(09-20-2020 03:48 PM)Ricefootballnet Wrote:  That’s true, but at that point we could’ve hired Ray Graves or Tommy Prothro but didn’t. It seems to be a critical decision point. I suppose you could’ve marked the beginning of the downturn being at the end of the 61 Bluebonnet bowl. But we beat Texas in Austin three years later. I think the first absolute coffin nail was our 0-9-1 ‘68 season. That was my freshman year.

The fact that we could attract the likes of Graves (Florida) or Prothro (#2 UCLA) in 1967 points to where the program was then. Even in 1971, Bill Peterson considered Rice an upgrade from Florida State. I don't know anyone who would consider Rice anywhere even close to those today.

Prothro would have been a particularly interesting hire. He had built his UCLA teams with the help of a recruiting pipeline out of the Beaumont-Port Arthur Golden Triangle area. Had he come, I think Rice would have gotten far more active in recruiting Black student athletes much sooner, and be far better off today for having done it. We would gotten a late start compared to Fry at SMU or Yeoman at UH, but I think we would have caught up--and in any event been well ahead of TexasU, aTm, and the big boys. Not to neglect that it was the right thing to do. Prothro was interested in Rice because he had something to prove. Despite his football success, he was always going to play second fiddle to John Wooden in Westwood, so he wanted to run his own show. Rice would have let him. He was an interesting guy, Duke graduate, world-class competitive bridge player (I can imagine some interesting games had he gotten to know Doc C). But he was not the easiest guy to get along with. In some ways, I see him as a more honest and reputable Todd Graham. I would guess that after he proved his point he would have bailed out for the Oilers, like Peterson did. He ended up going to the Rams from UCLA. At that point, there would have been a young, up-and-coming coach at Angelo State who might have taken the Rice job. Had we followed Prothro with Grant Teaff, our athletic trajectory over the next 50 years could have looked a lot like what did happen at Baylor--minus the rapes and murders, we can hope. And we probably would have been in primo position to jump to the SEC with Arkansas. That's the dream. What actually happened instead was the nightmare.