Hire of new football coach another step in Karlgaard’s vision
Lessons from previous stop influence AD’s plan to rejuvenate Owls’ moribund program
In 2006, Stanford finished 1-11 under football coach Walt Harris, who was in his second season.
At a school tied with UCLA for the most collegiate national championships (113), sports were an important part of the culture at Stanford, though football hadn’t consistently carried its weight.
The school was prepared for a change. It would commit to success on the gridiron and get to work providing the resources to ensure the program’s stability.
Big 12 commissioner Bob Bowlsby was Stanford’s athletic director at the time. He led the effort with a team of administrators, including his senior associate athletics director for development, Joe Karlgaard, now the athletic director at Rice.
Together they raised the funds to improve the infrastructure around football.
“Turning around a football program is a 100 decisions,” Bowlsby said. “Some of them are football related with personnel; some of them are facility related; some of them are transportation or better housing or lodging; you have to have the right strength and conditioning staff and all of those kinds of things.”
In the same way Karlgaard’s Stanford experience has helped shape his approach at Rice, Bowlsby’s past experience at Iowa led to the changes that they implemented on “the Farm.”
“The last few years I was at Iowa, we went to five New Year’s bowls in a row so I had an idea what a program at that level looked like, and there were a number of things at Stanford that weren’t in place,” Bowlsby said. “We worked together — Joe contributed to that — to raise money and to increase salaries and bring in a staff that was competitive and that we were able to keep.”
By 2012, Karlgaard had established himself, leading a staff that delivered the greatest year in the school’s fundraising history ($52 million) and overseeing the completion of a $22 million campaign for a new football operations building.
Karlgaard’s approach is depicted as creative and comprehensive.
“He understands elite programs and elite universities,” Bowlsby said. “Joe’s got a tremendous work ethic, but also he’s not threatened by hiring people who will challenge him and who are also bright. It’s the old adage that ‘A’ players hire ‘A’ players and ‘B’ players hire ‘C’ players.” Most important decision yet
In four years at Rice, Karlgaard has been responsible for three hires. Replacing football coach David Bailiff is his fourth, and arguably, the most important to his early legacy.
“We want somebody who’s a great fit for the institution, who embraces the values of Rice, who in many ways conducts himself exactly like coach Bailiff did, with campus engagement and understanding of our alumni base,” Karlgaard said of the next coach.
“I want someone who can really look at the way things have been done here and question all of it,” Karlgaard said, adding buzzwords like creativity, curiosity and innovation.
There has been speculation Karlgaard will opt for a coach with Stanford connections, although he has downplayed those assumptions.
“We have people with Stanford experience in the athletic department but I don’t see myself — and I don’t think other people see me — as a one-trick pony when it comes to hiring coaches,” he said.
Karlgaard’s first hire at Rice was men’s basketball coach Mike Rhoades in 2014. Rhoades previously had coached Division III Randolph-Macon College before spending five years as an assistant at Virginia Commonwealth. After winning just 12 games in the previous two years, Rice won 12 games in each of his first two seasons. Last year the team won 23 games, the most since 2003.
When Rhoades left to return to VCU, Karlgaard promoted Rhoades’ assistant, Scott Pera, much to the players’ delight.
“With the basketball search, we wanted continuity,” Karlgaard said. “I don’t think that’s the case in this instance, but they’re two programs in very different places in the coaching transition.”
In 2015, Karlgaard hired women’s basketball coach Tina Langley, who had been an associate head coach with Maryland when the Terps reached consecutive Final Fours. Last year, her Owls won 22 games (the second most in a season at Rice) and won the Women’s Basketball Invitational Tournament. Not afraid to think big
Karlgaard’s vision for the program and the athletic department are lofty. He emphasizes how important it is for a candidate to fit his profile of a successful coach at Rice. Like his days at Stanford, he uses his knowledge of the space to inform his ideas.
“I think I understand this institution fairly well, and I’m also a really competitive person,” he said. “We’ve had some success finding people who embrace Rice but also want to win. I’ll be looking for the same thing in football that I look for in our basketball coaches.
“My vision is that we’re in bowl games every year and we’re consistently competing for a conference championship. I think that we have the capabilities of doing that; with this facility (the Patterson Sports Performance Center) we’re in today, we’re by no means done. Eventually, we want to be in the conversation for one of those New Year’s bowls.”