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Rice University Athletics
David Bailiff Press Conference Transcript
1/19/2007 12:00:00 AM | Football
Jan. 19, 2007
"I'll tell you what, I am excited. I know they set out to hire a big name coach, but I'll tell you this, they came back with a big one. I'm so excited to be part of this Rice Owls family. I want to introduce my wife, Angie, and my sons, Grayson and Gregory. Gregory is the shy one, he'll get to know you.
"This is a great day for me. I want to thank the search committee, the board of trustees, the ex-lettermen, the players that are on that committee. I just want to tell you, I think you all made a great decision. I really like your decision. And I want to thank the Texas High School Coaches Association because those are the guys that give us the type of recruit we need at Rice to continue the momentum that was started here. And that's going to be my job. My job is to continue that momentum and then increase the momentum of what happened here last year.
"I love the Rice mission, the academic mission. It has not changed since the inception of the school. What a great student athlete to go after. That's one of the reasons I wanted this job. I wanted this job because I did the research, too, and we have a great president who cares about the student athletes. We have an energetic athletic director who's leading this athletic department. I want to be a part of that. I want to be a part of graduating players and winning championships, and that's what it's all about. My mission here will be to graduate them and win championships. I can't wait.
"This is a day. I got up this morning, I was at the Marriot, I was in a three-point stance waiting on the athletic director to say, 'set, hut!' and get me over here so we can go to work at Rice. We are a family, and I look forward to being part of this Rice family. This job is not about me. This job will always be about the student-athletes. I have a job because there are players that I'm responsible for. They're not here to serve me, I'm here to serve them. I like high morale and I like high discipline. I like people who work hard with a smile on their face and that's what I'm inheriting here. It has been a fast 48 hours. And I'm just thrilled to be here. I'm going to run a program just like I run my home. I run my home with love and tough love when the kids don't listen, and that's what I'm going to do here. This program is going to be filled with love. It's a program that's going to be filled with tough love when that's what we need. I hope to have an impact in these guys lives. I'm not a 2 to 6 football coach, I'm an around the clock football coach. I'm going to be there for these young men 24 hours a day. If they need me, I will be there for him. Every man that works for me will be an impact person, not just a football coach. Nobody is coming here just to be a football coach. We're coming here to make an impact in these young men. One of the things that I'm proudest of at Texas State we had a top graduation rate of public schools, a 75% graduation rate. We led the Southland in all-academic picks, we led the nation in all-COSIDA picks, and that's what makes this a great fit for me. I believe in the Rice way. I believe in everything Rice stands for and I am excited and I can't wait to go to work.
"Offensively, we're going to stay with the spread offense. If you look at the quarterback, Chase [Clement] and what they've done here. That's what we've done at Texas State, that's what we're going to do here. Hopefully it's going to be an offense where you better get your extra point team ready because we're going to put it up in the air a lot. On defense, we're going to run a 4-2-5 which is what I'm comfortable with, probably have to recruit to it some and slowly evolve to that. That's what we did at New Mexico, that's what we did at TCU, that's what we did at Texas State. We'll put a heavy, heavy priority on special teams. You win close ballgames by playing great special teams. I look forward to getting here and going to work and meeting everybody. It is a special day for me. I can't wait to meet everybody here and become part of this Rice family. You that are in this Rice family, I'm going to count on you all to accelerate my learning here. We need everybody's help to keep the momentum going. That momentum got started by one man, but it's going to take all of us to keep this rolling. We need to continue to get people to jump on with us and get out in the community and keep this momentum growing. I'm excited to be here. Let's go to work. Let's all do it for each other. Let's have a blast working hard and winning a lot of football games and graduating these young men."
(on his biggest challenge here) "I think my biggest challenge is I need to get in here and hold these recruits. Recruiting is the lifeblood. I need to get into these recruits' homes. We need to keep them committed to Rice. That will be my first priority when this is over and I get certified as an employee of Rice to get on the phone and start calling these guys to let them know I'm here and I'm staying. If your mission is to win football games and graduate the come on because that's what we're going to do here."
(on applying for the Rice job a year ago) "I had not fulfilled my obligation of what I told the president at Texas State that I would do, and I would not have felt good about leaving. I feel good now that I've got a program there that has good young men that are going to compete for championships and graduate. I'm a man of my word and I feel like I kept my word there. I would not have had a good feeling leaving after two years."
(on the emotions of leaving Texas State) "As a coach when I tell you I'm going to run it like a family, these young men become family to me and you fall in love with them. There is an emotional attachment to working with these young men everyday and seeing them succeed and watching them grow. I have the greatest job in America because you get these young me that are 18 years old, some of the most highly motivated people in the country, and you get to watch them turn into men. You develop that bond and it's a lifetime bond, and it does hurt you emotionally. There were tears in that dressing room last night because of that reason. Today, I have 87 sons. I've got 85 at the office, I've got two at home. That's how we're going to do it. I'm going to get close to these guys, and they're going to know that everything I do is in their best interest."
