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BREAKING: Rice Football to part ways with Mike Bloomgren

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Mike Bloomgren will no longer be the head coach of Rice Football, effective immediately. The Owls are making a leadership change within the program.

The Roost can confirm reports, first from ESPN’s Pete Thamel, that Mike Bloomgren has been fired. This decision comes in the days following another disheartening loss, this time to UConn, sinking the Owls’ record to 2-6 on the season.

The 2024 record reflects what had become a disastrous seventh season for Bloomgren at Rice. Picked to finish seventh in the preseason media poll, the Owls’ lone win in their first five games came against FCS Texas Southern. They are now 1-3 in conference play

Bloomgren leaves Rice with a 24-52 record across seven seasons. He routinely delivered some of the best recruiting classes the program has ever seen, hauling in the top-rated class in program history on at least four separate occasions. He was one of just three coaches in program history to reach back-to-back bowl games. At the end of the day, though, he never won consistently enough to deliver on expectations.

Athletic Director Tommy McClelland released this statement:

“I want to express my sincere appreciation to Coach Bloomgren. Over his seven seasons of service as our head football coach, he has represented our university and football program with the utmost class and integrity,” said McClelland. “However, as I evaluated our program and compared our current and desired trajectory, I determined new leadership is necessary to guide us into the future.”

A national search is expected to begin immediately to find his replacement. Associate Head Coach & Special Teams Coordinator Pete Alamar will serve as the Owls’ interim head coach for the remainder of the 2024 season.

** Photo Credit: Maria Lysaker **
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In it for the Long Haul: Mike Bloomgren Embarks on Seventh Season with Rice Football

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Entering his seventh season, Rice football head coach Mike Bloomgren has become one of the longest-tenured coaches in the country, persevering through a rebuild that was far from easy.

Mike Bloomgren found himself the elder statesman when he took the podium at American Conference Media Days in mid-July. A veteran of seven years as the head man for Rice football and the longest-tenured FBS head coach in the state of Texas, Bloomgren has certainly seen a thing or two along the way. His journey to where he is today hasn’t been linear. The bumps and bruises accrued along his path might have scared others in the profession away, but Bloomgren has persevered.

Onlookers are gradually starting to take notice. Rice was picked to finish seventh in the AAC this season, the first time the team has been projected to be better than a bottom dweller in its conference since Bloomgren arrived. Still, Bloomgren offered his best Rodney Dangerfield impersonation upon seeing those results, joking that the Owls “can’t get no respect.”

The build

“In year one it was hard to argue,” Bloomgren said, remembering where the program came from back in his early days on South Main. “We had a lot of holes in our roster. We had some talented kids, but we had a lot of holes too. The same was true in 2019. Still building. Still playing a lot of young kids.”

It was in that 2018 season that Rice began a complete overhaul of its roster. The program didn’t fully start to resemble a bonafide FBS squad until years into Bloomgren’s tenure. That same season the coaching staff was forced to turn to a scout team running back to cover Houston superstar wideout Marquez Stevenson. The Cougars scored 28 unanswered points and pulled off a come-from-behind win that afternoon.

“The five-year plan got scrapped in about year two and a half and got reassessed.”

Two years later, a converted wide receiver turned emergency defensive back took the field in an oversized offensive lineman jersey to break up a red zone pass against North Texas. He succeeded, but the sheer absurdity of the situation served as a waypoint for a team in progress, a finished product still in the making.

There weren’t real expectations back then, not really. At least not when it came to high win totals on the field. That started to shift in 2020, but COVID through a wrench in things before a brutal schedule in 2021 — Rice opened against Arkansas, Houston and Texas — made year five a retooling point, of sorts.

“The five-year plan got scrapped in about year two and a half and got reassessed,” Bloomgren admitted. It was then that things started to shift.

Raising the floor

After going 11-31 in Bloomgren’s first four seasons, Rice has gone 11-13 in the regular season since, with most of those wins coming in a more challenging AAC. Armed with a complete roster, patience, and (for the most part) healthy starting quarterbacks, the Owls have reached bowl games in back-to-back seasons, something which had only occurred twice in the centuries’ worth of Rice football seasons before Bloomgren arrived.

