(11-25-2019 04:20 PM)Hambone10 Wrote: (11-25-2019 01:42 PM)Frizzy Owl Wrote: 1. What does "going for the Transformation" look like? 2. How do you know if a guy is Transformative before hiring him?
3. Does a Transformative succeed in Year One no matter what he has to work with?
In some ways, it depends on how you define success.... and what you're trying to 'transform' from or in to.
Again, I think the challenge will be 'what's next'. As an example, I think many would say the defense has improved. If it has, then others will notice and want to hire away the guys responsible for it. What do we do when that happens? It seems that when that happened with DB, we stopped being able to coach and/or recruit
Ham had a good start there.
Since I offered it, I'll try to answer Frizzy's queries from my perspective:
1. Up front, it appears spending the money to compete for top coaches at the level you WANT the program to be at, not the level you are used to spending or the level you are at now is the optimal way to get into and stay in the Top 25. This likely includes being willing to and spending the buyout money a few times if the guy you hire doesn't pan out after a few seasons, so you don't let the cost sink paralyze and decay your program overall. Everyone makes missteps, and it appears from the successful programs you have to build in the ability to quickly pivot into the Transformative attitude. Without it, you seem to stand much less chance for sustained success (as we have seen.) Paying a bad or mediocre coach you already have more to appear competitive seems to actually hurts your program, again as we have seen here at Rice. Cutting bait before too much damage is done by a bad or mediocre coach seems more prudent in the long term.
2. You never seem to absolutely, but you certainly appear to have strong clues to which coaches have better odds by listening to the market. If a coach (let's take Grinch, or Leach, for example, back before they were where they are now) is constantly touted as the next great candidate by Top25 schools (versus P5 also-rans or G5 mid to bottom pack schools) that seems to be a better indication that once or twice out of 3 times, he'll right the ship and ignite your program. Money is certainly a partial indicator, and if you aren't willing to compete with dollars for the big names then you have less chance of finding a diamond in the rough. That said, those diamonds are out there, certainly. And they often get snapped up after sparkling at a lesser program. To say that you intend to Transform a bad or mediocre program over time by solely looking for that diamond in the rough several times in a row is difficult (Boise did do it) but near-impossible when you have the academic restrictions of Rice placed on top.
The exception to this is probably someone completely unconventional, like RUOWLS is for Rice. But it still takes a lot of money to get him away from his successful medical career. The downside is you don't know if he'd actually be able to do what he says because he has no major coaching experience. Then again, major league baseball seems pretty comfortable these days handing managerial jobs to former players who never coached before, and some of them do pretty well. The upside is he'd be less likely to leave if he was successful. The truth is he probably could do no worse than the present coach or the one before. He was a helluva player, and he seems to know a lot, so why not roll the dice. if we still stink, nothing has changed and we'd have the answer to that equation at least.
3. Ask Todd Graham (I suspect many don't want to, and I certainly understand why--but look at the TYPE of coach not the actual individual, which is what I try to do in that case.) It can happen. But better football minds here than me were and still are highly skeptical that Pound the rock is a winning strategy over time at Rice. Maybe at other G5 schools, but OWl#s has pointed to the types of QBs we are more easily able to get, and Bloom's stated style does not appear to be one that can be had consistently at Rice over time, if at all.
We saw the more recent QBs the last guy had, before he was finally canned, and they were just not up to snuff on the filed. Nice guys, great people, but not winners at Rice.
Chase Clement was a diamond in the rough other schools missed, and even Hat found him, but his system probably would not have unleashed Chase's full potential. It took a guy who was willing to turn everything upside down here to see that potential and allow it to be ultilized. Sure he was a jerk, but what if we could find a TG-type of coach (NOT TG himself) who wasn't? I believe there are several out there.
We'd have to pay money upfront. We don't want to. That's why we stink. But we're still losing millions of dollars either way. Penny smart, pound foolish. Unconventional 'wisdom' indeed. Can't stand that the football or basketball coach might make more salary than the President or most professors.
By the way, it's the end of Year 2, going into Year 3, and Rice football still stinks--not Year 1, so that's an inaccurate diversion from the actual point. Let's hope Coach Bloom studies over the offseason, and changes enough to get a 7-4 or 8-3 team on the field next year, including an upset against one of the better non-conference teams. then we may have something different and potentially Transformative. If not, then it's just another flavor of same-ol', same ol'. We need that run of six or seven zero or one loss seasons in a row. We are experts in how to identify the guys who will get you several 1, 2 or 3 win seasons in a row.
Another great point Ham makes is Rice never seems to have a plan for "What's next." And it shows. A long-term strategy (not platitudes) identifies what and how we will do when a successful coach or assistant leaves. Paying bigger money than others (at mid-to-top P5 level) is one way to keep them here, and/or attract equivalent or better talent.
You can't run a top-notch program on the cheap. Rice has proven that ad-nauseum, yet still insists it it right. Rice is wrong. College football, is right. Then again, Rice doesn't seem to be dominated by the kinds of people that can accept that reality in many areas. So I guess they would be best to cut the whole thing. But that ruins the value of our degrees, short and long term, and there are still many of us who didn't sign up for that, came to Rice because it was a good school with D-I sports and played their friends' schools on the same fields year in and year out. It would be a shame to destroy that tradition just because the elites that run it are too stubborn to admit the truth of real-world competition. I certainly didn't have any desire to go to Case Western or RPI, though they have some merits as schools. I and many others wanted the total college experience, which at the time Rice still had. But that does appear where the little school is headed, ever so painstakingly.
Owl#s, Ham, Nightowl, RUOWLS and a few others can tell you who to look at and what to look for. All would appear to agree what we're doing and who we're getting is not really working.
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RE: Rice v UNT: *Post*-game Thread 