Rice Coach David Bailiff: Optimism On South Main

It’s hard to know what to expect from the Rice Owls football team. In days gone by, it would have been pretty simple. Just expect them to lose.

But things have slowly started to change over at Rice Stadium. The Owls have actually been to two bowl games in the past four years, under two different coaches, and they actually won the Texas Bowl two years ago.

Think about that, the Rice Owls winning a bowl game. Back in the `70s and `80s, the Owls might have gone through two coaches in four seasons, but there would have been no bowl games, and the thought of just finishing with a .500 record would have been cause for celebration. But no more.

“We have the chance to be a much improved football team,” Owls coach
David Bailiff says. “We have matured over the last season. We’re bigger,
faster, stronger. It’s one of those where we expect to win. We expect
to go to a bowl game. We expect these young men to come out and compete
every snap, and play a great brand of football. We’re going to keep our
expectations always high. And this season, I think we’re going to be a
real good football team, and we’re going to surprise some people.”

Talk
of improvement is nothing that the Owls haven’t heard, or said, before.
But the expectation of a bowl game is something that the coaches are
trying to drill into the players, and into the fan base. It’s something
the coaches want the players aiming for every year. Being competitive is
just no longer good enough.

“We have great competition all
over the field, on the offensive side of the football, on the defensive
side, and special teams,” Bailiff says. “The competition just makes you
improve, and it makes you improve fast. We created a culture. We keep
working on the culture here, where we expect to win, and play with great
passion for four quarters, and I think these young men are ready to do
that.”

And those young men are buying into that expectation.

“I
believe that we have something special here,” running back Sam McGuffie
says.”[T]hat not everyone knows about, but the people in this building
do. I just think with a little a bit more practice, a little bit more
coaching, and just a couple of more opportunities I think we’re going to
be something special here in the near future.”

Defensive back
Chris Jones says it all ties into the Owls playing as a team, and not
playing as separate units, i.e., defense and offense and special teams.
And he sees the team getting better, getting stronger. The defense will
be better, and he sees the offense being able to return to what it was
two seasons ago, when Chase Clement and James Casey were leading the
Owls to a victory in the Texas Bowl.

“For us on defense, the key
for us is to get better, get everybody on the same page, and make sure
we’re working as a unit. Make sure that we gang tackle, make sure that
we all run to the ball, make sure that we all know exactly what the call
is and what our job is on the defensive side. As a team, in the weight
room, we’re getting stronger, we’re getting bigger, we’re getting
faster. We’re trying to get to it where it — our offense is back to the
way it was when we were a run-and-gun offense and get everything set.”

The
key is the attitude. If the players buy into the plan, if the players
buy into that expectation of the bowl, then it will happen.

“These young men have absolutely committed not to be good, but to be great,” Bailiff says.

A
commitment to being great was something the Rice Owl football team
wouldn’t have been able to pull off in decades past. But things are
changing. And they appear to be changing for the better.