Bloomgren was always quick to describe his vision for Rice football as two-fold. He wanted to raise the ceiling, to reach those postseason opportunities. But he wanted to make sure he raised the floor, too. When the tough years came, in years past, the program would plummet to a one or two-win campaign. Now, they hope to take on adversity and preserve, aspiring to become a postseason-caliber program even in the tough years.

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That growth is part of what enabled Rice to reach its highest point in those preseason polls, but it’s who Rice brings back that likely played a more significant role. ESPN’s Bill Connelly ranked Rice football No.1 in the AAC in returning production, an assessment that attempts to quantify how much of last year’s talent is returning this coming season.

Rice lost three important starters on defense (DE Coleman Coco, CB Tre’shon Devons and DT De’Braylon Carroll) and three key pieces on offense (QB JT Daniels, WR Luke McCaffrey and LT Clay Servin) but more or less everyone else stayed. Only two of their most significant departures were transfers. For the most part, eligibility expiration and the NFL have been the reason for players who don’t return to Rice football right now. Few choose to leave.

Establishing a culture

Every coach in America uses the word culture in their recruiting pitch. Bloomgren has made the nebulous word a tangible reality at Rice.

“He’s not even a coach anymore. He’s like another father figure in Houston,” star defensive back Gabe Taylor said of Bloomgren. “The bond we have with Coach Smith, the whole coaching staff. It’s unbreakable. There’s no other team like this one. The brotherhood is real, genuine, second-to-none.”

For years Bloomgren labored to build the roster. Once it got here, everyone stuck around.

“Rice is a place that I’ve been longer than any other place in my life, school-wise,” running back Dean Connors said. “This third year will be the longest I’ve been playing football for someone and I wouldn’t want it to be anyone other than Bloom. He was the one coach who gave me my chance, my shot. I owe him the world and just look what he’s done with the program.”

There’s a different type of buy-in created for those who have been in the depths and labored to make something better. Taylor, Connors, and several other stars certainly have the talent to be coveted elsewhere. Their leadership and commitment to what they started never allowed any other program to be an option.

Those repercussions have helped establish one of the most consistent rosters in the country, a roster the likes of quarterback EJ Warner and others wanted to come join. It’s become a team that players like sixth-year players Josh Peary, Myron Morrison, Izeya Floyd and others just don’t want to leave, even with a degree in hand and potential NFL opportunities ahead.

Bloomgren couldn’t have asked for much more than this. He built the roster to his liking, established a postseason baseline and earned some respect in his conference. All that’s left to do now is take that next step and start to win in earnest.

The Future at South Main

Moving forward, Bloomgren and Rice football find themselves in a good place. A private institution, Rice isn’t required to report contractual information, but multiple sources have confirmed to The Roost the nature of Bloomgren’s current agreement. The contract stipulates an automatic one-year extension upon the invitation to any bowl game. Additionally, as was previously reported by The Roost, Bloomgren was given a one-year extension because of the COVID-19 season.

In totality, Bloomgren has now worked under his base five-year original contract agreement, plus three additional years of extensions, the first from the COVID season and the subsequent two earned by bowl trips. As things currently stand, he has two years remaining on his adjusted deal, which runs through the 2025 season.

Should Bloomgren bring Rice to the postseason again in 2024, the same clause would be in effect, triggering another one-year extension.

The terms are a win for both parties. Bloomgren has had the privilege of watching his kids go to school in the same places, eschewing the roaming norms that often typify the coaching profession. As long as Bloomgren continues to ensure Rice is a postseason-quality team, he’ll have security while Rice is protected should things go south. All parties dream of any potential dilemmas caused by too much winning, but that bridge will be crossed when we get there.

For now, Bloomgren and his team are preparing for Year Seven with Rice football. Only four head coaches in program history have been on South Main longer.

“It’s just been great to see the growth,” Bloomgren said. “As exciting as it is to go into Year Seven, [it’s even more exciting] to know that we’ve really made progress and we’re in a position, we think, we can jump to the next step.”

