Given situation, Rice’s Bailiff deserves another year
An oversized banner gives the whole 1-8 thing away.
Somehow missed the fact the 2016 Rice Owls are one of the worst college football teams in the country? Then just glance up at the decaying exterior of a once-proud 66-year-old stadium. “RICE BUSINESS,” reads an outstretched flag, which matches a huge “RICE OWLS” tarp that covers multiple sections of end zone-area seats and doesn’t exactly promote a squad that’s been outscored 362-220 this season and has won only once since Sept. 1.
There’s a sparkling new $33 million sports performance center on one side of the stadium, which once housed the 35th president and hosted Super Bowl VIII.
There’s a lost-in-time football facility on the other, needing
a wrecking ball and not far removed from trying to lure potential Owls recruits with spotty electricity, cramped hallways and iffy water temperature — and that’s leaving out all the really bad stuff.
Then there’s David Bailiff stuck in the middle, 10 years into an unpredictable coaching cycle that never seems to end and enduring one of Rice’s worst seasons in the new millennium.
“Nobody comes here to lose. I didn’t get into coaching to lose,” Bailiff said this week in his office. “These kids work their tails off; the coaches do. It’s not fun for the university. But it’s certainly not fun for these kids.”
We know what’s coming in this what-have-youdone-for-me-lately world, right?
A new young voice. A true outsider to wake up Rice football and bring the Owls’ version of Tom Herman to the Village. Maybe. Athletic director Joe Karlgaard answered everything I asked him in full detail. Except one thing.
“That’s not a question I’m going to answer for you,” he said after being asked how confident he was that Bailiff will return as Rice’s coach in 2017.
No midseason moves
Karlgaard doesn’t believe in the theory of midseason firings. To prove it, the AD called out the contemporary era of college football warfare.
“You have to have the complete picture,” he said.
So does Bailiff think he’ll be back?
“Sure,” he said, sounding surprisingly confident.
Then he quickly added: “The AD said we’ll get together at the end of the season.” Well, then. Unless an athletics program that takes pride in its business banners can absolutely
guarantee a new face will make Houston care about Rice football again, this shouldn’t be the end for Bailiff, 58. And until the Owls figure out how to better blend their strict academic standards and $43,220 annual tuition with the realities of fielding a legit Football Bowl Subdivision team, there’s no reason to expect anything more from Rice.
“We can’t forget the type of success and the longevity of success that Bailiff had not too long ago,” said N.D. Kalu, who spent 11 seasons in the NFL and was drafted in the fifth round in 1997 out of Rice. “I just feel like this is a down time. But I do believe David Bailiff is the guy for the job to get them back on track.”
UH’s Herman: “Rice is in very good hands. It stinks for him to be down right now. But there’s no doubt in my mind that you’re not going to find a better man for that job.”
Bailiff won 10 games and the Conference USA title in 2013. The Owls appeared in three consecutive bowls prior to last season. And while Bailiff holds a 54-68 career mark at Rice, 11 Owls have reached the NFL under his watch — including Texans defensive end Christian Covington — and an underclassman-heavy 2016 team has been decimated by injuries.
“I get out of bed every morning, and I say, ‘You know, I’m no different than I was 10 years ago,’ ” Bailiff said. “I know what it takes to win. … The greatest thing about football is that it truly does mimic life. Life’s hard.”
Consistently winning at Rice can be harder. The Owls are different — and I don’t mean the awesome MOB.
“Rice is a developmental school,” Bailiff said. “And I just think we always will be with the academics — that I love. It is what it is.”
Like Bailiff, Karlgaard mentioned youth and injuries when describing what’s gone wrong with the Owls. The Stanford grad was also adamant that the thought of Rice’s dropping down a level in NCAA football is a “nonstarter.”
But the AD acknowledged the Owls have a thin “margin for error.”
Negatives pile up
Then he listed everything that must come together, from the resolution of ongoing stadium issues to increased fan support, for Rice to have a shot at becoming the next Stanford or Northwestern.
Also holding back Bailiff ’s Owls: Conference USA doesn’t ring the bell like the Pac-12 or Big Ten.
“We have to evaluate every single aspect of the program to try and figure out how we can avoid this in the future,” Karlgaard said.
Bailiff is betting on next year’s cycle. The class he recruited after the Owls’ 2014 Hawaii Bowl victory will be juniors in 2017. The 31 freshmen Rice played last season will have lived through the pain of 2016 and have two years left to reclaim their football names.
Almost anywhere else, Bailiff would be gone after 1-8. At Rice, he deserves one more chance. If he can’t turn around the Owls next year, then it’ll be time to move on.
“Have you ever heard anybody say, in the history of the world, that we won a championship because we played a bunch of freshmen and sophomores?” Bailiff said. “No. It’s not going to happen in this game.”
Especially not at Rice.