Staff members will be in Austin on Tuesday, Ft Worth on Wednesday, and Dallas on Thursday. I am looking forward to hearing from Bloomgren and JK at one of the DFW events hopefully.

http://www.riceowls.com/sports/owl-club/...18aaa.html

Nothing in San Antonio??

I hope Austin's event is better than last year...stuffed in a back room having to listen to Bailiff and his crew

(05-11-2018 08:39 AM)BSWBRice Wrote:  I hope Austin's event is better than last year...stuffed in a back room having to listen to Bailiff and his crew

Well, you won't have to listen to Bailiff and his crew.

I hope Bloomgren continues his trend of testing new and emerging technologies at media events.



This photo will never get old for me.

Looks like he is of the Borg. Bloomgrutus?

Austin tonight. Who's gonna get it poppin and ask JK about what happened w Wayne?

(05-11-2018 10:55 AM)tanqtonic Wrote:  Looks like he is of the Borg. Bloomgrutus?

Eight of Nine.

Seriously, guys, take some notes and report back to us.

Heads up to those planning to attend tonight: All the previous emails listed the Cover 3 location on Anderson Lane in north Austin.
Today's email from Lizzie Yoshida lists the Cover 3 location downtown on Sixth Street.

I've sent her email asking to verify which location.

EDIT: Got a quick response---it is the DOWNTOWN location.
Cover 3
1717 West Sixth Street, #210R
Austin, TX 78703

(05-15-2018 09:13 AM)OptimisticOwl Wrote:  Seriously, guys, take some notes and report back to us.

Yes, please.

(05-11-2018 10:55 AM)tanqtonic Wrote:  Looks like he is of the Borg. Bloomgrutus?

Resistance is futile!

Coach Bloomgren was very articulate and showed a lot of passion in what is coming up. He reiterated the 'pound the roch, control the clock, and great defense', and went into the philosophy he was instituting throughout the team. In short, the fundamentals are stressed, but he said he definitely wanted and needed to take advantage of the specialty of the what the Rice student-athlete can bring to the table -- use the fundamentals but also note the special issues and trends that they see and can adapt to, especially in 'specialty' situations such as red zone, 3rd down, etc. He stressed that when the fundamentals are in, then the true value of the Rice student athlete should be on display in being able to recognize trends and patterns, and to take advantage of other team's 'roteness'.

He also emphasized that the bonding of the team as a team was paramount, and that in that respect he was exceptionally pleased with the Spring training and scrimmage. One of the assistants spoke about overhearing some 'old hands' from the OL talking between themselves that they were going to 'push some people around' next year when the players did not know they could be overheard.

He showed us part of the recruitment deck, which played Houston up amazingly nicely -- up played all the advantages of being and living in the fourth largest city in the US, both professionally and in terms of the amazing amounts of activities that Houston can offer --- more than most college campus cities in terms of world class arts and activities.

He had a very large part of the recruitment deck geared to the advantages of Rice --- he said that several potentials had asked him if the whole of Rice degrees were available for the team. He said that he enjoys telling the true scholar-athlete that not only are the sciences and engineering programs available, he fundamentally welcomes them to do those and really wants those athletes who want to go down those paths. He said it fit right in with what he wanted his athletes to be -- unafraid of challenges and the smarts to get those things down in whatever fashion.

He made an explicit point to invite not just parents of players from the Austin area, but I also met some grandparents as well. That tells me that his staff isnt just checking the surface boxes in that regard, but is actually taking the time to go deeper.

As an aside, the boneless hot wings were pretty darn good.....

JK took questions afterwards.

JK made a comment tonight that was in response to a question about conferences. He said that that the next conference shakeup could very well be precipitated by the outcome of a court case in California this winter.

In that case the NCAA is being taken to court over the issue of NCAA restrictions being confined to scholarships covering tuition, fees, room, board, books and incidental costs of attending college. He mentioned that he could easily foresee various conferences splitting based upon what level the member institutions want to 'put out'.

(05-16-2018 03:16 AM)tanqtonic Wrote:  Coach Bloomgren was very articulate and showed a lot of passion in what is coming up. He reiterated the 'pound the roch, control the clock, and great defense', and went into the philosophy he was instituting throughout the team. In short, the fundamentals are stressed, but he said he definitely wanted and needed to take advantage of the specialty of the what the Rice student-athlete can bring to the table -- use the fundamentals but also note the special issues and trends that they see and can adapt to, especially in 'specialty' situations such as red zone, 3rd down, etc. He stressed that when the fundamentals are in, then the true value of the Rice student athlete should be on display in being able to recognize trends and patterns, and to take advantage of other team's 'roteness'.

He also emphasized that the bonding of the team as a team was paramount, and that in that respect he was exceptionally pleased with the Spring training and scrimmage. One of the assistants spoke about overhearing some 'old hands' from the OL talking between themselves that they were going to 'push some people around' next year when the players did not know they could be overheard.

He showed us part of the recruitment deck, which played Houston up amazingly nicely -- up played all the advantages of being and living in the fourth largest city in the US, both professionally and in terms of the amazing amounts of activities that Houston can offer --- more than most college campus cities in terms of world class arts and activities.

He had a very large part of the recruitment deck geared to the advantages of Rice --- he said that several potentials had asked him if the whole of Rice degrees were available for the team. He said that he enjoys telling the true scholar-athlete that not only are the sciences and engineering programs available, he fundamentally welcomes them to do those and really wants those athletes who want to go down those paths. He said it fit right in with what he wanted his athletes to be -- unafraid of challenges and the smarts to get those things down in whatever fashion.

