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2005 vs 2017
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ExcitedOwl18 Offline
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Post: #41
RE: 2005 vs 2017
I’ve heard football’s recruiting budget is barely larger than men’s basketball. Which is ridiculous considering the relative size of the recruiting classes.

When Rhoades got hired, Kaarlgard gave him any and everything he wanted in terms of OpEx while shortchanging football. This can be seen in a few ways: Recruiting budget, graphics in Fox Gym vs. Patterson, and basketball equipment/uniforms/gear compared to football. RiceOwl53 alluded to the towel issue... This isn’t due to negligence from the equipment staff. It’s because the equipment staff didn’t have enough money to buy more towels when they would invariably tear, disappear, etc.
10-31-2017 05:26 PM
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Owl 69/70/75 Offline
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Post: #42
RE: 2005 vs 2017
This has been a pet peeve of mine regarding Rice athletics since at least the Bo Hagan era. Rice has never spend adequately for operating expenses. We've trotted out new capital expenditures when some donor or group of donors came together, such as for Tudor or Patterson or Reckling. But by and large, we have never spent appropriately to operate and maintain our programs or our facilities. The anecdotes being circulated here are nothing that hasn't gone on for 50 years.

In conjunction with a failure to spend adequately for operating expenses has been an almost total lack of attention given to revenues, and in particular to customer satisfaction. The attitude was always, "They'll come see us play Texas or aTm or LSU, and we can run the program on whatever revenues they generate." So what has happened--inevitably, IMO--is that as Texas and aTm and LSU stopped playing us, revenues went down, expenditures were cut to offset at least partially the decline in revenues, and the quality of the programs declined. We went from the bottom of the SWC to the middle of the WAC to the middle of the new and weaker WAC to the middle of CUSA to the bottom of CUSA.

The BOT needs to invest more to turn things around. At the same time, the athletic department needs to find ways to generate revenues, other than just sending out donation requests to the same heavy hitters over and over. Yes, JK does pay a lot of attention, some would say too much attention, to the moneybags donors. In his present situation, he really has no alternative.

Short run, the only ways I see to generate more revenues is money bag games in football and turning basketball from a loss center to a profit maker. The other potential that I see is to find some way to change what I understand to be the university stance on large corporate donations to athletics. That's where most programs actually make money. When the McKinsey study was going on, I made the online acquaintance of a professor from U of Illinois-Chicago, whose research interest was financing of intercollegiate athletics programs. When the study was finished, I emailed him a copy. His first reaction was, "The corporate support numbers can't possibly be right, we get more than that here at UIC." No, they were right, that's just how bad we are in that area.

With those changes, we would be looking at $6-10 million more a year in revenues. If we could split that with the BOT, let them reduce the subsidy by half that and let athletics spend the other half, then lots and lots of those things that need doing would be doable.

What do businesses focus on? Revenues and expenses. That's what athletic programs need to focus on. Ours doesn't, and hasn't for decades.
10-31-2017 06:33 PM
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owl at the moon Online
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Post: #43
2005 vs 2017
(10-31-2017 10:17 AM)mrbig Wrote:  
(10-31-2017 09:42 AM)RiceOwl53 Wrote:  
(10-31-2017 08:17 AM)McHargue Wrote:  During my time at Rice we had

1) Black mold in the locker room
2) Rats in the ceiling
3) No warm running water in the facility (unless it was summer and the pipes warmed the water to scalding)

Some of you need to get a grip, we have the least spoiled program in the nation. They aren't welcome by a majority of the regular students because they needed assistance getting into the school. The Shepherd School students carry more celebrity that any member of the team. We built a facility for them a couple decades too late (they showed me renderings of a facility on my official visit in 2008) and ran out of money for graphics so the walls are completely empty.

We're pretty awful this year there's no doubt, but I can assure you it's not because of spoiled players.

This whole "spoiled" narrative is preposterous. Comparatively speaking, Rice is at a huge disadvantage to other schools, even with the new end zone facility. The atmosphere on campus is hostile from students and faculty, the administration doesn't prioritize football, and the budget for football is absurdly underfunded.

By the time I arrived, the black mold and rats were gone (or at least under the surface). But the showers were still either scalding or freezing, whichever one was inconvenient for the weather. Also, we had to scramble for towels after practice because we didn't have enough for everyone on the team. That's pretty ridiculous.

For my last point about the budget for football being underfunded, I would be willing to bet my paycheck that Rice Football does not pay anywhere near the national average for a coaching budget. It spends $166k for the football recruiting budget which is embarrassingly underfunded. If you don't pay coaches (mainly talking about assistants here), a competitive wage, they won't come coach at your school. If you don't have the funds comparative to other institutions to recruit, you aren't going to be able to recruit quality players.

When the baseball team made its first 2 College World Series, the team's locker room and the coaching offices were in Autry. They used the weight room at the football stadium. Baseball did not have its own trainer. Other than the locker room and the batting cage, there was no designated team meeting space. The "stadium" was largely indistinguishable from what you would see at a high school. Thankfully, no black mold or rats that I noticed and the showers at Autry worked.

