After reading alot of the chatter surrounding the drama of Coach Graham's departure, I thought it time to give a brief overview of the job JK's done -- and where things might've been done better:
1. Rhoades hire --- Homerun (the AD can't control the slimy state of D1 MBB, nor the fact that the VCU job happened to come open when it did)
2. Pera hire --- as yet undetermined (ditto first part of above)
3. Langley hire --- Homerun
4. Bloomgren hire --- Homerun (likely) - (JK was apparently constrained from releasing DB sooner, but then ultimately followed through just as he'd indicated he would)
5. Fundraising (etc) --- increased/improved
6. Graham decision --- Options: (a) extend contract (IMO no, not with the program in steady decline)
(b) long-term succession plan (IMO this is nonsense, especially with no willing partner. The OG had made it abundantly clear that he intended to coach forever if allowed, and that he was as capable as ever)
© fire him last season (of course not, especially with a conference championship streak intact)
(d) give Coach Graham earlier notice / let him help select successor / victory lap celebrations, etc (this all hinges on speculation and hearsay, because none of us knows what exactly has been discussed between WG and JK these past few months; AND, until mid-season or so, it was NOT clear that we might not have another late season surge and conference tourney title again -- I would assume that JK even at that time was prepared to offer an extension if that happened)
(e) I have yet to see anyone offer a realistic alternative to how this came down

My Conclusion: a grade of A, if not A+

Well, this thread's likely to be... lively... unless people just avoid it.

I'll say one thing and leave it at that: if he would communicate better with the boosters, he wouldn't leave everyone to assume the worst.

(05-02-2018 01:10 PM)Barney Wrote:  My Conclusion: a grade of A, if not A+

And this is why Rice Athletics remains in the steady downward spiral. If this performance gets an A+, we are truly ******.

Sure, relative to Greenspan, I give JK an A+.. but he waited too long on Bailiff, utterly botched the Graham scenario and hasn't inspired confidence in MBB with Pera. Far from an A overall.

(05-02-2018 01:41 PM)Frizzy Owl Wrote:  I'll say one thing and leave it at that: if he would communicate better with the boosters, he wouldn't leave everyone to assume the worst.

This isn't necessarily a bad thing (since I'm sure a big school's AD job is often miserable), but JK's aloof nature / lack of communication may preclude him from ever becoming the AD at a big time sports powerhouse, where there are many, many more boosters and they all expect to be constantly kept in the loop. I'm sure every school's AD has their own threshold for what donor $-level gets what information, but those donor numbers at Powerhouse U are a double-digit multiple of what they are at Rice.

Chris Del Conte at Texas, he is not (at least in terms of fanbase and booster engagement)

(05-02-2018 01:57 PM)Antarius Wrote:  

(05-02-2018 01:10 PM)Barney Wrote:  My Conclusion: a grade of A, if not A+

And this is why Rice Athletics remains in the steady downward spiral. If this performance gets an A+, we are truly ******.

Sure, relative to Greenspan, I give JK an A+.. but he waited too long on Bailiff, utterly botched the Graham scenario and hasn't inspired confidence in MBB with Pera. Far from an A overall.

Haven’t we been told he couldn’t fire Bailiff? He made it clear he had 1 year to get better results then fired him when he didn’t. I think your complaint is the extension but JK had just arrived at Rice and Bailiff was winning.

How has he botched the Wayne situation? Maybe he should’ve fired him last year but we made the NCAA tournament in miracle fashion. Wayne doesn’t want to leave. Wayne needs to leave (clearly to anyone objective). Not sure what JK can do other than let him go....

What were you expecting out of basketball year 1? If it doesn’t look better this year then you might have a point.

JK could communicate better but I’m not sure he’s that different from ADs at bigger schools. The biggest problem is our conference, and I blame the BOT and president for that.

It's hard to say that JK has "utterly botched" the Graham scenario since we do not know what constraints were put upon him by the administration. I mean it's worth considering the possibility that JK was told he can replace Graham, but is not allowed to fire him. In which case the painful scenario of letting OG complete the current contract is the only logical result.

We will likely never know JK's version of how the Graham scenario unfolded. All we know is what OG has said to Mark Berman and Glynn Hill, which is probably only 10% of his side of the story.

A few thoughts:
-He's made some good hires, but other than Langley they come with rather large asterisks.
-Pera hire is recent, but the (apparent) reasoning behind it and early returns have been bad.
-Marketing/fundraising: I don't know enough to comment. We finally got an EZF, so that's positive.
-Graham situation: don't really care, as it's been time to move on.

JK does seem kind of anti-social/anxious around people. Granted, I'm a nobody (normal alum, minimal disposable income), but I recall the Austin Coaches Caravan in 2015(?) when dude literally ran away with his head down immediately after his talk and jumped into a waiting vehicle, which sped away. Kinda hilarious, but still...

