games like today.

As things have slowly melted over-the-decades as the macro landscape changed and micro execution in high profile sports has not improved (regressed?), more risk is needed to be taken to be relevant. At current course/speed, the inevitable conclusion will be big sport bankruptcy.

JK's current playbook is the right one for Northwestern, Stanford, Vandy, etc. but don't think it will work at Rice. Too much damage has been done prior to his watch and more radical changes are needed. Not sure he is the guy to do that as he is a professional AD type that is likely to find an escape hatch to optimize his own career vs. do something with more risk (and potential failure) attached to his name. And he will be long gone before Rice declares Chapter 11 in the big sports.

This is a BoT/Leebron thing, not a JK thing.
10-26-2019 10:42 PM
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GoodOwl Offline
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Post: #32
RE: AD Replacement Thread
(10-26-2019 05:24 PM)temchugh Wrote:  
(10-26-2019 05:07 PM)Hambone10 Wrote:  B) many of the 'good' things that have happened were suggested here on the Parliament long before they were put into action.

Wait, when did we go independent? When did we hire a surgeon as our new head coach?

...since we're eviscerating the program anyway...might as well get an actual professional...
10-26-2019 10:57 PM
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mrbig Offline
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Post: #33
RE: AD Replacement Thread
I'll put these in order of success:
Women's Basketball - Langley has been the best hire since Wayne Graham and if she sticks around long enough she might be even with him. Calling the hire a "home run" understates how good the hire was. Its like 5 home runs in the first inning, not merely a home run.

Men's Basketball - Rhoades was a pretty good hire, but he left 1 year too early for Rice to really flip things around. On top of that, most of his recruits were more interested in their own basketball careers or loyalty to Rhoades than they were academics or loyalty to Rice. So while he was a pretty good coach and recruiter, he left Rice just as bad as what he inherited. I really liked the Pera hire. Anyone who won high school state championships in 2 good basketball states (California and Pennsylvania) is doing something right from a pure coaching standpoint. The transfers when he was hired were worse than expected and his transfers after his 1st season were just as bad, which had me really worried. But he retained almost everyone after last season and I'll admit that I'm pretty optimistic moving forward. I doubt he's WG/Langley good, but I think he's pretty darn good and I hope he sticks around a while.

Baseball - Hard to tell how much of baseball's steady decline is on JK or WG or just systemic issues in baseball. Maybe all 3? Regardless, pretty much everyone thinks JK could have handled it better but that WG could have handled it better as well. Bragga looked like a really good hire on paper. The jury is still out and maybe he will end up being great. But there is one obvious asterisk. If Berkman hadn't been publicly working his a$$ off trying to get the job, I would have been a lot more excited about Bragga. But for a school like Rice to have a chance at a borderline HOF player to coach who is also an alumni and is also independently wealthy (so that he isn't going to get lured away by Vandy or LSU just for a better salary) and also has family roots in Houston (minimizing the allure of UT and TCU) is pretty special. He would have been riskier than Bragga in some ways, but the more I think about it, the more I wish JK had taken the risk. Hopefully Berkman is still interested if either Bragga doesn't work out or if Bragga is successful but moves on to greener pastures.

