(09-20-2017 08:23 PM)franklyconfused Wrote: (09-20-2017 07:12 PM)Tiki Owl Wrote: (09-20-2017 11:05 AM)illiniowl Wrote: (09-20-2017 10:39 AM)Owl 69/70/75 Wrote: (09-19-2017 11:01 AM)illiniowl Wrote: I am still waiting for the positive, strategic argument for keeping football from anyone.
The positive, strategic argument for keeping football is that in today's world of intercollegiate athletics, football is the ticket that lets you into the club. Unless you have a long basketball-strong tradition, like say a Georgetown or a St. John's, you are not getting a whiff from a major conference without football.
McKinsey said there were two viable options--commit to be competitive in D-1 or move to D-3. Twelve years later, I think the same two options are still the only ones on the table.
We didn't want to be in the AAC if you remember how Greenspan and Lebron laughed and derided it when asked about it at the Greenspan "EZF" announcement in Shepherd.
We don't want to be in a major conference. Or haven't you noticed?
Then why did we make a presentation to the Big XII last year? Delivering a Powerpoint is much cheaper and easier than actually building a competitive football program, but Leebron was presumably ready to sign if they gave us an invitation. He and JK didn't make the presentation without at least informal consent from the Board.
The invite to the Big XII's ultimately meaningless beauty contest was a complete deus ex machina. It dropped out of the sky into our lap without us doing anything really substantive to merit it. Yeah, we made a presentation, along with 17 other schools, got rejected, and immediately resumed doing nothing to change the status quo. It signifies nothing, other than perhaps that we were willing to go back on welfare with a major conference if by some miracle they took us.
At some point, I suggest dealing with the facts on the ground, not as we would wish them to be. It is beyond obvious by now that the leadership of the University has no intention of making the real, immediate, and "costly" (but the maddening thing is that we could afford it, of course) push it would take to legitimately aim for return to a P5 conference. If somebody can convince them otherwise, donate nine figures and force action down their throats, or even just get them to wake up and be embarrassed about the level we have fallen to, that would be great. Hasn't happened yet, though, and at this point, two decades-plus into this G5 wasteland, I suggest we stop wishing the leopard would change its spots.
What they do want is whatever sort of nominally Division I athletic program that they can have for about $24MM of subsidy per year. If that is the case, I'd rather see us adopt the University of Denver approach, drop football, and aim to have across-the-board excellence in the rest of our sports plus the emerging ones that we are missing. If that means the Missouri Valley or the Summit League or something similar, so be it. Literally nothing could be worse than CUSA.
There is no point to us playing G5 football if we are not doing so as part of a strategy to return to P5, which we clearly aren't and have no intention of doing. Other schools, mostly second-rate, fairly large public ones that are the only game for miles around, can make enough ticket and ancillary revenue playing football against other similar schools to justify it on its own. It is clear, however, that that is not the case at Rice. Rice people are not falling for this inferior and meaningless product, and there is thus essentially no football-specific revenue to be beholden to.