(02-02-2015 09:19 PM)OptimisticOwl Wrote:  

(02-02-2015 08:44 PM)Owl 69/70/75 Wrote:  Look, regardless of wha we did on the field, our problem was that literally everything OFF the field was so screwed up that nobody wanted us.\

Does this mean that the problem cannot be rectified with just on the field results?

Absolutely. Remember the whole conference thing is about money--butts in seats, eyeballs looking at TVs, that sort of thing. Rice athletics deliberately and intentionally did everything humanly possible to alienate its customer base for 40 years. When you do that, you lose customers. I sat there and watched it happen, and it drove me up the wall. Guys like Mike Pede and Steve Moniaci and Jim Harris tried to turn things around, but got hammered down from above.

We could be winning national championships and if we were still running the business side the way we did in the 1970s and 1980s, I don't know that any conference would want us. The SEC was legitimately interested in 1990, but we had to change our ways of doing things. When we went into WAC, a group from the conference office came down and met with Bobby with a list of things that we had to change. We didn't make the changes that either requested (which were essentially the same changes). That as much as anything probably caused us not to get invited to the Denver airport.