Football - Unfortunately the worst job in the most important sport. I'm sure he had a lot of big supporters whispering in his ear to extend Bailiff. But he could easily have waited 1 year without an extension. And there were many smart people around her who never thought Bailiff was good enough to take Rice to any next level. In retrospect, the extension was a disaster. The jury's still out on Bloomgren. Special teams have been steady and the defense is improved, so credit where it is due on those. But the offense has somehow been worse than almost any Bailiff offense and shows no signs of turning around. Bloomgren needs to accept that certain aspects of his offense just aren't going to work at Rice, due to the differences between Rice and Stanford (P5 vs. non-P5 recruiting; P5 vs. non-P5 money; athletic endowment). If he makes some adjustments on offense, then he can still be a success. But any optimism or hope are fading quickly. Separately, I continue to believe Rice's best opportunity to excel in football will to find an alumni coach. I love the idea of ruowls, but there are some legitimate arguments against hiring someone with such limited coaching experience. There are some legitimately interesting options out there like Drew Mehringer and James Casey and I think those kind of guys will be more likely to stick with Rice if they are successful. I wouldn't take this position if I was an alumni at almost any other school, but Rice is almost uniquely situated for it to make sense (Northwestern and Vandy are arguably similarly situated and Northwestern has done pretty well with a young alumni coach). Anyone else will leave at the first hint of success. I think the Northwestern route is more likely for Rice than the Boise St. or TCU route.
(This post was last modified: 10-26-2019 11:09 PM by mrbig.)
10-26-2019 11:05 PM
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mrbig Offline
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Post: #34
RE: AD Replacement Thread
I don't think JK should be replaced. I think his seat should be warm. If women's basketball makes the NCAA tournament again, men's basketball takes some more steps forward and doesn't lose too many transfers, and baseball shows signs of improvement, then the idea of firing him would look silly. Let's see how things are looking in May.
10-26-2019 11:12 PM
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texowl2 Offline
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Post: #35
RE: AD Replacement Thread
(10-26-2019 10:42 PM)owl40 Wrote:  JK would have been the perfect hire in 90's when SWC imploded. A steady, competent, 'incrementalist' hand that could have implemented a similar approach to what TCU did at the time. Unfortunately there was incompetence at the helm back then (and prior) that through a variety of bad moves already discussed ad nauseum on other threads drove things into the ground.

Fast forward to the 2010's and what is needed at the AD level is a risk taking change-agent willing to blow things up and take bold risks with conference affiliations/independence, bolder coaching hires, buy-in from alums/admin, etc, not an incrementalist/textbook AD type. So I don't really blame JK for this. He is what he is. A smart, data driven, AD type that is going to run a textbook AD gameplan for what Rice needed back in-the-day but not for what it needs now. While hiring Pera was a bad knee-jerk in the moment thing and Bloom was one of his Stanford guy hires, I don't think that is JK's biggest mistakes. It has been the inability to find a solution to C-USA. I think he could find eight-figures from folks to a better lot in life whether that is SWC old schedule as independent or to AAC/MWC. That would lead to better recruits, exposure, and relevance vs. the empty stadiums of USM games like today.

As things have slowly melted over-the-decades as the macro landscape changed and micro execution in high profile sports has not improved (regressed?), more risk is needed to be taken to be relevant. At current course/speed, the inevitable conclusion will be big sport bankruptcy.

JK's current playbook is the right one for Northwestern, Stanford, Vandy, etc. but don't think it will work at Rice. Too much damage has been done prior to his watch and more radical changes are needed. Not sure he is the guy to do that as he is a professional AD type that is likely to find an escape hatch to optimize his own career vs. do something with more risk (and potential failure) attached to his name. And he will be long gone before Rice declares Chapter 11 in the big sports.

This is a BoT/Leebron thing, not a JK thing.

Agree 10000%
10-26-2019 11:40 PM
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Post: #36
RE: AD Replacement Thread
(10-26-2019 09:13 PM)tanqtonic Wrote:  
(10-26-2019 07:40 PM)Frizzy Owl Wrote:  
(10-26-2019 06:22 PM)RiceOwls2019 Wrote:  
(10-26-2019 03:57 PM)ExcitedOwl18 Wrote:  
(10-26-2019 03:49 PM)Frizzy Owl Wrote:  I'm not in favor of firing him. One bad hire compared to the good he's done isn't reason enough.

What good has he done? Our crowds are smaller than ever, our revenue sports as bad as ever... That’s what most people care about. I root for all the non-revenue sports but it’s football, MBB, and to a lesser extent, baseball that move the needle. And he’s failed there.

Yep. Total disaster in the big 3 men’s sports on his watch.

On his watch? Basketball has been bad for decades. Graham couldn't coach forever, and even so, baseball isn't a disaster.

Talk about hyperbole.

On JK's watch:

FB --- bonfire in the dumpster, and to be blunt, my estimation of Bloom's ability as a head coach is taking an utter pummeling this season. Count this as Incomplete (-) for me (i.e. incomplete but leaning negative).

Baseball --- did not manage the Graham episode nearly as well as it could have. But, Graham himself added to the divisive nature of what happened. On Bragga for a hire, the pudding there is still being baked. 2019 was a dumpster fire.

