New day dawns at Rice
for second straight year

Rice fans are hoping for a few more scenes like this one, as yet another new coaching era commences (Photo by Ed Cuccia)

All aspects of physical acuity get tested by Rice strength coaches (Mark Anderson photo)

HOUSTON (July 22) -- Another year, another era.

After residing firmly within the realm of mediocre stability -- or is it stable mediocrity -- for well over a decade, the Rice football program has been the subject of more turmoil in the past 18 months than the Croatian Parliament.

After sweating through two coaching changes in a year's time -- both with more than their share of histrionics -- Rice football die-hards look forward, with 2007 fall drills just around the corner, to a time when improvement, spelled in terms of wins and bowl games, doesn't have to come at the price of stomach-turning twists and treachery.

New head football coach David Bailiff has done his share of moving around over the past few years -- his tenure at Texas State lasted for three seasons -- but he gives all the signals of a guy who can become as firm a fixture on the Rice campus as Willie's statue, or to put it in terms of an even greater icon, legendary Owl baseball coach Wayne Graham.

Rice trustee and former football letterman Bucky Allshouse said the choice was obvious back in January when university fathers were faced with another hasty coaching search.

"When David came in the second day, he just blew us away," Bucky said shortly after the hire. "Everything we found out about him was just superb and there was no doubt him from the very beginning. This guy's going to build upon our success and make it even better."

In the six-odd months since Coach Bailiff has arrived, he's continued to impress observers by saying the right things and doing the right things, albeit within a much less flashy style than that of his predecessor.

"I think we're on track," Coach Bailiff told us recent, just for instance. "And I just like the enthusiasm and the personality that these guys show up with every day."

Coach sends Rice players pounding the pavement

David Bailiff was known for his community involvement as the head man in San Marcos, and if any of you West U., Southampton or Braeswood residents were home for dinner on the right day last week, you probably found yourself the subject of a surprise visit from some very big young men wearing blue and grey t-shirts and handing out game-day coupons.

Sure enough, the new Rice head man had his entire team, for the second time since his arrival on South Main, combing the local neighborhoods on foot.

"It's critical that we reach out," Coach explained. "We want to be the local team. People, adults, are already Longhorns, they're already Aggies; there's nothing you can do about that."

"I don't like eating at McDonalds but I eat there all the time because I have twin boys and they demand it. So the greater relationships we can develop in the local neighborhoods and in the elementary schools -- if we can the kids waking up in West U Saturday morning demanding of their Aggie or U of H parents that they take them out to the Rice Owls football game, we can make this a neighborhood program for all the right reasons."

Having three well-scrubbed, well-spoke and polite young men standing on one's front porch asking you to come out and support them as they play is a rare sight in today's world of Division 1A football, where in places like, oh, say like Austin, neighborhood residents are much more likely seeing their local pampered gridiron prima donas running through their back yards with a television set under each arm.

But that's just part of a Rice football player's basic education under the Bailiff program.

"Orandum est, ut sit mens sana in corpore sano," is more than a quote from a dead language around the Flock dressing rooms and study halls. Rice's team leaders on the field also tend to be among its best students in the classroom as well.

The Institute recently earned the Conference USA Institutional Excellence Award for the second straight year -- it's given to the C-USA institution with the highest grade point average during the current academic year for all student-athletes in conference- sponsored sports.

The Owl football team had the highest average GPA of any gridiron squad in the league -- and that's with a roster laden with engineering majors and no jelly-roll, just-for-jocks program.

That academic bent helped Owl players to pick up yet another offensive and defensive system with relative ease during spring drills.

"It's language; the guys have to learn our language," Coach Bailiff said, speaking of the basic elements of any offensive and defensive scheme. "Once they get the nomenclature, they're OK. What we've done is blended some of their language last year with our own language, especially offensively."

Offensively, it's same plays but with different names

Speaking after April's spring game, Rice quarterback and linch-pin Chase Clement said the transition in the spring went relatively smoothly, and added that he was expecting more progress to be made come two-a-days in August.

"It's been, really, a fairly easy transition," he said, speaking of the move from from OC Major Applewhite's spread offense to a substantially identical, but differently-drawn-up passing attack headed by this year's Rice offensive coordinator, Tom Herman.

"We're doing a lot of the same things we were doing last year, only with a different terminology," he added.

The defensive changes added by Coach Bailiff and his well-traveled DC Chuck Driesbach were more substantial, however. But the implementation of a 4-2 front in place of a 3-3 alignment was one that was eagerly welcomed by Owl defenders.

"Everything's new; we're running a different name, a different technique," Rice senior DL George Chukwu told us, "but everybody's more comfortable with the 4-2-5. With four defensive linemen instead of three, those big gaps between the ends and the nose guard aren't there. There's only a gap-and-a-half."

"We're learning it, and we're happy about the changes."

A lot of Rice's success this coming season will stand upon the health status of those two players. As goes Chase Clement, so also will go the Rice offense. Clhase played in only eight games as a sophomore in 2006 because of a jammed thumb he suffered in the season opener against Houston and a cracked collarbone he picked up in the East Carolina game.

The Owls went 7-1 in those games, and that's a statistic that speaks for itself.

And it's pretty much the same thing on the other side of the ball with George Chukwu.

In fact, the slogans "Keep Chase Healthy" and "Let George Do It" probably ought to be posted on the tunnel walkway into Rice Stadium this fall.

Coaching staff making early inroads on recruiting trail

The Owls are thinner than they'd like to be at several positions, not the least of which are indeed the quarterback spot and the defensive line. But the Rice coaching staff has been out combing the bushes furiously, this time around, employing the early-commitment method much moreso than any prior Rice coaching staff.

Recruiting to a school like Rice demands such an approach, Coach Bailiff told us.

"All of our coaches are great recruiters," he said. They have all recruited Texas at some point. In addition, Chuck Driesbach has worked at Wake Forest; he's coached at Cornell."

"Darrell Patterson came from Stanford. Immediately those guys brought some ideas on how some of the recruiting needs to be done at places like Stanford and Rice."

"And that's really accelerated our efforts. And you don't bring in these great coaches and throttle them back. You turn them loose. You want them coming up with ideas."

In consequence, Rice already has garnered six verbal commitments among schoolboys who'll tee it up for their high school senior year this fall, with a couple more potential Owls said to be on the verge of committing.

All in all, that's encouraging news to the Rice faithful as they watch the clock tick down what's stacking up to be perhaps the most eagerly anticipated football seaosn in many a year.

--P.T.H.

All American? No problem....

Rice DB Chris Douglass (L) appears to have the angle on Owl pre-season All-American Jarrett
Dillard during the April 14 Blue-Grey Game, in which the defense out-pointed the offense, 26-18.
(Mark Anderson photo)