(Yesterday 07:46 PM)ExcitedOwl18 Wrote:  Still doesn’t explain why our university fundraising team hasn’t done a better job at cultivating our super-rich.

How do you know they haven’t? Plenty of things to donate to besides NIL. If their path to riches included being a turbo-wienie as an undergrad, the only thing they remember about athletics is freshman gym class and intramural games making them go around those grass fields that would one day be where the building or art they funded would be built.

(Yesterday 08:55 PM)Frizzy Owl Wrote:  

(Yesterday 07:46 PM)ExcitedOwl18 Wrote:  Still doesn’t explain why our university fundraising team hasn’t done a better job at cultivating our super-rich.

How do you know they haven’t? Plenty of things to donate to besides NIL. If their path to riches included being a turbo-wienie as an undergrad, the only thing they remember about athletics is freshman gym class and intramural games making them go around those grass fields that would one day be where the building or art they funded would be built.

Indeed!
Alas, criticizing other people for how they choose to spend their money is one of the oldest spectator sports on earth. :(

(Yesterday 08:55 PM)Frizzy Owl Wrote:  

(Yesterday 07:46 PM)ExcitedOwl18 Wrote:  Still doesn’t explain why our university fundraising team hasn’t done a better job at cultivating our super-rich.

How do you know they haven’t? Plenty of things to donate to besides NIL. If their path to riches included being a turbo-wienie as an undergrad, the only thing they remember about athletics is freshman gym class and intramural games making them go around those grass fields that would one day be where the building or art they funded would be built.

I know they haven’t done a good job of raising money as we supposedly have the lowest NIL budgets in the AAC, which is unacceptable given the wealth of our alumni base. That’s my whole argument.

The only sport where we are remotely competitive on an AAC scale is baseball, which was evidenced by the documents released in the Blaine Brown lawsuit.

(Yesterday 10:26 PM)georgewebb Wrote:  

(Yesterday 08:55 PM)Frizzy Owl Wrote:  

(Yesterday 07:46 PM)ExcitedOwl18 Wrote:  Still doesn’t explain why our university fundraising team hasn’t done a better job at cultivating our super-rich.

How do you know they haven’t? Plenty of things to donate to besides NIL. If their path to riches included being a turbo-wienie as an undergrad, the only thing they remember about athletics is freshman gym class and intramural games making them go around those grass fields that would one day be where the building or art they funded would be built.

Indeed!
Alas, criticizing other people for how they choose to spend their money is one of the oldest spectator sports on earth. :(

I’m not criticizing anyone - I’m using publicly available information (i.e. Coinbase SEC filings, the Anduril tender offers, etc) to dispel the notion that we don’t have alumni wealth on the scale of TCU (maybe if the argument was Harvard or Stanford there’d be more merit to it).

Then, I said that our university development team is lacking in “skins on the wall” compared to other institutions, as evidenced by the fact we have not only have smaller NIL budgets academic peers and Texas institutions, but also hotbeds of wealth like ECU, FAU, etc…

Not once did I say “XYZ person needs to give money to Rice Athletics.”

(Yesterday 10:33 PM)ExcitedOwl18 Wrote:  

(Yesterday 10:26 PM)georgewebb Wrote:  

(Yesterday 08:55 PM)Frizzy Owl Wrote:  

(Yesterday 07:46 PM)ExcitedOwl18 Wrote:  Still doesn’t explain why our university fundraising team hasn’t done a better job at cultivating our super-rich.

How do you know they haven’t? Plenty of things to donate to besides NIL. If their path to riches included being a turbo-wienie as an undergrad, the only thing they remember about athletics is freshman gym class and intramural games making them go around those grass fields that would one day be where the building or art they funded would be built.

Indeed!
Alas, criticizing other people for how they choose to spend their money is one of the oldest spectator sports on earth. :(

I’m not criticizing anyone - I’m using publicly available information (i.e. Coinbase SEC filings, the Anduril tender offers, etc) to dispel the notion that we don’t have alumni wealth on the scale of TCU (maybe if the argument was Harvard or Stanford there’d be more merit to it).