** Photo Credit: Maria Lysaker **
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Expectations Rising for Mike Bloomgren, Rice Football

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Rice Football was projected to finish seventh in the AAC Preseason Media Poll, the highest preseason rank for the Owls under head coach Mike Bloomgren to date.

In recent memory, expectations have, quite literally, never been higher for Rice football. The 2024 AAC Media Poll, released during Media Days on Tuesday morning, projected Rice to finish seventh in the 14-team conference. Not only is that higher than the Owls’ were picked last year (12th), but it’s also higher than any team head coach Mike Bloomgren has coached at South Main thus far.

“To see us tied for seventh, I guess that’s improvement,” head coach Mike Bloomgren said. “But again, that’s not where I think we should be with our team and what this coaching staff and these players have built together collectively.”

Rice was never picked to finish higher than second from the bottom in the West in Conference USA’s divisional structure. In 2021, the Owls’ only year in the league without divisions, Rice was tabbed to finish 10th. For this program to overcome outside perceptions and get recognition in the middle of the pack is not insignificant. The five-spot rise is the second biggest of any team in the AAC. South Florida was the only other program in the league to climb more than two spots, moving from 13th to fourth.

Rice has been a program content to play the underdog role as they’ve built from a two-win season in 2018 to back-to-back bowl campaigns in their most recent seasons. They aren’t the favorites just yet, but those outside of South Main clearly don’t view this program as a perennial underdog any longer.

No longer is this a team expected to finish in the bottom view. First impressions might not change quickly, but something has certainly shifted when it comes to the perception of Rice football around the AAC.

The players inside the locker room have noticed the shift, too. “Talking together as a group, we feel like we should be in the championship conversation,” proclaimed veteran safety Gabe Taylor. “We can’t make no excuses this year. We have to learn how to win and make sure we take care of business one week at a time.”

At the end of the day, media polls are worth the paper they’re printed on. Outside prognostications don’t determine the actual order of finish, that’s what the games are for. And until you start winning those games with regularity, those polls will likely be a lagging indicator of the quality of the program you’ve built. Seventh is better than tenth, but it’s a far cry from first. There is work left to be done.

“I think that’s a good thing. I think the less eyes that are on us the better,” said running back Dean Connors.” We fuel off the underdogs. We have a lot of guys that weren’t highly recruited. The longer we stay like that, the better.”

If things go according to plan, Rice football might not be flying under the radar for much longer.

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Mike Bloomgren, Rice Football take another step forward

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Rice Football is going bowling for the second season in a row as head coach Mike Bloomgren continues to elevate the program one step at a time.

When you look at the Rice football win totals in the five non-COVID seasons under head coach Mike Bloomgren (Two. Three. Four. Five. Six.) you see a pattern: ascent. Bloomgren never went backward. The gripe with his tenure as the Owls’ headman never had anything to do with direction, it was all about the speed of those steps.

It was that most recent step that meant the most, to qualify for a bowl game “the old fashioned way” as some would say, with six regular-season wins. It was the first time the program had done so since 2014 and officially made Blomgren only the third coach in program history to reach back-to-back bowl games — Rice has fielded a team since 1914, 110 seasons ago.

To get this far, flooded Bloomgren with memories of all sorts. “When I took this job, we had played Rice the year before in Sydney, Australia. I don’t want to take anything away from that team, but there were a lot of people in the national media and coaches that told me not to take this job because they could never go to a bowl again,” Bloomgren recalled.

He cited his own stubbornness, the patience of former AD Joe Karlgaard who allowed him to remain in his position despite no winning seasons in his first five years at South Main and his staff and players for fighting through what he referred to as “headwinds” of all different kinds.

“But this is so cool to be here at this moment with the administration we have in place, the alignment we have in place and the excitement. And when you have a board of trustees and a president and AD that are going to do everything they can to help a football program, let’s go.”

The Owls will find out exactly where they will be going a few days from now on the Sunday following conference championship weekend. Rice won’t be playing in that game, perhaps a goal for next year and beyond, but the Owls did play both teams (Tulane and SMU) within a score, the latter with a backup quarterback for the second half.