Kudos to JK for grabbing the hot new flavor of the year with Bragga; but we will see if Bragga is a long term 'good coach', or if his 'big bat style with a lot of jucos' either doesnt transplant to Rice well, or if Bragga can recruit to Rice well, or if the first option is a bust (transplanting big pine baseball to Rice), if he can adapt and overcome.

I had a lunch with a potential investor that a client is seeking out for an equity investment --- I cant name names but the individual was an 8 year MLB pro player, and has ongoing ties to Rice baseball personnel, as well as other fairly deep ties to others in NCAA Div. 1 coaching community. Overall, the viewpoint that he relayed to me is that there is a huge amount of doubt whether Bragga can dig the way out of the pit that borders the corner of South Main where a solid Rice baseball program stood.

Of course, this is third hand, and probably very subjective. But it was disheartening and in line with my feeling about a mismatch between Bragga Ball and whether Bragga can recreate that at Rice.

Call Bragga an Incomplete

Men's Basketball --- JK went with Pera, and at the time I thought it a desperation half court shot. The resulting diaspora and the second diaspora on the first year's recruits didnt help that feeling. But the second half of last season really gave me a dose of optimism.

Truth be told I expected Pera to do no better than the 4-14 of his year one in CUSA, thought he would win 2 in CUSA. Instead he did 8-10 and upped the total wins from 7 to 13.

I am actually positive on Pera with two seasons under his belt --- truth be told really only one season due to the really screwed up way that he pulled into the position. Call Pera for me an Incomplete, but leaning positive.

Rhoades is actually a positive here -- JK picked someone who brought life into the Rice basketball after Braun. I cant hold the Rhoades departure and the manner of the (expletive deleted)'s manner of departure agains JK.

So all in all, JK really in the last three years has had to revamp every single mens money sport at Rice.

Tina Langley was an out of the ballpark success as a hire under his tenure.

Coach Lee will also be an Incomplete, as this is his first year at the helm, and Coach Adams predated JK. And Coach Volpe with volleyball predates JK.

I think the story will be clear in two years as to the success of the three men hires. If they all go belly up, then that wold undoubtedly take the success of the women's major programs off the very positive side of the ledger there.

Does JK get any credit for retaining coaches he did not originally hire (Adams and Volpe)?
10-27-2019 08:38 AM
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Post: #37
RE: AD Replacement Thread
(10-26-2019 09:22 PM)OldOwl Wrote:  I agree. Fire the President who doesn’t care about football and then the AD could be let go but that will never happen at Nerd U
(10-26-2019 04:23 PM)greyowl72 Wrote:  Great thread to use for ventilation.
But I’d save a lot of my time and energy getting too over-wrought....Rice is not gonna fire our AD any time soon.

IMO, nothing significant will change as long as our current university president is in office. That decision rests on the Board of Trustees, right?
10-27-2019 08:39 AM
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Post: #38
RE: AD Replacement Thread
I don't think the BOT or Leebron are particularly anti-athletics. Certainly not a BOT chaired by Bobby Tudor, and before him Bucky Allshouse. As far as Leebron, I am aware of situations that I am not at liberty to disclose openly, where he has stuck his neck out for athletics in ways that to my knowledge no prior Rice president has ever come close to being willing to do. If you want to know more, PM me and if I know you and can trust you, I will give you details. Maybe something similar happened to get Rice Stadium built, but I don't go back that far.

But it is not the job of the BOT or Leebron to micromanage the athletic department. Their priority is and should be preserving the endowment. To spend a bunch of money on athletics, they need to have a plan, and that plan needs to be realistic. The problem is that, for the longest time, there has been no coherent plan or vision coming out of athletics. I have actually had conversations with BOT members who told me, "Look, if they would just give us a coherent plan, we would approve it. But they don't give us anything." It is the job of the AD, not the BOT or president, to develop and sell that plan.

