Wow on Conner. I asked his aunt if he was going to stay and she said yes, but I think this was a Kazemi situation-someone who worked his tail off, had some moments, solid guy, but wanted some success in his career, but saw next year as sinking. Another horrible in the worse rice sports year since 88 or so.

Re Rhodes, imho in short, we got unlucky, once LSU hired VCU's coach, the dominos were about to fall. Braun was the disaster.

Re JK, does anybody really think that the best AD ever (not sure who that would be) could have made chicken salad out of this mess? All the issues have been stated over and over again, but it starts at the top, the very top and the lack of commitment, support, and funding. What did TCU, UH, others do? We cut budgets, stay in the WAC way too long, hire Greenspan, Braun, keep Bailiff after 2011, can't handle the Wayne situation when as they said in the Godfather, it was clear that he was slippin, etc etc. The BOT and Leebron can not hide from the responsibility of this disaster.

I am not conspiratorial in nature, but am convinced that "those" who wanted to kill sports at rice, but we're unable to do the deed directly, did so through starvation and neglect.

Let's face it, did the McKinsey report state anything that a rational follower of Rice sports not know? The "pro" crowd hoped that it would lay out the magic bullet. The "anti" crowd hoped it would provide a case for hopelessness. Neither got what they wanted, but in short, it said there are two options: 1) commit, fund, go all in or 2) kill it. It did not say muddle along, market based on hope, ignore what little fan base that is left, hire retreads, fund minimally and too late (sorry, but convincing a rich alum or 2 to fund a bldg is not funding), ignore the obvious (wasn't 5 1/2 years of bailiff enough?), in short, the same ole Rice way of the past 50 years (not meant to slam Bobby May as he did a great job of turning the on the field/court results around). The minute after we won the 96 SWC baseball tournament, we needed a whole different approach and attitude, but sadly.

Those who aren't followers, like the Comical and their occasional reporting such as columns on when bailiff was fired or the Wayne situation, don't get why on either since "but didn't they do all this before", from a perspective of that should be enough for you Rice guys. In other words, irrelevancy, which tells it all. Bet if MK did a long retrospective on the past 20 or 25 years, the analysis would be different.

Well we played Southwestern in football a couple of times during WWII, hope they will let us in their D3 conference. Scary thing is that Trinity is in that one and they are quite the powerhouse.

Well to paraphrase Casablanca, we always will have the CWS championship.....