I was a big fan when he was hired (had the pedigree, said all the right things), and he's far from a Greenspan-level atrocity, but as time moves on I've come to terms with the fact that he's not the "savior" I'd hoped for.

Kind of an easy grading scale for homeruns, if you ask me. Mercy.

The only homerun JK has hit is Langley, but what his grade will depend on is Bloomgren, Pera, and the next baseball coach. He gets an I from me. He gets some partial credit for the facilities and the fundraising and getting Rice apparel out there for us to buy, but that's like the 5% extra credit at the end of class. 80% of his grade will be based on how the 3 major sports do going forward.

(05-02-2018 02:27 PM)BSWBRice Wrote:  I was a big fan when he was hired (had the pedigree, said all the right things), and he's far from a Greenspan-level atrocity, but as time moves on I've come to terms with the fact that he's not the "savior" I'd hoped for.

I'm in a similar boat.

As for the comments about him not being able to do x,y,z --> he was hired to do exactly that. Which means he either has to bulldoze his way through those hurdles, schmooze his way through those hurdles or if all is lost, I'd expect him to leave, not sign a new contract/extension.

Any athletic director has three primary responsibilities, in no particular order:

1. Oversee fundraising;
2. Have the correct personnel in the correct positions;
3. Ensure that there are conference championships (and national rankings, if possible).

1. I don't have sufficient information.
2. Generally poor, as to hiring new coaches, at the present time. Men's basketball is a disaster, football has been awful, but women's basketball has been a bright light. The coaches that were in place before JK have done a credible job. I won't comment on baseball. The facts speak for themselves.
3. After his exhortation that Rice should strive for being top 25 in every sport, we arrive in the 2017-18 calendar year with 0 team championships in a third-rate, backwater conference.

Conclusion: if the bar is lowered so far as to give a grade of A (or, God forgive, an A+), that bar is 6 feet underground (reference intended).

(05-02-2018 03:18 PM)owl95 Wrote:  The only homerun JK has hit is Langley, but what his grade will depend on is Bloomgren, Pera, and the next baseball coach. He gets an I from me. He gets some partial credit for the facilities and the fundraising and getting Rice apparel out there for us to buy, but that's like the 5% extra credit at the end of class. 80% of his grade will be based on how the 3 major sports do going forward.

(05-02-2018 02:27 PM)BSWBRice Wrote:  A few thoughts:
-He's made some good hires, but other than Langley they come with rather large asterisks.
-Pera hire is recent, but the (apparent) reasoning behind it and early returns have been bad.
-Marketing/fundraising: I don't know enough to comment. We finally got an EZF, so that's positive.
-Graham situation: don't really care, as it's been time to move on.

The bold is what worries me. He has been here since Fall 2013, so 4.5 years. If we are still talking about asterisks and incompletes, I think that says something about his decisions that certainly doesn't merit an "A" grade. I think his pedigree was perfect when he was hired. But I think he waited too long on Bailiff. If he believed Bailiff wasn't the guy, he needs to cut the cord and move on. You know what will make the vocal boosters happy? Winning. Winning cures all ills. Same with baseball. Regardless of what the rest of us think about Coach Graham, he should have made the decisions that he thought were right, and lived with the consequences. Then we wouldn't be talking about asterisks and incompletes after 4.5 years.

And lets not forget, Baseball is at a 25 year low, and Football and Men's Basketball are equal to any low in the past 25 years. He can't possibly get an "A" with all 3 marquis sports currently at the bottom of a pit.

Don't get me wrong, I overall like his hires. From everything I have heard and read, it sounds like he has made internal improvements in how the athletic department operates. He undoubtedly has to deal with behind-the-scenes stuff that we don't all know about (budget, BOT, boosters, administration, etc.). But we don't know about those things and I don't really think we can give him an easier grade based on unknown assumptions.

I'd give him a B, with room for improvement because I like his hires. But his replacement for Graham better improve the program immediately and Pera's 2nd year better show some real improvement.

Look, no one has been more critical of the way he's handled The OG's contract situation (not that I disagree it's time for a transition), especially in contrast with his handling of the Bailiff situation the past 3 years, but I do think he's made excellent coaching hires (Rhoades, Langley, Bloomgren)....and, importantly, though often overlooked, he's added much-needed and long-overdue discipline, analytics and marketing to the athletic department. He's also staffed up the department with quality people. He's also increased the annual operating budgets for most of the sports.

Where he has fallen short, particularly the past few years, once he settled into the job, is in his (lack of) communication and interaction with anyone other than the student-athletes themselves and the mega-donors. Thank heaven for Rick Mello, Tanner, Brian Mann and Shu, but an effective AD cannot simply delegate this part of the job.

