Rice/C-USA

[50's PONY]

Joining C-USA may help Rice

Saturday, June 11, 2005
By Ted Lewis
Staff writer

There are plenty of good reasons why Rice shouldn't even been trying to compete in Division I-A anymore.

The self-dubbed "Harvard of the South," ranked No. 17 among all colleges by U.S. News & World Report, has some of the most exacting academic standards in the country.

The Houston school is so small (undergraduate enrollment, 2,850) that all of its alumni -- living and dead -- wouldn't fill its 70,000-seat football stadium.

Football attendance bottomed out at an average of 15,785 last year. A six-game losing streak at season's end isn't producing much excitement for this season.

When the Southwest Conference broke up in 1996, Rice didn't make the cut to get into the Big 12, thus missing out on any subsequent BCS windfall. After nine years in the Western Athletic Conference, the school joins Conference USA on July 1, but how much of a benefit that brings remains to be seen.

The basketball arena, Autry Court, is far past being overdue for a renovation. The 55-year-old football stadium is far too large for current needs and also needs modernization.

Neither will be getting a facelift anytime soon.

And last year, the athletic department had to survive a Tulane-like review that had football on the chopping block.

One result of the review was a mandate to reduce a $10 million overall budget deficit, something that might never be done to the trustees' satisfaction. Only a $28 million athletic endowment keeps things fiscally viable.

However, the Owls aren't ready to give it up just yet. To the contrary, they're doing pretty good.

This weekend's baseball super regional against Tulane caps off a year in which Rice won its second consecutive WAC all-sports championship.

And despite continued faculty carping about athletes being admitted who fall far short of the school's normal standards and the "sheltering" of many of them in majors such as managerial studies and kinesiology, Rice annually ranks in the top 10 for graduation rates among football players and athletes overall.

"It's a tough challenge," said Bobby May, Rice's athletic director since 1989. "But we don't use excuses, and we don't just go through the motions. We are very interested in winning. We feel like we offer the best of both worlds -- the opportunity to compete at the highest level and have a great college experience at the same time."

That's certainly so in baseball. The Owls won the 2003 College World Series and have had three other CWS appearances since 1997.

Basketball isn't hurting either. Despite the arena problems, the men's team has had back-to-back 20-win seasons. The women's team exited the WAC by ending Louisiana Tech's streak of conference championships.

But football remains a major issue. The Owls haven't been to a bowl game since 1961.

May has basically put longtime coach Ken Hatfield on notice that improvement must be shown this season.

"What we're trying to do financially all turns on football attendance," May said. "If you have a successful football program, that's going to drive attendance and that's going to drive your income through contributions. Football has got to be a major focus for us. We've really got to make it happen."

A bowl berth, May said, would work wonders for the perception of the program. But he admits that it will take more than one good season to attract more fans.

The style of play matters, too.

Hatfield employs the triple option and his team was last in Division I-A in passing last season. Running the ball 70 times a game doesn't rate high on the entertainment scale.

Perhaps getting the message, Hatfield has said he will diversify his offense this season.

The move to C-USA could help, too. The league has five bowl berths to the WAC's two, and of the six schools in the newly formed C-USA's West Division, only UTEP had a winning season in 2004.

"Conference USA is giving us a shot in the arm," May said. "We love the division setup. There's no reason to believe we can't be as competitive in Conference USA as we were in the WAC, if not more so."

Rice does come to C-USA with a unique status -- athletic and academic success without the cachet of a BCS conference like Stanford, Vanderbilt, Duke and Northwestern enjoy. Among the other "Big Brain" schools, Tulane might come closest to paralleling Rice's positives -- and its problems.