(01-17-2018 05:24 AM)BruceMcF Wrote:  

(01-16-2018 07:50 PM)johnintx Wrote:  The reputation of the other large private schools in Texas is "rich". Rice's reputation is "smart". (But, there are plenty of smart people at the other TX private schools, and Rice isn't cheap at all) With its small size, small alumni base, and exclusivity, there's not as much of a connection with the general population.

However, if Rice invested HUGE money into athletics, they could, in a best-case scenario, be a Northwestern. Northwestern markets itself as "Chicago's Big Ten Team". Rice could market itself as "Houston's (insert P5 conference) Team". That is, if they could get a P5 conference to look at them. At this point, after the most recent B12 dog and pony show, P5 conferences are as likely to contract than to expand outside the P5.

But there is still the size ... Rice may have the academic standing of larger private schools, but it's still a school with under 4,000 undergrads ... among P5 privates that come immediately to mind, Duke is closest in terms of undergrads, with about 1.6 times as many undergrads and over twice the total enrollment, Vanderbilt in terms of total enrollment, with over 1.7 times as many undergrads and over 1.8 times as much total enrollment. Northwestern has over twice Rice's undergrad and total enrollment, Stanford has over twice their enrollment and over 1.8 times their s undergrad enrollment.

Vandy, Northwestern, Stanford and Duke all fall in a fairly tight cluster as far as institution size goes, and Rice is in tier a step down from that.

USC is in a different tier from the others with total enrollment above 40,000 ... in the same scale as UH, though for UH it is heavily tilted to undergrads while for USC it is tilted to graduate students.

Rice's size, and thus fan base, is a problem. Rice draws about 20,000 to football games and that's in a good year, some years it's at 15,000, FCS level.

They'd have to get fan support up in to the 30,000 + range to be more ready for P5.