(08-18-2019 09:29 AM)GoodOwl Wrote:  

(08-17-2019 08:54 PM)RiceOL83 Wrote:  

(08-17-2019 08:39 PM)Fort Bend Owl Wrote:  

(08-17-2019 07:35 PM)tanqtonic Wrote:  Apparently there are only 3 redshirt seniors, 1 senior, and 12 redshirt juniors on the roster.

Enormously bottom heavy --- that aspect just hit me for the first time.

I count 12 seniors on the team according to the riceowls.com roster. I'm not sure where you're getting your numbers from (unless you're not including graduate transfer seniors - I still think you'd have more than 4 seniors though). Granted, that's still not a ton but at least it's more than 4.

I didn't count the number of redshirt juniors.

ETA - the breakdown. Aston Walter (6th year senior), Reagan Williams (Stanford grad transfer), Nahshon Ellerbe (5th year senior), Tom Stewart (Harvard grad transfer), Charlie Booker (Harvard grad transfer), Adam Nunez (TCU grad transfer), Cole Elms (5th year senior), Nick Leverett (NC Central grad transfer), Brian Chaffin (Stanford grad transfer), Justin Gooseberry (Ouachita Baptist grad transfer), Chris Barnes (5th year senior), Myles Adams (4th year senior)

Only 5 program guys. Rest transferred in. As for the beating a dead horse thing...sorry but complaining or making excuses for youth by choice is BS. Bloom chose the roster he has

Maybe, but my guess is he is also going for a culture change with his roster revamps. Looks like in his opinion, many of the guys who were on the roster were not the caliber of player necessary to compete at Div I. Since he did coach for a very successful Stanford roster for several years, I would give him the benefit of doubt that he might understand at least that aspect, whether his chosen style of offense/defense is your cup of Rice tea or not (or mine, for I'm not sure smashmouth works here.)

To the extent that for much of the previous 11 seasons those type of players are now Rice football alumns, they colour the perception of the program's level with their own perceptions, which may or may not be the type that are successful/compatible with successful Div I teams today. That is where an alleged acceptance of mediocrity may come from as far as the program. If it is instituted in the very players who are alumns of it, and they even subconsciously can't handle the program becoming far better than when they were there under differing systems/values. The damage to the Rice football program from those 11 years, like the damage form many previous regimes, is thus far long lasting due to those kind of attachments it created, and takes what are perceived by many of those previous players to be wrongheaded or painful measures to eradicate.

Summary: turning around the program is painful and can seem irrational or mean to the players who were part of the lack of success under a flawed leader. TG, for all his faults, embraced the radical and rapid change needed at Rice to turn the rudder to success from defeat. I am not endorsing all his methods, merely his mentality that "this $# here has to stop for Rice to be successful on the field." Some of that may be what Bloom is doing, albeit hopefully in a more ethical way than TG. It will still piss off a lot of Football alumni. So be it. We have not had the kind of success with what we were doing befitting a storied school like Rice. We need to change. We'll see if this change works.