Then, I said that our university development team is lacking in “skins on the wall” compared to other institutions, as evidenced by the fact we have not only have smaller NIL budgets academic peers and Texas institutions, but also hotbeds of wealth like ECU, FAU, etc…

Not once did I say “XYZ person needs to give money to Rice Athletics.”

You're right: you did not say that.
I was using your post as a springboard to take a dig at those who do say it -- which was not fair to you.

(Yesterday 07:46 PM)ExcitedOwl18 Wrote:  Per ChatGPT, Rice has 68k living alumni (across all degree types) vs. 107k for TCU.

i think Rice's proportion of grad students is much higher than TCU's, and I consider somebody who went undergrad elsewhere and came to Rice for a grad degree far less likely to be a Rice football fan. I know I don't give a &*&%# about the athletics at the school I got my grad degree from. OTOH, I care a lot about the athletics at my undergrad school where I spent years and knew many of the athletes.

IAC, I wonder about the 107/58 ratio, as 60 years ago when I was an undergrad, TCU was 4X the size of Rice, and even though we have increased our enrollment, so have they, and the current numbers are 11K/5K (undergrad), and I don't see how you can have 2 to 4 times the enrollment annually for 60 years and have less than double the alumni. I'll leave you (and Chat) to find that explanation.

Certainly our alumni have a lot of various, non-athletic things at Rice that they can contribute to, but so do other schools, and they (well, many of them) ALSO find the money for NIL.

Perhaps the decades of losing have decimated the number of people interested in athletics.

maybe there weren't many of them to start with.

If we cannot compete in NIL, we cannot compete.

(Yesterday 10:26 PM)ExcitedOwl18 Wrote:  

(Yesterday 08:55 PM)Frizzy Owl Wrote:  

(Yesterday 07:46 PM)ExcitedOwl18 Wrote:  Still doesn’t explain why our university fundraising team hasn’t done a better job at cultivating our super-rich.

How do you know they haven’t? Plenty of things to donate to besides NIL. If their path to riches included being a turbo-wienie as an undergrad, the only thing they remember about athletics is freshman gym class and intramural games making them go around those grass fields that would one day be where the building or art they funded would be built.

I know they haven’t done a good job of raising money as we supposedly have the lowest NIL budgets in the AAC, which is unacceptable given the wealth of our alumni base. That’s my whole argument.

The only sport where we are remotely competitive on an AAC scale is baseball, which was evidenced by the documents released in the Blaine Brown lawsuit.

From what I've read, Rice sits well above the national average across NCAA Division I and is competitive within its conference with its NIL budget.

If anything, Rice should take a page from Houston's athletics. UH cannot compete to other Bigger Texas schools like Texas Tech or Texas. But they spend a lot of their money on elite coaches and position players instead of spreading it thin. Players in the areas want to play in front of their families. New facilities and building for athletics has helped Houston and will eventually also help Rice. There needs to be a culture change. That Western Michigan game turnout was not good.

(11-11-2026 07:23 PM)owl at the moon Wrote:  

(11-11-2026 12:36 AM)WRCisforgotten79 Wrote:  Team stats in NCAA:

Team Rushing - 4th (270.3 yards/game)
Team Passing - 136th (93.2 yards/game)

Rushing Defense - 112th (177.6 yards/game)
Passing Defense - 72nd (218.3 yards/game)

Turnover Margin - 132nd (-8)

Time of Possession - 72nd (30 minutes/game)

I’m glad we’re ranked 4th in FBS in something good… but those rushing and passing total yards per game stats are so meaningless in evaluating the relative efficiency of Rice that it almost offends me that someone bothers to post them.

Take a look at yards per rush, or QB rating, or yards per passing attempt.

Rice is 125th in passing efficiency.
Rice is 42nd in rushing yards/attempt.

Y'all still spewing nonsense on this old thread? Tulane game tomorrow. Let all this go. A new game day thread is up.