Sports that were measurably better in 2017-18 than they were five years ago:

-Women’s basketball
-Women’s Soccer

The big three were either the same (basketball) or worse (football and baseball).

That gets a big F from me.

JK seems like he has done an okay job thus far. I'm not sold on Pera since he was unable to keep guys from jumping ship, but time will tell. Bloomgren appears to be above our weight class and hopefully the results follow. The secondary sports all seem to be doing pretty well despite the lack of a conference title. Certainly he can't mess up the baseball hire up that much...lots of talented coaches out there and we should have the $$$ to lure them to South Main.

I am obviously not privy to what goes on, but my guess is that JK's inability to aggressively negotiate both the beginning and (possible premature) ending of coaching contracts is because he is not empowered by the university to do so. So I firmly place the Bailiff and Graham contract debacles at the feet of the university and not solely JK. Other than those two issues, I think he has done an okay job. If he was much better, he would have been hired away by now Del Conte style.

Just based on this board, I think people ride the AD too hard and do not place enough blame at the feet of Leebron and the BoT for not committing appropriate resources (ie money) to D1 sports. We are building a $100million opera house than only seats 1,000 people (just think of that in terms of what the $/sqft construction cost is and $/seat cost)...not like we can't launch gobs of money out the window for frivolous pursuits of notoriety because that is happening all over campus for the last 10 years. If they can't commit to an appropriate funding level for D1 athletics and participate in athletics at a level that our peers do (Stanford, Northwestern) we should shut the athletics down and spend the money and real estate on something else. This poor boy approach just looks bad.

(05-02-2018 04:00 PM)ExcitedOwl18 Wrote:  Sports that were measurably better in 2017-18 than they were five years ago:

-Women’s basketball
-Women’s Soccer

How about Men's Golf? 2014 CUSA team title and this year's individual winner (Meissner).

(05-02-2018 04:33 PM)flash3200 Wrote:  The secondary sports all seem to be doing pretty well despite the lack of a conference title.

I am not sure how this is possible in CUSA. Winning CUSA doesn't make you good and sometimes barely makes you decent, so not winning it definitely isn't pretty well, IMO.

(05-02-2018 04:48 PM)Almadenmike Wrote:  

(05-02-2018 04:00 PM)ExcitedOwl18 Wrote:  Sports that were measurably better in 2017-18 than they were five years ago:

-Women’s basketball
-Women’s Soccer

How about Men's Golf? 2014 CUSA team title and this year's individual winner (Meissner).

Yeah, I forgot about that. Men’s tennis has had its bright spots in between too.

I was simply comparing 2012-13 vs 2017-18.

Let’s be honest though, unless you’re winning the natty in golf, it doesn’t really move the needle. We didn’t even win C-USA this year.

(05-02-2018 04:53 PM)ExcitedOwl18 Wrote:  

(05-02-2018 04:48 PM)Almadenmike Wrote:  

(05-02-2018 04:00 PM)ExcitedOwl18 Wrote:  Sports that were measurably better in 2017-18 than they were five years ago:

-Women’s basketball
-Women’s Soccer

How about Men's Golf? 2014 CUSA team title and this year's individual winner (Meissner).

Yeah, I forgot about that. Men’s tennis has had its bright spots in between too.

I was simply comparing 2012-13 vs 2017-18.

Let’s be honest though, unless you’re winning the natty in golf, it doesn’t really move the needle. We didn’t even win C-USA this year.

I don't disagree with your final comment (which I put in bold, above). It just seemed to me that the golf team met your OP criteria: "measurably better".

BTW, the Owls finished 11th out of 12 in the 2013 C-USA Men's Golf Championship ... and 4th this year.

(05-02-2018 05:01 PM)Almadenmike Wrote:  

(05-02-2018 04:53 PM)ExcitedOwl18 Wrote:  

(05-02-2018 04:48 PM)Almadenmike Wrote:  

(05-02-2018 04:00 PM)ExcitedOwl18 Wrote:  Sports that were measurably better in 2017-18 than they were five years ago:

-Women’s basketball
-Women’s Soccer

How about Men's Golf? 2014 CUSA team title and this year's individual winner (Meissner).

Yeah, I forgot about that. Men’s tennis has had its bright spots in between too.

I was simply comparing 2012-13 vs 2017-18.

Let’s be honest though, unless you’re winning the natty in golf, it doesn’t really move the needle. We didn’t even win C-USA this year.

I don't disagree with your final comment (which I put in bold, above). It just seemed to me that the golf team met your OP criteria: "measurably better".

BTW, the Owls finished 11th out of 12 in the 2013 C-USA Men's Golf Championship ... and 4th this year.

Fair enough!