OptimisticOwl
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Posts: 58,630
Joined: Apr 2005
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I Root For: Rice
Location: DFW Metroplex
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RE: Relevance
(10-26-2015 08:37 AM)GoodOwl Wrote: (10-26-2015 08:09 AM)cr11owl Wrote: (10-26-2015 07:56 AM)GoodOwl Wrote: (10-25-2015 10:13 PM)Ricefootballnet Wrote: (10-25-2015 08:28 PM)illiniowl Wrote: FIFY
Out of all the schools in the country, we are the only one in a conference completely devoid of any peer institutions. There will be a price to be paid for this - we already seem to be paying it, actually, given the downward trend of our rankings over the past decade-plus. And I don't think we're anywhere near the floor.
Rice is already sailing into a significant headwind in trying to stay in the top 20 without a med school or law school. And now, the vanishing linkages of our brand in the public consciousness with peer schools, plus every linkage of our brand with Middle Western International Dominion Tech State, are combining for death by a thousand cuts.
A school like ours is expected - by the public, by its students, alumni, would-be applicants, etc. - to strive for excellence in all areas and engage in genuine competition with its peers. However, in the one arena most visible to all these groups, Rice isn't doing that.
I just don't think it is possible to make Rice people - or people who might be disposed to care about Rice, like potential new fans in Houston, smart HS kids, etc. - care about competing in C-USA. Why would they? Why should they?
At best, Rice is essentially telling its supporters and potential supporters to eat this spinach for X years in the hope that things will get better someday for some future generation. Not exactly an inspiring marketing pitch. I don't blame today's Rice kids for not caring, in the main, about attending C-USA games, and I don't blame any kid today considering Rice who ultimately decides to go to Stanford, Duke, Northwestern, Army/Navy/Air Force, an Ivy, or any other school where part of one's college experience can be participating, directly or vicariously, in athletic competition with one's peers. And as more and more decisions get made in this vein, the negative results will redound to Rice.
Increasing irrelevance for Rice athletics will lead to increasing irrelevance for Rice.
This post, more than any I can remember, summarize my feelings -- actually, fears -- about the way I perceive Rice to be fading, fading in perceived importance and relevance in the city, the state and the region. It ought to be framed and sent to JK, President Leebron, and every member of the Board of Trustees.
I agree. The posts on this page and in this thread are the very reasons I get overly worked up on this board when it comes to football and the present head coach. I don't think he means to, I think he's doing the best he can--and his best is not nearly good enough for what this school needs--but right now, I feel this coach is hurting Rice in so many ways just by being who he is as a football coach.
If we were in a P5 today, it probably wouldn't matter if he was our coach since we'd be getting the big check and playing some of our peers in-conference. That's how it was in the SWC days, and we didn't step up when given chances back then to invest and improve, which is what got us to fall all the way down to the near-bottom where we are now. We are still doing the same things that got us to fall, and yes, it drives me crazy, as I feel it helps to devalue the University and in some measure deflates the value of our degrees in aggregate. We aren't Case Western--no one expects them to compete in Div I football (do they even have a team?) We hold ourselves up as a model of excellence and then we add a big qualifier for football and it looks like we are talking out of both sides of our mouth and comes across as insincere. If we admitted publicly we have no intention of competing against the best then at least the message would be consistent with what some perceive to be the results.
I don't want us to drop football but if this is how it's going to be then I agree with some posters who already have said it's just not worth it. To me, every activity or program on campus should either contribute to the overall excellence of the University or be scrapped if its not heading there. I realize others are happy with starting various programs and just having them be jobs programs in perpetuity. That doesn't work for me, but it works for lots of people around the country, it seems.
As far as being hungry, it's hard to be that when you appear to be overeating and hand-clapping all the time. I guess that's also why Rhoades appeals so much to me. Unlike what Owl69/70 has posted about having no idea what the current football coach's plan is, I have a clear idea of who our basketball coach is, what he expects, how he's going to do things, what his plan is and how his players will over-perform and steal wins they aren't supposed to from better programs every year even if his current players aren't as highly touted. It hasn't happened yet, but I have no doubt it will. It is hard to see that kind of hand-picked coach by our AD and try to accept that he doesn't want to get the same results from the same kind of coach he picks for our football team.
