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January 19, 2007 > Sports > Graham, staff depart to mixed reactions

Graham, staff depart to mixed reactions

By Nathan Bledsoe | Thresher Editorial Staff

Two days after signing a contract extension Jan. 9, former head football coach Todd Graham, who led the resurgent team to seven wins in his lone season at Rice, departed to become head coach at the University of Tulsa.

CBS Sportsline reported that Tulsa, where Graham was defensive coordinator before coming to Rice, will pay him $1.1 million a year — an estimated $400,000 increase over his Rice salary.

By Jan. 13, Athletic Director Chris Del Conte had formed a committee and begun the search for a new head coach.

“We are going to strike and get someone here in short order who is going to take this baton and run faster than we were running before and build upon the foundation that we have laid,” Del Conte said.

The Athletic Department is expected to announce a new coach within days. The search must move quickly because national signing day — when players sign binding agreements to accept scholarship offers — is Feb. 7.

President David Leebron, who is currently traveling in India, said he supports the coaching search.

“Chris Del Conte is doing an absolutely first-rate job of conducting this process really expeditiously and thoughtfully,” he said. “He has assembled a terrific committee of people which includes players from the team — I think people are really optimistic and excited about the future. It’s not about just one person; it’s about the program.”

Graham’s lone year at Rice was marked with much on-the-field success, with the Owls playing in their first bowl game since 1961. He also raised enough money to install new Field Turf and a Jumbotron at Rice Stadium, among other upgrades. However, many players felt the high-energy head coach was overly demanding of their time and energies.

“[Upon hearing Graham was leaving] the way we were feeling was happy,” defensive lineman DeJaun Cooper said. “I mean, his workload and the amount of stuff he put on us was getting to be too much, and a few players had quit because of that.”

Rice led Conference-USA in team GPA but for the first time since such records have been kept, the Owls failed to put a single player on the academic all-conference team, suggesting a decline in the players’ academic performance.

Graham’s departure

Despite speculation in the media, Graham said money was not his main reason for leaving.

“At the end of the day, we have a situation where I’m going back to a place I’ve been three years,” he said. “They’ve made a terrific commitment to build a program that’s going to win championships.”

But when Graham informed his players of his departure the morning of Jan. 12, players said Graham pointed to financial reasons. Cooper, a Lovett College senior, said Graham told the team that Tulsa offered him so much money he could not pass up the offer.

Multiple players said Graham told the team, “It’s hard for a rich man to go to heaven, but I’m sure going to try.”

The time between Graham’s contract extension and his departure was extremely short — a situation that has sparked skepticism among bloggers and those involved with Rice football. While preliminary talks for an extension began before Rice’s appearance at the R+L Carrier New Orleans Bowl Dec. 22, no finalized agreement came before the announcement of the extension Jan. 9. Graham began confirmed talks with Tulsa less than 24 hours later. Sources confirmed online reports that the buyout clause in Graham’s extension was lower than the one in his initial contract.

The buyout clause — part of every major coaching contract — is the amount that must be paid by a coach’s new employer if he leaves before his contract runs out. Similarly, a coach must be paid a certain amount by the university if it decides to terminate the contract before the term is up.

In other words, the renegotiated contract allowed Tulsa a lower buyout than if Graham’s departure had occurred under his original contract.

Graham said he spoke to Del Conte about a possible counter-offer after he received his offer from Tulsa.

Graham did not say he gave Rice a chance to match Tulsa’s offer, but he said the two sides came to a mutual understanding that Rice would not bid against Tulsa’s offer.

Looking to next season

The team also lost offensive coordinator Major Applewhite, who will join head football coach Nick Saban at the University of Alabama as the quarterbacks coach. Several of the coaches from Graham’s staff will leave with the former head coach to Tulsa: strength and conditioning coach Yancy McKnight, special teams coordinator Danny Phillips, safeties coach Jess Loepp, cornerback coach Jason Jones, tight end coach Dean Jackson and assistant strength coach Bo Graham.

Four coaches have remained at Rice to continue work with the players and try to keep a recruiting class in place. The highest ranking coach remaining is defensive coordinator and associate head coach Paul Randolph. Randolph is a candidate to replace Graham as head coach.

“I worked with [Rice] on an exit plan,” Graham said. “I had one of our strength coaches stay behind and keep track of the players. A couple of our coaches stayed behind — Coach Randolph stayed behind, and he’s interviewing for the job to try to keep some continuity.”

Randolph is Graham’s preferred candidate for the vacancy, but Graham said Randolph will be offered a place on Graham’s Tulsa staff if he does not become Rice’s head coach.

Under Applewhite, Rice set a school record for points scored in a season — 350 — and adjusted well to the spread offense in its first year running the scheme.

Several players said they were far less upset with Applewhite’s departure because he never indicated he planned to stay at Rice. Graham, however, repeatedly pitched the idea of commitment to the team.

“Some people were mad,” Cooper said. “All the B.S. he was loading us with about the tradition, building this program up, stuff like that. [Graham said] ‘We’re doing all this for a reason; we’re building a relationship of trust,’ and all this other [stuff] like that. You can just [throw that out] now: all the stuff we sacrificed, all the time, our grades, all the stuff we sacrificed to try to get into this commitment, the trust and belief in what he was saying.”

Graham said goals and dedication, not finances, were the reasons for his departure.

“I felt like there was a commitment at Tulsa to build a championship football program, and it was a substantially larger commitment that I felt like was there at Rice,” he said.

Despite their dislike for Graham, many players said he made a significant contribution to Rice football.

“He’s definitely done some positive things,” Cooper said. “The whole stadium’s been redone, he got the student body involved, he helped us to get a winning record, and he got alumni back. He built everybody’s heads up with all the good stuff that football should be.”

Cooper said many players feel betrayed, and whomever Rice selects as the new coach will have to overcome this.

Players were not the only ones unhappy with Graham’s departure. Del Conte and Leebron both said they were disappointed, but both were optimistic about the future of Rice football.

“A guy that we hired a year ago came in here and proved that we can win at Rice, and we should celebrate that,” Del Conte said.

Del Conte said that players, not coaches, are how football teams win games, and the demonstrated successes of the 2006 season have provided a rich pool from which to select a new head coach.

“My phone is burning off the hook with guys who were not applying for this job a year ago that want to be at Rice because [Graham] proved [the team] can win,” he said.

End of article

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