To the Rice football players and staff, the bowl game destination is less relevant. Getting to this mountain top was a significant step, the next one would be winning, regardless of locale or opponent.

“I think the sky’s the limit,” senior running back Juma Otoviano said after the win. “We started from the ground up, but [we’re] looking at back-to-back bowl games and expecting to win this one.”

So in an era of rapid reaction and fast-moving chairs, under the leadership of a new athletic director who did not hire him, Bloomgren and his staff have taken yet another step on their climb in a conference incredibly more challenging than the one they played in over the previous five seasons. And there’s still a chance to win one more game and make this season even more special than it has already become.

“It makes me really proud of these kids and these coaches because nobody’s ever blinked. Anybody who’s still in this building has just kept fighting for what they believe in for these kids. That’s what’s all about,” Bloomgren said. “This team is always been worth fighting for for me, so it’s really cool.”

And the job isn’t done just yet. Bloomgren and Rice can turn that six into a seven with a bowl victory, a feat that hasn’t happened by the team on South Main since 2014.

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Quiet confidence permeates one of Rice Football’s biggest wins

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Thursday night Rice football posted a significant win in program history, but rather than respond with jubilation, the Owls responded with quiet confidence.

When the clock hit triple zeroes of Chapman Stadium, Rice football formalized a host of significant program achievements. The Owls hadn’t won a conference game by more than a touchdown since 2020. They hadn’t won a conference game by as many points (32) since 2013 and hadn’t won a conference road game by that margin since 2003.

By every estimation, this win was seismic — and it was — but the tone Rice football players and staff brought with them to their postgame media availability leaned much more toward serious than euphoric.

Head coach Mike Bloomgren, who has said now on multiple occasions, “the fun is in the winning,” seemed more focused than exultant.

He chuckled about quarterback JT Daniels’ rushing touchdown, just the second of his collegiate career. He praised the offense for controlling the clock, winning the time of possession battle 22:23 to 7:37 in the second half. He gave the defense its flowers for an explosive three-turnover first quarter.

But at no point during the discussion did the tone venture into anything that could be considered truly jubilant. Bloomgren was happy, sure. He stated on multiple occasions how proud he was of his players and his staff for their efforts. But the air was permeated with a businesslike, mission-accomplish aura.

“It just shows you when we play the way we’re capable of, we can do some real fun things,” Bloomgren summarized.

More: Rice football demolishes Tulsa in big program win

If the national television audience was surprised to see the Owls absolutely obliterate a team that was favored to beat them on their home turf, Bloomgren didn’t seem faced. It’s almost as if, despite the ebbs and flows it’s taken the program to get to this point, he expected it.

That approach was echoed by his players.

“It’s a big win for us, we’re of course excited, but we’re definitely not satisfied,” safety Gabe Taylor, who had a big interception on Thursday said. “We want more. We’re 4-3. That’s a good record, but we know we’re not supposed to be here. We’re just ready for Tulane next week.”

Running back Dean Connors, who rushed for three touchdowns and 120 yards on nine carries, addressed the upcoming game with Tulane, too. “It’s about stacking days, and we stacked three great days of work [at practice this week]. And I think to beat Tulane, who’s a really solid team, we’re going to have to do that all over again and do it better.”

From Bloomgren to the pair of veteran leaders, it’s almost as if the page had already been turned. And it wasn’t as if they’d taken the game they just finished for granted, they just knew they had bigger goals still to achieve.

Perhaps the real message Rice football hoped to send on Thursday night on ESPN went well beyond the final score. Sure, 42-10 is impressive and as Taylor put it, “I hope they were looking,” but what Rice football really wants people to know is this team is in a different place, mentally.

“This week, we proved a point,” Taylor said.

It’s hard for one singular game to be a referendum on the season as a whole. The Tulsa game likely won’t define the entire season, neither will the upcoming bout with Tulane.

But if Rice football has really found a way to lock in and carry themselves with the level of seriousness and focus it takes to play like they did on Thursday night, this program really could be different moving forward. Whether or not that continues rests on the shoulders of this team. Maybe, just maybe, they’re past wake-up calls and ready to take the next step. If so, Thursday night was a great first step.

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