(09-02-2021 08:38 AM)Ourland Wrote:  

(09-01-2021 10:54 PM)mrbig Wrote:  

(09-01-2021 08:22 AM)Ourland Wrote:  Awful decision. We reward a guy who destroyed football, basketball, and baseball? Absolutely pathetic display by Rice. Not to mention, two months ago, Karlgaard was interviewing for other AD positions. I question his real commitment to Rice. He must not really want to be here if he has interviewed for other jobs. Why would Rice reward that? He's inept and looking to leave as soon as possible. No one else wants him!

I hope Rice sees bigtime improvement coming in our three biggest sports that I can't see at the moment.

Has men’s basketball really gotten worse under JK? The last AD made comments that at least gave an excuse for 2 of our better players to transfer to PAC programs and a bunch of other guys followed them out the door. Pera has an eye for recruiting talent and is finally keeping more of his guys on campus.

And while (from the outside) it looks like he handles the WG sunset seasons poorly and made a bit of a dud replacement hire for baseball, JK at least quickly moved to change directions and chose one of the (IMO) best options he could have with Cruz Jr.

Meanwhile, I think his biggest football blunder was Bailiff’s extension. I am still not sold on Bloomgren, but on paper he was the right kind of hire for Rice and Rice has at least had pretty solid defenses the past couple of years.

I am critical of the extension and would have preferred rolling the dice on new blood … but I also don’t think JK has been a failure. On a scale of 1-10, I would give him a 6 or 7. Rice is way behind the programs we want to be associated with, but that was the case when JK got to Rice. He hasn’t moved the ball forward much, maybe he has just stopped the freerall. But he has done well with the non-revenue sports, has run a clean department, and has basically tread water with the revenue sports (with some upside potential for all 3 in 2021-22). So I don’t love the extension, but this isn’t the end of Rice athletics. It just isn’t the potential dawn of a Rice athletics revival either.

That's some good perspective. Hopefully things are about to turn around in the big three men's sports. He had never been an AD before, so there's the learning curve to consider. I'll accept him with open arms if football, basketball, and baseball have winning seasons this year. It's past time that all his efforts bear fruit. Perhaps the timing is right for him, but I'm growing very impatient with the lack of results.

Just a small reminder that mens basketball already had a winning season this past year, though of course we are expecting more improvements this year.

(09-02-2021 09:08 AM)owl95 Wrote:  

(09-02-2021 08:38 AM)Ourland Wrote:  

(09-01-2021 10:54 PM)mrbig Wrote:  

(09-01-2021 08:22 AM)Ourland Wrote:  Awful decision. We reward a guy who destroyed football, basketball, and baseball? Absolutely pathetic display by Rice. Not to mention, two months ago, Karlgaard was interviewing for other AD positions. I question his real commitment to Rice. He must not really want to be here if he has interviewed for other jobs. Why would Rice reward that? He's inept and looking to leave as soon as possible. No one else wants him!

I hope Rice sees bigtime improvement coming in our three biggest sports that I can't see at the moment.

Has men’s basketball really gotten worse under JK? The last AD made comments that at least gave an excuse for 2 of our better players to transfer to PAC programs and a bunch of other guys followed them out the door. Pera has an eye for recruiting talent and is finally keeping more of his guys on campus.

And while (from the outside) it looks like he handles the WG sunset seasons poorly and made a bit of a dud replacement hire for baseball, JK at least quickly moved to change directions and chose one of the (IMO) best options he could have with Cruz Jr.

Meanwhile, I think his biggest football blunder was Bailiff’s extension. I am still not sold on Bloomgren, but on paper he was the right kind of hire for Rice and Rice has at least had pretty solid defenses the past couple of years.

I am critical of the extension and would have preferred rolling the dice on new blood … but I also don’t think JK has been a failure. On a scale of 1-10, I would give him a 6 or 7. Rice is way behind the programs we want to be associated with, but that was the case when JK got to Rice. He hasn’t moved the ball forward much, maybe he has just stopped the freerall. But he has done well with the non-revenue sports, has run a clean department, and has basically tread water with the revenue sports (with some upside potential for all 3 in 2021-22). So I don’t love the extension, but this isn’t the end of Rice athletics. It just isn’t the potential dawn of a Rice athletics revival either.

That's some good perspective. Hopefully things are about to turn around in the big three men's sports. He had never been an AD before, so there's the learning curve to consider. I'll accept him with open arms if football, basketball, and baseball have winning seasons this year. It's past time that all his efforts bear fruit. Perhaps the timing is right for him, but I'm growing very impatient with the lack of results.

Just a small reminder that mens basketball already had a winning season this past year, though of course we are expecting more improvements this year.

True

(09-01-2021 10:54 PM)mrbig Wrote:  

(09-01-2021 08:22 AM)Ourland Wrote:  Awful decision. We reward a guy who destroyed football, basketball, and baseball? Absolutely pathetic display by Rice. Not to mention, two months ago, Karlgaard was interviewing for other AD positions. I question his real commitment to Rice. He must not really want to be here if he has interviewed for other jobs. Why would Rice reward that? He's inept and looking to leave as soon as possible. No one else wants him!

I hope Rice sees bigtime improvement coming in our three biggest sports that I can't see at the moment.

Has men’s basketball really gotten worse under JK? The last AD made comments that at least gave an excuse for 2 of our better players to transfer to PAC programs and a bunch of other guys followed them out the door. Pera has an eye for recruiting talent and is finally keeping more of his guys on campus.

And while (from the outside) it looks like he handles the WG sunset seasons poorly and made a bit of a dud replacement hire for baseball, JK at least quickly moved to change directions and chose one of the (IMO) best options he could have with Cruz Jr.

Meanwhile, I think his biggest football blunder was Bailiff’s extension. I am still not sold on Bloomgren, but on paper he was the right kind of hire for Rice and Rice has at least had pretty solid defenses the past couple of years.

I am critical of the extension and would have preferred rolling the dice on new blood … but I also don’t think JK has been a failure. On a scale of 1-10, I would give him a 6 or 7. Rice is way behind the programs we want to be associated with, but that was the case when JK got to Rice. He hasn’t moved the ball forward much, maybe he has just stopped the freerall. But he has done well with the non-revenue sports, has run a clean department, and has basically tread water with the revenue sports (with some upside potential for all 3 in 2021-22). So I don’t love the extension, but this isn’t the end of Rice athletics. It just isn’t the potential dawn of a Rice athletics revival either.

I largely agree with this. I frankly think that Karlgaard either was sold a bill of goods when he was hired -- i.e. Rice was willing to make a serious push to rejoin the P5 ranks, which has been proven patently false -- or that he believed, naively it would turn out, that he could convince a diffident Leebron & BOT to make that push.

Instead, he more or less unwittingly stepped into an impossibly dysfunctional situation -- a university with an endowment-per-student that is off the charts yet is maddeningly unwilling to invest in the best and most cost-effective way (compared to buying a med school and hospital) of increasing its visibility and augmenting its reputation -- which you'd think a school that has slipped from top-10 to top-20 status over the last generation would be keen on doing, but no.

Being an academically elite G5 that has orphaned itself to a conference with zero appeal puts a ceiling on what can realistically be accomplished here, most severely for football and men's basketball. And of course the general unwillingness of even Rice folks, much less the wider public, to pay to watch either in person or on TV the revolting conference matchups that make up the vast majority of these two sports' schedules chokes off revenue the rest of the department needs.

Given these profound structural issues that are beyond the AD's ability to fix, for us to have some national top-15-to-25 nonrevenue programs and mostly conference-level competitive other programs is about as much as could be hoped for.