(06-11-2021 09:23 AM)tanqtonic Wrote:  

(06-11-2021 08:52 AM)Owl 69/70/75 Wrote:  

(06-11-2021 08:42 AM)tanqtonic Wrote:  Rice on the other hand, had five years of nothing but a glide path downwards in the last number of Graham years, and what can only be termed a full dive into the rocks under Bragga,

If there is a reason to see an upswing at Rice, it lies in the hope that the Rice Investment can narrow or eliminate the sticker shock gap between Rice and other private schools, if not public schools. One thought about Cruz is that he may be able to make significant recruiting inroads into the Hispanic community. And given the economics, that is one demographic where the Rice Investment may have maximum impact.

The Rice Investment could be a game changer. And, it can be used (manipulated) to allow Rice to apply athletic scholarships in a wholly new way and a wholly new target base. *That* is the impact of the Rice Investment.
Every player that can be brought aboard with the Rice Investment path paves the way to target a player in the higher economic brackets with a 'true' baseball scholarship. That is, the ones where Rice previously had to tell the parents 'well you can afford Rice'. The RI literally inverts (and drastically expands) the classic equivalency sport scholarship paradigm.
In the hands of an adroit coaching staff and sports department, this is a dramatic upside potential for equivalency sports.

LSU (one of the pioneers of using academic scholarships creatively in equivalency sports) saved up enough partials to be able to give Alex Bregman a full ride. That's almost unheard of in baseball. Now, obviously 1) the Bregmans didn't need the money, and 2) Alex has proved that he was well worth it.

I look forward to seeing Rice make similarly creative use of the Rice Investment. Applied properly, it truly is a game changer. But this is Rice athletics, so there is no certainty that they will not screw it up.

At this point, I do have a whole lot more trust and confidence in Cheito than I do in JK.