THESE ARE TRYING TIMES
It’s not for a lack of effort or poor coaching that Mike Bloomgren sees Rice’s losses mount
Mike Bloomgren left his team in thte locker room and stepped behind a podium for a postgame media session that was not going to be fun.
His team had just lost a home game to a team that hadn’t won in two years. A game between teams that matter to so few, one that to many was the least interesting contest in college football.
After Saturday’s 34-26 loss to Texas-El Paso at Rice Stadium, it is unofficially official: The 2018 Rice Owls are the country’s worst football team. The absolute worst.
As you might imagine, Bloomgren wasn’t in a chipper mood when charged with discussing what went wrong on a day his squad trailed a winless team 34-3 en route to a ninth straight defeat.
No bluster. No anger. No defensiveness.
Just brutal honesty from a first-year head coach who is going through a difficult time.
“We got a locker room full of guys that are hurt, and to be quite honest with you, it’s no fun right now to do this,” Bloomgren said. “And that’s a shame. Because this is supposed to be a kid’s game that we all love.”
I later asked Bloomgren for clarification on whether he meant it was no fun to take questions about such a depressing day or if coaching and not winning was the “no fun” part.
“I mean everything to do with it,” he said. “The fun is in the winning. I mean going and talking to your team in the locker room (after a loss), I mean coming up here on Monday in front of the team and trying to act like a ray of sunshine to get them to practice the way they need to. It’s not what I’m used to.
“It’s not fun. Life is not fun for me right now, because this is such a big part of my life. It’s not fun for our coaches. It’s not fun for our players. It’s just not fun. The fun is in the winning. I wish I had a magic pill. I don’t. We’re going to keep working.”
Don’t let the dire tone of Bloomgren’s reply lead you to believe he is defeated. The nerves were raw, the pain fresh.
The Owls, who had not won since a come-from-behind victory in the season opener against Prairie View A&M, had one of their best practices of the season this week. They were facing a team that they knew they could beat, perhaps should beat.
But on the game’s first snap, UTEP quarterback Kai Locksley connected with Warren Redix on a 42-yard pass play that stunned the Owls.
Locksley, whose father is the offensive coordinator at Alabama, which played in a Saturday night game a few hours away in Baton Rouge, La., but a college football galaxy away from Rice-UTEP, had not completed even a 20-yard pass to Redix this season. The Owls were dazed. “We were emotionally hijacked for about two quarters,” Bloomgren said. “From that point on, all the wind came out of our sails.”
When Rice’s Haden Tobola booted a 43-yard field goal as time expired on the first half, the Owls’ chances of winning the game, per the ESPN.com’s win probability calculator, improved from 1 to 2.4 percent.
That was generous, considering the tidbit that the Miners scored four touchdowns in the first half, the Owls scored four touchdowns in October.
But the Owls rallied in the fourth quarter to make a game of it, and they had two late possessions after they pulled within eight points.
This 1-9 mark is a culture shock for Bloomgren.
Bloomgren started his coaching career as a graduate assistant at Alabama when Mike Dubose’s team won a measly three games. He was with the Jets when Eric Mangini’s squad went 4-12. But it has never been this bad.
Recently, his coaching life has been very good.
For the previous seven seasons, Bloomgren was at Stanford, which has figured out how to run a successful, bigtime athletic department in a strenuous academic environment. The Cardinal won 10 or more games five times and were at some point ranked in the top 15 in all seven of his years there.
I submit Bloomgren is a better head coach than his record, and not just because the record says that this year he is the worst.
Though the numbers factor into a percentage that is the measuring stick, there is so much more to good coaching than wins and losses.
“Nobody handles it better than Coach Bloom,” Rice freshman quarterback Wiley Green said. “He puts this team on his back.”
Hard when called for, nurturing when necessary, Green said.
Bloomgren’s postgame honesty beats the bluster and blame we so often see from coaches whose teams underperform because the coach undercoached.
The Owls, while certainly capable of playing better, haven’t underperformed due to a lack of effort or palpably poor coaching. They are starting at the bottom and have a long way to go.
As disheartening as Saturday’s loss was for Bloomgren, his belief that his process will work hasn’t changed.
He isn’t having fun right now, but he still sounds like a winner.