I agree that the "spoiled players" narrative can be overplayed. If there are spoiled players on the team (in any sport), it is because the coaching staff recruited spoiled players and/or allowed that attitude to persist on their team. I have no insight into what is currently happening at Rice in any sport.


(10-31-2017 09:42 AM)RiceOwl53 Wrote:  This whole "spoiled" narrative is preposterous. Comparatively speaking, Rice is at a huge disadvantage to other schools, even with the new end zone facility. The atmosphere on campus is hostile from students and faculty, the administration doesn't prioritize football, and the budget for football is absurdly underfunded.

For my last point about the budget for football being underfunded, I would be willing to bet my paycheck that Rice Football does not pay anywhere near the national average for a coaching budget. It spends $166k for the football recruiting budget which is embarrassingly underfunded. If you don't pay coaches (mainly talking about assistants here), a competitive wage, they won't come coach at your school. If you don't have the funds comparative to other institutions to recruit, you aren't going to be able to recruit quality players.

I mean why would you go to a company that doesn't pay as well? The same principle applies to the coaching market. It limits the options.

I think you make some extremely valid points. I have maintained for years that one way Rice can help overcome this gap is to bring former Rice players who are just getting into coaching into the program as grad assistants and assistant coaches. This would have numerous benefits:
(1) If Rice alumni want to pursue football coaching as their profession, it gives them early collegiate experience. College coaching is such an apprenticeship job situation, getting your foot in the door early can be a huge benefit to the former player / prospective coach.
(2) Rice guys are, on average, much smarter than players from other programs. While this may not always have a direct application to real-time situations on the field, I think it helps enormously for coaches.
(3) On average, I think an Rice alum coach is more likely to stay with the program an extra year even if they could get a slight promotion to a better program. Similarly, I think a Rice alum coach might take slightly less to coach at their alma mater.
(4) I think having a number of young, talent assistant coaches coming out of Rice football would help Rice make a name for itself within the football coaching community. Rice would be seen as an attractive entry-level place for talent (assuming you have a talented head coach who knew how to utilize and implement the young coaches). When these guys moved on to coach other, more prominent programs, there would be some trickle-down that could benefit Rice. Particularly true if some of these guys went to the high school ranks after being assistants at Rice.
(5) I think the understanding would have to be that these positions were ideally 2-3 year spots before a new Rice alum coach would come through. But obviously, Rice should seek to retain and internally promote any coach that showed truly outstanding capabilities.

Instead, we have guys like James Casey and Drew Mehringer breaking into the coaching profession elsewhere and quickly pricing themselves out of what Rice could afford. I have been heartened the a couple Rice guys have come in as graduate assistants the past few years (including Jaylon Finner right now). But we need a lot more of them, IMO. (I am not saying the entire staff should be Rice alums, but I think roughly half the coaching staff would be appropriate if there were a sufficient number of former players getting into coaching)


Had a similar thought recently, but didn’t quite know how to bring it up.
I like your idea and really like how you’ve laid it out.

For better or worse, “getting” (I.e. understanding) Rice is going to be a learning curve for any outsider coming in. Alums of the programs would know what they’re getting into... and that alone could help retention and effectiveness.
10-31-2017 08:10 PM
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Tomball Owl Offline
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Post: #44
RE: 2005 vs 2017
Some of us have been lobbying for a certain receiver alum for some time now.
10-31-2017 09:03 PM
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ruowls Offline
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Post: #45
RE: 2005 vs 2017
(10-31-2017 09:03 PM)Tomball Owl Wrote:  Some of us have been lobbying for a certain receiver alum for some time now.

We could be just like Stanford.
11-01-2017 03:05 PM
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75src Offline
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Post: #46
RE: 2005 vs 2017
Allowing corporate support for football is probably not going to take away from academic support because the football support is given for corporate publicity.

(10-31-2017 06:33 PM)Owl 69/70/75 Wrote:  This has been a pet peeve of mine regarding Rice athletics since at least the Bo Hagan era. Rice has never spend adequately for operating expenses. We've trotted out new capital expenditures when some donor or group of donors came together, such as for Tudor or Patterson or Reckling. But by and large, we have never spent appropriately to operate and maintain our programs or our facilities. The anecdotes being circulated here are nothing that hasn't gone on for 50 years.

In conjunction with a failure to spend adequately for operating expenses has been an almost total lack of attention given to revenues, and in particular to customer satisfaction. The attitude was always, "They'll come see us play Texas or aTm or LSU, and we can run the program on whatever revenues they generate." So what has happened--inevitably, IMO--is that as Texas and aTm and LSU stopped playing us, revenues went down, expenditures were cut to offset at least partially the decline in revenues, and the quality of the programs declined. We went from the bottom of the SWC to the middle of the WAC to the middle of the new and weaker WAC to the middle of CUSA to the bottom of CUSA.

The BOT needs to invest more to turn things around. At the same time, the athletic department needs to find ways to generate revenues, other than just sending out donation requests to the same heavy hitters over and over. Yes, JK does pay a lot of attention, some would say too much attention, to the moneybags donors. In his present situation, he really has no alternative.

