(08-06-2023 01:23 PM)tanqtonic Wrote:  

(08-06-2023 11:14 AM)OptimisticOwl Wrote:  

(08-06-2023 09:31 AM)tanqtonic Wrote:  

(08-06-2023 09:26 AM)OptimisticOwl Wrote:  

(08-06-2023 08:43 AM)tanqtonic Wrote:  The one sad thing is that his short tenure at Rice was successful.

It would have been an enormously more satisfying long set of events of the dbag had just been mediocre enough to bolt -- matching the rest of his stints.

I would not call a lucky 7-6 campaign successful. I would call it mediocre. It was thrilling, in the second half of the season. Not so much at the start or finish.

And he did bolt.

7-6 looks like Nirvana to me at this point. And for someone who Riced in the early to mid 80's that 7-6 is *highly* successful.

I went through the 40+ years of bowl futility that your mid-80's were the nadir of. but I will never accept barely .500 as highly successful. If we go 7-6 this year will you consider that "highly successful"?

Of course, I was never part of the Toad bandwagon. I didn't like him from the git-go. I enjoyed the stretch drive, even the lucky UAB win, and OTOH, I was in NOLa to see the ending debacle. Then he bolted. The only way to call that highly successful is to compare it to Hat's last year.

But, for 2023, I hope we are highly successful by somebody's standards. Yours at least, or better yet, mine.

Go Owls! Beat (whoever).

I dont believe I said 'highly' successful....

Quite a bit more successful than most seasons I have seen coming out of Rice. That seemingly is, in the relative sense, 'successful'.

I too hope for absolute 'successful', and maybe one day will dawn on the shrubs and oaks of S. Main where 7-6 as not even 'relatively successful', and there will be no word whatsoever in the term 'successful' in either sense with 7-6.

As it is, I think most in the last 8 years would give a left nut (metaphorically of course, as we are seeming arguing about relative and absolute success when the term 'success' is bandied about....just to be absolutely crystal clear.....) for that not so absolute successful campaign. But -- wow, I hope to be that picky some day.

I would hope that one day 7-6 would get the coach fired, or at least on the hot seat. But we have already seen where an occasional 10-4 will eventually do the trick. I want consistently good results. Rice has never had that, not even in the Neely era. But hey, I have been wanting this for 60 years. Why lower my standards now?