"Throw another $10 million a year at athletics and we can show you how that will get us into the XII or SEC or ACC--or even American," might be a plan that the BOT could approve. But you need to put some meat on those bones and make the business case for how and why that can happen, and nobody has done that. I think Chris was on the way to that, but he left the project very much incomplete. Ranger Rick promised that--I was given specific assurances that such a plan was in the works by the son-in-law (that's the correct relationship, isn't it?) at lunch at the Cheesecake Factory in The Woodlands early in Rick's tenure, but I never saw it. Did any of you? I had hoped that Joe would come onboard with something like the Rice version of the Stanford vision--maybe "Stanford lite"--and that we would be well along on implementing it by now, but that hasn't happened either.

Here's the way I think I would approach it now.
1) We are going to make a significant effort to increase the athletic endowment massively. This is a big part of Stanford's success, and without something similar we can't hope to be Stanford, or even "Stanford lite." This is going to require substantial modification of the current university position regarding corporate donations to athletics.
2) At the same time, we are going to make a substantial effort to increase butts-in-seats and other current revenues. I would propose some sort of matching by the BOT--for every $X in additional revenue, the BOT will agree to increase the annual subsidy by $Y. At least in the short run, this is going to require what some call "body bag" football games. There simply isn't anything else that will yield revenues. I prefer to call them "money bag" games because a) we desperately need the money, and b) I've not really seen compelling evidence that we bring many more people home in body bags from such games as we do from others. I'd do two year with LSU, TexasU, aTm, or any of the SEC schools who schedule breathers in their penultimate weekend before their rivalry games. I'd also plat UH every year and make a massive effort to build that into a cross-town rivalry--sort of USC-UCLA lite. With 8 conference games, that leaves one date to fill, and I'd alternate between local FCS teams who can bring a crowd and similar academic institutions (Duke, Stanford, Northwestern, Vandy, service academies). I'm not that big on former SWC mates--having them come in and blow us out doesn't help recruiting, and they never drew that much when we were in the same conference, and really haven't done very well since. I'd love to play some of the Ivies, but that would almost certainly have to be a road trip because of their travel restrictions.
3) In the arena, the goal would be to dominate CUSA. The ultimate goal is, of course, to get out of CUSA. But we're not going to attract any attention going 3-9, 1-11, 2-11, 0-12 in CUSA. To get out we are going to have to a) average 9-10+ wins per year in football, b) go to the dance--men and women--in basketball at least every other year, and go as far as sweet 16 frequently, c) get baseball back to Omaha on a regular basis, and d) maintain at least what we have (thank God we have that) in women's sports. Conceptually, I'd say get football to where Navy has been over the past decade, get basketball to where Gonzaga has been over the last decade (although the last couple of years may be hard to match), get baseball back to where Wayne had it from about 2000-2010, and keep women's sports where they are now. No Rice teams have ever done this--nothing even remotely approaching it. But that's where we have to go. We can't do it exactly the way those schools did, or the way TCU did, but we can learn from every one of them.

For too long, the paradigm has been, "Losing is okay if you have a good enough excuse," and, "If you don't know where you are going, the path of least resistance will get you there." We need to have goals, we need to be willing tonight through resistance to get there, and winning has to be a huge part of those goals.

Joe is a competent administrator. We need one of those, but he/she needs to be the #2 person in the department. At the top we need a visionary leader who can formulate a plan and make a business case for that plan to the BOT. We don't have that, and other than possibly Chris we never have had that, at least not since I have had any association with the university. Stanford, Duke, and to lesser extents Vandy and Northwestern, had those visionary leaders back when the landscape of college athletics shifted dramatcially. We had Bo Hagan, Red Bale, and Augie Erfurth. Bobby was better than them--he was at least a competent administrator--but he was not a visionary.

Remember when our big plan was the EZF? How many football games have we won since it opened? What about the bubble in the west parking lot? Will it ever open?
(This post was last modified: 10-27-2019 02:03 PM by Owl 69/70/75.)
10-27-2019 12:16 PM
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tanqtonic Online
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Post: #39
RE: AD Replacement Thread
(10-27-2019 08:38 AM)TFW Wrote:  
(10-26-2019 09:13 PM)tanqtonic Wrote:  
(10-26-2019 07:40 PM)Frizzy Owl Wrote:  
(10-26-2019 06:22 PM)RiceOwls2019 Wrote:  
(10-26-2019 03:57 PM)ExcitedOwl18 Wrote:  What good has he done? Our crowds are smaller than ever, our revenue sports as bad as ever... That’s what most people care about. I root for all the non-revenue sports but it’s football, MBB, and to a lesser extent, baseball that move the needle. And he’s failed there.