He made an explicit point to invite not just parents of players from the Austin area, but I also met some grandparents as well. That tells me that his staff isnt just checking the surface boxes in that regard, but is actually taking the time to go deeper.

As an aside, the boneless hot wings were pretty darn good.....

JK took questions afterwards.

JK made a comment tonight that was in response to a question about conferences. He said that that the next conference shakeup could very well be precipitated by the outcome of a court case in California this winter.

In that case the NCAA is being taken to court over the issue of NCAA restrictions being confined to scholarships covering tuition, fees, room, board, books and incidental costs of attending college. He mentioned that he could easily foresee various conferences splitting based upon what level the member institutions want to 'put out'.

Thanq you, Tanq

(05-16-2018 03:16 AM)tanqtonic Wrote:  Coach Bloomgren was very articulate and showed a lot of passion in what is coming up. He reiterated the 'pound the roch, control the clock, and great defense', and went into the philosophy he was instituting throughout the team. In short, the fundamentals are stressed, but he said he definitely wanted and needed to take advantage of the specialty of the what the Rice student-athlete can bring to the table -- use the fundamentals but also note the special issues and trends that they see and can adapt to, especially in 'specialty' situations such as red zone, 3rd down, etc. He stressed that when the fundamentals are in, then the true value of the Rice student athlete should be on display in being able to recognize trends and patterns, and to take advantage of other team's 'roteness'.

He also emphasized that the bonding of the team as a team was paramount, and that in that respect he was exceptionally pleased with the Spring training and scrimmage. One of the assistants spoke about overhearing some 'old hands' from the OL talking between themselves that they were going to 'push some people around' next year when the players did not know they could be overheard.

He showed us part of the recruitment deck, which played Houston up amazingly nicely -- up played all the advantages of being and living in the fourth largest city in the US, both professionally and in terms of the amazing amounts of activities that Houston can offer --- more than most college campus cities in terms of world class arts and activities.

He had a very large part of the recruitment deck geared to the advantages of Rice --- he said that several potentials had asked him if the whole of Rice degrees were available for the team. He said that he enjoys telling the true scholar-athlete that not only are the sciences and engineering programs available, he fundamentally welcomes them to do those and really wants those athletes who want to go down those paths. He said it fit right in with what he wanted his athletes to be -- unafraid of challenges and the smarts to get those things down in whatever fashion.

He made an explicit point to invite not just parents of players from the Austin area, but I also met some grandparents as well. That tells me that his staff isnt just checking the surface boxes in that regard, but is actually taking the time to go deeper.

As an aside, the boneless hot wings were pretty darn good.....

JK took questions afterwards.

JK made a comment tonight that was in response to a question about conferences. He said that that the next conference shakeup could very well be precipitated by the outcome of a court case in California this winter.

In that case the NCAA is being taken to court over the issue of NCAA restrictions being confined to scholarships covering tuition, fees, room, board, books and incidental costs of attending college. He mentioned that he could easily foresee various conferences splitting based upon what level the member institutions want to 'put out'.

Thanks for the update.

Hopefully Bloomgren can walk the walk, because his talk is spot on.

Tanqtonic summed things up quite nicely. A few other notes:

-Shouts to Jay Lamy for always hosting this event in Austin; dude is a class act all the way.

-Coach Bloom mentioned wanting to get his players into internships in Houston over summers instead of just slamming classes, perhaps as a way to slow the post 4th-year exodus?

-OL coach Joe Ashfield was in the house, as he was doing some recruiting in the area. Mentioned his recruiting tours took him to Hawaii, Canada, Wisconsin, California, and Minnesota just in the past couple weeks.

-Bloom broke down the pedigree of his entire staff (impressive!), stressed that he knows how important it is to have a great working relationship with Texas HS coaches, and that while we'll recruit nationally (some internationally), Texas (and especially Houston) will be the recruiting base.

-Kaarlgard said we should have a new baseball coach named 10-14 days after the end of the 2018 season, whenever that may be.

-Props to JK for taking questions live and sticking around to talk to folks afterwards; I imagine some in attendance aren't too happy with him right now.

-Turnout was good, about 50-60 folks. I'm class of '09 and it's always a bit concerning when I'm the youngest alum at these events, ex-players excepted. I realize that most folks who graduated my year and since then aren't really in a position to be big- or medium-time donors (yet), but if Rice is serious about maximizing it's fanbase, it's gotta do a better job of engaging its "average" alums, and not just folks who paid for a seat at the big-time table.

Overall, good stuff! I'm actually going to come down for a few games for the first time in a few seasons.

JK also said something very, not odd, but non-ordinary.

He took a direct question about 'what about after Graham' and he very pointedly said that this was an 'intergalactic' (with a a smile) search. He then backed up and said the search includes not just Southern based coaches, but national based coaches, and then said 'even beyond that'.

Dont know how effective that a search that produces a coach that has no ties to the US, but he was very direct to say that there were no preconditions in the scope of the search -- potentially he even told the 'searchers' to open it up that wide.

He and I actually had a fairly longish conversation (more than one back and forth, way more than one topic), as I stood next to him prior to and for some of the presentation.

He could be talking about Jose Cruz Jr., or perhaps some Caribbean Island-based coach. Someone like a Carlos Beltran - just throwing out a name so take it with a grain of salt.

He called it an "intergalactic" search jokingly, but I thought he was just emphasizing that the search will be all-encompassing, not that we're necessarily targeting someone international.

The conspiracy theorist in me thinks it might've been a subtle acknowledgment that we aren't just going to promote a current assistant or automatically hire someone like Berkman or Pettitte (i.e., a local name).

Inb4 OldOwl suggests we hire a coach from Taiwan to better connect with the student body.