(08-10-2016 11:40 AM)GoodOwl Wrote:  

(02-03-2015 08:11 AM)Owl 69/70/75 Wrote:  

(02-02-2015 11:32 PM)Middle Ages Wrote:  

(02-02-2015 11:11 PM)Owl 69/70/75 Wrote:  

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

I'm sure I can guess, but what were the specific changes requested?
ETA- and who was doing the hammering down from above?

The demands were similar but there were some differences in the SEC and WAC requests as they got filtered down to me. The SEC was more about investing in facilities, whereas I understood the WAC also wanted a major marketing effort. I think the SEC figured that the SEC name would take care of marketing, while the WAC was still trying to build a brand. My recall is not entirely clear, but I got the impression that our people were a bit surprised by the WAC demands, which they had not expected. In the end I think the WAC split was between those who wanted to build the brand and those who were content with the status quo, and we were definitely not perceived as wanting to build the brand. I think the efforts to build the Mountain West brand faltered with the losses of Utah, BYU, and TCU, each of which was more successful in building its own brand than was the league as a whole.

As for the hammering down, that is a bit of a curious issue. All I ever got from discussions with Bobby and his predecessors was that "they" wouldn't let us do things, "they" obviously meaning somebody in the administration, but without ever identifying who "they" were. I think "they" were people in administrative positions between the president and the athletic director in the chain of command, who served as gatekeepers and prevented the flow of ideas and information, but I don't know specifically who they were. I could make some educated guesses, and probably so can you. What's very curious is that I had discussions with several board members over the years, and they all seemed to be wanting the athletic department to come forward with some sort of plan to address issues, basically a plan to do exactly the sorts of proactive things that "they" (whoever they were) were supposedly denying the opportunity to do. To say the least, it was a very curious situation. The board seemed to want a proactive department, and want it very badly, but somewhere between the athletic director and the board was some "they" in middle management who discouraged all attempts to be proactive. Norman Hackerman and Malcolm Gillis both paid lip service to athletics, but both kowtowed to whoever "they" were and did not really go to bat for athletics on the tough issues. Todd Graham broke this cycle by going directly to David Leebron, going around whoever "they" were, and getting things done. This was by far Todd's greatest positive contribution. CDC had a good relationship with David, and David was the first president to go to bat for athletics in a major way. I think the "they" factor got their revenge by hiring Ranger Rick. As with Bo Hagan long before him, I think there is a credible argument that the decision to hire Rick was made by people who wanted to end the athletic program, and who felt that hiring a weak and incompetent AD was the best way to accomplish that. I think David asserted himself with the hiring of JK and I think David will be involved in any further major decisions regarding athletics, and that is a very good thing.

These are subjective impressions based largely upon second and third hand information, and thus may be incorrect. But they are based upon a staggeringly huge amount of such information, and where there is that much smoke I am inclined to believe there must be a fire. Let's just say that this stuff was a constant topic of discussion among insiders in the department for 40 years.

"Losing is okay if you have a good excuse," and, "If you don't know where you are going, the path of least resistance will get you there."

So how are we doing today, August of 2016, with the issues you mentioned in your posts?

Have "they" gone away or been silenced? Are there still things in the way we're running the business side of things under JK's regime that need more work? What are we now doing right that we weren't before? How much of the issues the SEC wanted and the WAC wanted have we addressed so far? What do you see as the top short term and long term priorities as things stand today? Do we know better where we're going these days, and where is that?