(07-13-2023 05:03 PM)ExcitedOwl18 Wrote:  We have plenty alumni who are just as wealthy as the benefactors of who fund NIL at, say, OU. It’s not that we can’t. It’s that we/they choose not to (in the same way that Ivy alums choose not to fund NIL initiatives).

I’m not in the financial position to give “real” money to a NIL effort yet (just turned 27, need a few more promotions ), but if I was, I wouldn’t give money to Rice Baseball right now.

As I’ve said in this thread before, NIL might be why we’ve fallen behind Texas and LSU, but it’s not why we’ve fallen behind UTSA and Charlotte. That is because we are poorly coached and don’t recruit well through “traditional” routes.

Really good points here. But, as I continue to beat the horse that is begging for me to put it out of it's misery, the overriding issue I have heard from players is the cost of attendance at Rice is the MAJOR hinderance to accepting offers. They have better programs available at significantly less cost. Throw in a
"smattering" of NIL money and Rice is a distant memory. I do know that Janish and company are out beating the bushes for talent but once the talent (and their families) look at the whopping cost to attend after scholarship they tend to move on. I know several really good players that would have liked to attend and play for Rice but they were from upper middle class families and even they could not make it work. So, how creative does the administration want to be to get the talent to the school is the overriding question in my mind. Right now the partial scholarship sports (baseball) are in a death spiral that we cannot pull out of unless the administration gets serious about addressing the cost of attendance.