For whatever reason, JK has not felt it necessary to change yet in football. If he's watching these games, I wonder how much his stomach is turning if at all. Then again, he has a Stanford degree, and so maybe can rationalize things here and comfort himself with the fact that this is just a short phase of his life before he moves on to greener pastures, like CDC did. (He can point to the EZF as his big accomplishment at Rice, and probably to Rhoades as well. The rest he can just tell his future employers 'Well, it's Rice, you know, there's just no way to help them overcome themselves. The Rice Way is stronger than anyone can imagine.' We can't, or at least it seems that way, and that's how I read some of ya'll's posts above in these threads.
There's just not enough lipstick for this pig. We need a bull. Yesterday.
Wow... Goodowl instead of blowing hot air all the time how about you tell us how we will find said "bull" and what your estimated salary for him will be. Also tell me where we will find the money to fire Bailiff a AND increase the salaries of all the future assistants.
I can also sit here on the message board and complain that Bailiff needs to be gone and we need to hire Urban Meyer immediately but I'd rather present feasible ideas instead of being like an Aggie message board.
I have said how I would do it it many times: Football and Men's Basketball are Marketing Expenses for the University. To me, it is merely an accounting issue--re-categorizing the expenses into their proper categories as University Marketing and Investments (kind of like R&D would be).
It's "impossible" to go to the moon, too. Glad you and your ilk weren't around to "advise" JFK and NASA back then. Frankly, I'm tired of your constant trolling and your blowing hot air that it's impossible. Your attitude appears to be a loser mentality, and to me at least, a loser mentality has no place at Rice, but maybe it does for you. Fix the accounting and there's the money. It's marketing--end of story.
Whether it's the current head football coach, or another who performs the same as he has for about a decade, the performance is not consistent with what the University requires for excellence in the given circumstances we find ourselves in--unless we have no real intention of changing those circumstances, which is how it's finally starting to appear to me. What we are doing in football is not good enough for what we need to be doing in football. We are no longer in the position to just graduate players and care-take our way to a football program. We haven't been since 1994 9and perhaps a little longer). We have still apparently not come out of our collective slumber as to that reality.
We do not need someone to maintain the status quo. We need someone to move the chains quickly and decisively with a clear plan of action that several posters have repeated they do not think this coach has or ever will have. The task is similar to what a guy like Theo Epstein had to accomplish in Boston (which he did, several times) and now in Chicago (which I am pretty confident he will also do there.) You don't get it done by trading lightly and changing the window curtains. You clean house, set a completely different tone, and don't accept excuses for ten years. That appears to be what Rhoades is doing. Even when his teams lose, they are highly watchable, likable, and most importantly for the University, entertaining to all fans, whether Rice grads or not.
Unless the University thinks marketing expenses are wasteful and unnecessary (and to me that is a foolish attitude for something so important in today's competitive college marketplace) there's your money for your laundry list. I trust JK to pick a different head football coach of his own who can get more done than we have seen for the past decade. It's his job (and he would hopefully have the knowledge) to say what the name would be. But I'd have bet RUOwls and a staff of his choosing could have gotten better results over the last decade in this conference with these schedules than what we have seen, for starters. At the very least, I think we'd all have a clear idea of what his plan was and how he was going about accomplishing it.
As somebody who was around then, I can tell you there was nobody who thought it was impossible to go to the moon. There were some who felt the timetable was too ambitious, but it was a race, and somebody would win, and it had better be us. There were those who thought the benefits did not outweigh the costs, and what I heard for two decades or more was that we could feed XXXXX people for the money we were spending on sending a couple of guys to the moon. Eventually that view prevailed.
I would bet on RUowls, too. I'm not so crazy for whoever is behind door #3. You get RU's name on the dotted line and I will be happy.
I like Rhoades, and think this hire has a lot of potential to turn around our MBB program. But as some wise guy said, potential means you ain't done it yet. It might be better to wait a few years before installing him in the Rice HOF. I think we liked Braun in his first year, too, and Willis in his.
Not sure what Bailiff's weight has to do with it, unless we are just looking for things to criticize. If it is important, I am sure JK will eliminate the heavies from consideration, like that guy at WashSt.
Hand clapping is just a way of encouraging the troops. It could mean "C'mon now, get your head in the game" or "shake it off, do better next time"or it could mean "job well done". It doesn't always have to mean the latter. Don't mistake it for a standing O at the opera.
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