(on differences from last year) "You know one of the ways I am different? I'm a man of my word. You can check my references. You can check my record. I'm not a job hopper. If I didn't keep my word, I would have been all over it a year ago."
(on job hopping) "If you don't fulfill your mission. I inherited a program that was bad on every level. I leave a program that now has the top graduation rate in the conference, I leave a program that's stable, I leave a program that's in good shape academically and athletically and will compete for championships next year. I leave 10 returning starters on offense alone. You owe it to these young men to fulfill your mission."
(on the decision to leave Texas State) "It was a hard decision because I am emotionally attached to that school. That school's been good to me. It has hired me back three times. Which I think tells you I'm a pretty good guy, but I think professionally at some point you have to grow. You have to go to the university that is a good fit for you. I felt this was a great fit because of the leadership that's already in place here. Growing up in texas, Rice is one of the finest academic institutions in the country, so they truly are recruiting student athletes here. Their mission at Rice has never changed since it opened, and that intrigues me."
(on the expectations for next season) "I think it's going to make it easier. These young men have already got the momentum going. They know how hard you have to work. They know what's required in the summer. I'm here to keep the momentum going. They've made the sacrifice. They know what kind of player we need to win championships here and we'll work hard recruiting. My job is to build on last season."
(on why Rice is a good fit for him) "I think with the way the NCAA is going academically with APR where you lose scholarships, you win championshipsby recruiting a freshman who is going to graduate, you win championships with seniors. You're going to recruit a young man here that is going to graduate because that's your mission when you get here. You're going to have large senior classes. We're going to monitor these guys and we're going to do everything we need to do and these young men are going to graduate. When I was with Coach Franchione that was one of the things you learned. You take a class, you keep it together, you graduate them all, you win championships, and they get great jobs. That's what it's all about and that's what happens here at Rice."
(on what he learned from being head coach for three years) "The amazing thing, no matter how long you've been a coordinator, you better be ready to multi-task, and whatever calendar you make, you better be flexible. There has to be flexibility in your schedule every day because just because that's how you plan it, the 85 guys may need you or somebody may need you and that's the one thing I learned. You get there early in the morning to get your work done."
(on dealing with the players) "There's no doubt I have to regain their trust. That will be important to me. As important as recruiting is and I have to do that, I plan on spending at least a day here with them so they get to know me. I'm going to be gone recruiting when I need to be, but the most important people in this program are sitting right over there. We need to start healing and we need to start letting them know that they can trust me and do that by working hard for them and putting them first. That's what I'm going to do"
(on Rice's tough non-conference schedules) "It's not anything that we need to be afraid of. We need to be able to go into any stadium and compete. I think every young man that comes to Rice needs to expect to compete for championships. One of our goals needs to be to win Conference-USA. One of our goals needs to be to win a national championship. You look at what's happened at Boise, you look at the baseball team. If you get a bunch of young men believing and they're believing right now, anything is possible. If they don't believe those things, they're not a Rice guy.
(on his recruiting strategy) "Because of the fact that I was born in Dallas, I've been a Texas high school coach, I played high school football in San Antonio, I went to what was Southwest Texas. Other than the five years in New Mexico I've been in Texas my entire career. I've recruited Houston, I've recruited Dallas, I've recruited San Antonio. I know these Texas coaches, so I think I've got a tremendous relationship with them. I think it helps me a lot that I was a Texas high school coach. I think it helps me a lot that every now and then I'll throw in a "fixin'".
(on whether his Texas State recruiting met Rice recruiting) "You'd see it. The beautiful thing about Rice though, the majority of the time they were looking at a different kid than we could look at. I mean that in a positive way. There's a lot of guys who wouldn't come to I-AA. That's what we're looking at here, this is Division I. These young men want to play Division I in Texas."
(on his staff) "I'm going to move three guys in here immediately. There will be Tom Herman, Blake Miller, Craig Naivar. I have talked to some of the staff here at Rice. I'm not going to make any fast decisions personnel-wise. We're going to get here and get guys that can recruit and make sure everyone is the right fit...They know they're coming here to work. We're going to get all the right people up with us and make sure it's going in the right direction and then we're going to assign titles. We're going to get the right people here first that are the right fit for Rice."
(on whether he would like to keep Rice assistants) "Sure, yes, It does nothing but accelerate my learning on the Rice way."
(on one of his assistants filling the Texas State HC position) "I know Brad Wright is going to apply for that job, and I think thats what the community wants there. Not to put any pressure on my last boss, but I know he's applying, I know he's a great fit."
(on his TCU experience) "TCU is a family like the Rice family. When you pull up here, it even resembles TCU with the stadium and the housing and the people. Operating at a small university it's important for everybody to be part of the team. I need to be part of the team and I look forward to it. You're going to see us at volleyball games and basketball games and on campus and at different events all over campus. I may be the football coach, but we're going to be everywhere.