Yep. Total disaster in the big 3 men’s sports on his watch.

On his watch? Basketball has been bad for decades. Graham couldn't coach forever, and even so, baseball isn't a disaster.

Talk about hyperbole.

On JK's watch:

FB --- bonfire in the dumpster, and to be blunt, my estimation of Bloom's ability as a head coach is taking an utter pummeling this season. Count this as Incomplete (-) for me (i.e. incomplete but leaning negative).

Baseball --- did not manage the Graham episode nearly as well as it could have. But, Graham himself added to the divisive nature of what happened. On Bragga for a hire, the pudding there is still being baked. 2019 was a dumpster fire.

Kudos to JK for grabbing the hot new flavor of the year with Bragga; but we will see if Bragga is a long term 'good coach', or if his 'big bat style with a lot of jucos' either doesnt transplant to Rice well, or if Bragga can recruit to Rice well, or if the first option is a bust (transplanting big pine baseball to Rice), if he can adapt and overcome.

I had a lunch with a potential investor that a client is seeking out for an equity investment --- I cant name names but the individual was an 8 year MLB pro player, and has ongoing ties to Rice baseball personnel, as well as other fairly deep ties to others in NCAA Div. 1 coaching community. Overall, the viewpoint that he relayed to me is that there is a huge amount of doubt whether Bragga can dig the way out of the pit that borders the corner of South Main where a solid Rice baseball program stood.

Of course, this is third hand, and probably very subjective. But it was disheartening and in line with my feeling about a mismatch between Bragga Ball and whether Bragga can recreate that at Rice.

Call Bragga an Incomplete

Men's Basketball --- JK went with Pera, and at the time I thought it a desperation half court shot. The resulting diaspora and the second diaspora on the first year's recruits didnt help that feeling. But the second half of last season really gave me a dose of optimism.

Truth be told I expected Pera to do no better than the 4-14 of his year one in CUSA, thought he would win 2 in CUSA. Instead he did 8-10 and upped the total wins from 7 to 13.

I am actually positive on Pera with two seasons under his belt --- truth be told really only one season due to the really screwed up way that he pulled into the position. Call Pera for me an Incomplete, but leaning positive.

Rhoades is actually a positive here -- JK picked someone who brought life into the Rice basketball after Braun. I cant hold the Rhoades departure and the manner of the (expletive deleted)'s manner of departure agains JK.

So all in all, JK really in the last three years has had to revamp every single mens money sport at Rice.

Tina Langley was an out of the ballpark success as a hire under his tenure.

Coach Lee will also be an Incomplete, as this is his first year at the helm, and Coach Adams predated JK. And Coach Volpe with volleyball predates JK.

I think the story will be clear in two years as to the success of the three men hires. If they all go belly up, then that wold undoubtedly take the success of the women's major programs off the very positive side of the ledger there.

Does JK get any credit for retaining coaches he did not originally hire (Adams and Volpe)?

I thought about that --- since I did not 'ding' him for *not* retaining Rhoades, then it was only fair to give a NOP to him for those he did retain.

If one chooses to count both the 'he hired em' *and* the 'he kept em, he lost them), then undoubtedly he did keep those status quo. It would be offset by the loss of Rhoades. Granted I think Rhoades a slug, he was undoubtedly an effective coach.

Good point as whether to count the 'he kept em or not' facet.
10-27-2019 02:50 PM
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OldOwl Offline
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Post: #40
RE: AD Replacement Thread
I don’t understand the money issue all the time. All I hear Is Rice needs more and more money. Rice has an endowment of $6 Billion and the University cannot chip in an additional $10 m per year (0.1 %) to athletics. That is peanuts. What is UH endowment, < $1 billion, and they are being successful in mens sports.
(This post was last modified: 10-27-2019 04:05 PM by OldOwl.)
10-27-2019 04:04 PM
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