(02-24-2023 03:48 AM)Owl 69/70/75 Wrote:  

(02-24-2023 01:16 AM)OptimisticOwl Wrote:  Maybe Bloom needs to be gone, but I have little faith that the next "good hire" will be any better. Ususally all that happens is the pictures in the coaches office change.

That is at least in part because Rice's hiring process has been horrible. A committee of academics, who may or may not know anything about football, is a collection of the wrong people to be hiring a football coach. It's not like hiring a faculty member (and I've been on a few committees to hire those).

We keep trying to hire a guy who will stay.

We are not in a position to do that, unless the reason the guy will stay is that he does something that few other places want to do... like either Ken (Hat or N).... or if he is a Rice guy.

If he REMOTELY does what everyone else does and does not bleed Blue and Grey then we need to repeatedly hire people who will come in... win fast and get hired away... and then we need to quickly hire the next guy... preferably from his staff or at least coaching philosophy tree)

We need to do this until people become convinced that there is something about Rice and our committment that makes these people able to do this... and not merely a lucky streak of good coaches. At that point, we are getting recruits that a regular first year coach isn't going to get... we are getting first year candidates and assistants that Rice wouldn't normally get... etc etc etc. Coaches are saying, if you are a young up and comer and want to get to the big leagues, Rice is a great place to launch that from... and players are saying the same thing.

You do that until we get an invite to the big leagues.... and NOW you can keep them because we are a destination as opposed to an opportunity... and if we never do become a destination, then we never stop doing that.

The only other opportunity is to carve a niche like the Savannah Bananas (not necessarily meaning comedy, but a niche nonetheless, and I have suggested some ways to do that) that allows us to pay 'big boy' salaries and have 'big boy' amenities without being part of the 'big boy consortium'.

Hiring coaches who struggle early until they can get 'their guys' in is a recipe for disaster because many people don't want to play for losing teams, even for just a year or two.... much less 4. So he can't GET 'his guys'. Hiring a coach who makes a splash and then 'fighting off' tepid offers to hire him away without having more in the tank such that we're having to reduce travel budgets in order to pay higher salaries or what have you is similarly a recipe for disaster. If we can't justify upping EVERY budget by the percentage of money it would take to keep a HC then we need to let him go and probably hire from his staff. We need to at least be able to offer what he would want to pay his OC or DC or Assistant Head Coach at his next stop... to be his own head coach.