Short run, the only ways I see to generate more revenues is money bag games in football and turning basketball from a loss center to a profit maker. The other potential that I see is to find some way to change what I understand to be the university stance on large corporate donations to athletics. That's where most programs actually make money. When the McKinsey study was going on, I made the online acquaintance of a professor from U of Illinois-Chicago, whose research interest was financing of intercollegiate athletics programs. When the study was finished, I emailed him a copy. His first reaction was, "The corporate support numbers can't possibly be right, we get more than that here at UIC." No, they were right, that's just how bad we are in that area.

With those changes, we would be looking at $6-10 million more a year in revenues. If we could split that with the BOT, let them reduce the subsidy by half that and let athletics spend the other half, then lots and lots of those things that need doing would be doable.

What do businesses focus on? Revenues and expenses. That's what athletic programs need to focus on. Ours doesn't, and hasn't for decades.
11-01-2017 06:51 PM
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waltgreenberg Offline
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Post: #47
RE: 2005 vs 2017
(11-01-2017 06:51 PM)75src Wrote:  Allowing corporate support for football is probably not going to take away from academic support because the football support is given for corporate publicity.

No Kidding. It's not the BOT who continue to advocate this policy, but rather the University Treasurer who thinks ANY $$$ gifted to athletics is cannabalizing gifts given to academics. I know because I had to fight this myself when I was establishing my two endowments. I had to threaten to cancel the academic-related one if they continued to question my Rice Baseball -related one. It's an absurd policy that hurting the University overall.
11-01-2017 07:45 PM
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Ourland Offline
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Post: #48
RE: 2005 vs 2017
(10-31-2017 06:33 PM)Owl 69/70/75 Wrote:  This has been a pet peeve of mine regarding Rice athletics since at least the Bo Hagan era. Rice has never spend adequately for operating expenses. We've trotted out new capital expenditures when some donor or group of donors came together, such as for Tudor or Patterson or Reckling. But by and large, we have never spent appropriately to operate and maintain our programs or our facilities. The anecdotes being circulated here are nothing that hasn't gone on for 50 years.

In conjunction with a failure to spend adequately for operating expenses has been an almost total lack of attention given to revenues, and in particular to customer satisfaction. The attitude was always, "They'll come see us play Texas or aTm or LSU, and we can run the program on whatever revenues they generate." So what has happened--inevitably, IMO--is that as Texas and aTm and LSU stopped playing us, revenues went down, expenditures were cut to offset at least partially the decline in revenues, and the quality of the programs declined. We went from the bottom of the SWC to the middle of the WAC to the middle of the new and weaker WAC to the middle of CUSA to the bottom of CUSA.

The BOT needs to invest more to turn things around. At the same time, the athletic department needs to find ways to generate revenues, other than just sending out donation requests to the same heavy hitters over and over. Yes, JK does pay a lot of attention, some would say too much attention, to the moneybags donors. In his present situation, he really has no alternative.

Short run, the only ways I see to generate more revenues is money bag games in football and turning basketball from a loss center to a profit maker. The other potential that I see is to find some way to change what I understand to be the university stance on large corporate donations to athletics. That's where most programs actually make money. When the McKinsey study was going on, I made the online acquaintance of a professor from U of Illinois-Chicago, whose research interest was financing of intercollegiate athletics programs. When the study was finished, I emailed him a copy. His first reaction was, "The corporate support numbers can't possibly be right, we get more than that here at UIC." No, they were right, that's just how bad we are in that area.

With those changes, we would be looking at $6-10 million more a year in revenues. If we could split that with the BOT, let them reduce the subsidy by half that and let athletics spend the other half, then lots and lots of those things that need doing would be doable.

What do businesses focus on? Revenues and expenses. That's what athletic programs need to focus on. Ours doesn't, and hasn't for decades.

+1
11-02-2017 01:16 AM
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westsidewolf1989 Offline
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Post: #49
RE: 2005 vs 2017
2005 Astros vs. 2017 Astros - one loses the World Series and the other wins it. That's the real difference between '05 and '17.
11-02-2017 11:40 AM
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wiessguy Offline
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Post: #50
RE: 2005 vs 2017
(11-02-2017 11:40 AM)westsidewolf1989 Wrote:  2005 Astros vs. 2017 Astros - one loses the World Series and the other wins it. That's the real difference between '05 and '17.

Too bad there isn't a "drop the mic" smiley

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11-02-2017 11:48 AM
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Antarius Offline
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Post: #51
RE: 2005 vs 2017
(11-02-2017 11:48 AM)wiessguy Wrote:  
(11-02-2017 11:40 AM)westsidewolf1989 Wrote:  2005 Astros vs. 2017 Astros - one loses the World Series and the other wins it. That's the real difference between '05 and '17.

Too bad there isn't a "drop the mic" smiley

01-ncaabbs

[Image: obama-mic-drop-gif-1.gif]
(This post was last modified: 11-02-2017 12:27 PM by Antarius.)
11-02-2017 12:26 PM
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