TEPPER: Why Mike Bloomgren is a great fit for Rice

Think of Texas college football as a family sitcom. Texas and A&M are always fighting; so are TCU and Baylor. Texas Tech is the rowdy one. UTEP’s the one that lives far away. In this sitcom, Rice is the brainy brother, the studious one who’s eschewing social functions in favor of sticking his nose in a book. After all, Rice has the lowest acceptance rate and highest average test scores of any school in Texas, let alone one with an FBS football program. Which might explain why Mike Bloomgren is the perfect fit for the Owls. The offensive coordinator for Stanford will reportedly be named the 19th coach in Rice program history on Tuesday, replacing David Bailiff who was fired last week after 11 seasons. It will be Bloomgren’s first head coaching job. In many ways, Bloomgren feels like a natural choice for the Owls: renowned for his intellect, the 40-year-old has been praised as a true student of the game, learning under the likes of Marty Schottenheimer, Bill Callahan, Rex Ryan and, most recently, David Shaw during his 17-year assistant coaching career. And if you want to toss the dreaded “nerd” word around, it may just fit — ESPN wrote a glowing piece declaring Bloomgren “the biggest techie in college football”, and he’s famously worn Google Glass to a press conferences. What should we expect from Mike Bloomgren, Rice head coach? He’s an adamant proponent of the pro style offense, so it wouldn’t be a surprise to see him follow the Stanford gameplan of a grinding ground attack with a play action-based passing attack over the top. Under Bloomgren, Stanford ranked 42nd in the nation in run-pass split this year, keeping it on the ground on 56 percent of its snaps; that’d actually be a step back from this year’s (albeit abysmal) Rice offense, which ran the ball a staggering 64 percent of the time. The next shoe to drop will be the announcement of the defensive coordinator, who must improve a unit that ranked 114th in scoring defense. Don’t be surprised if it’s a name with Texas ties, as Bloomgren has no previous affiliation with the Lone Star State. But in the end, Bloomgren’s biggest asset may be that he understands the culture at Rice, and the hurdles that come along with it. He must sell a program with the highest academic standards in the state, and convince the best prospects who qualify to join the Owls. In short, Mike Bloomgren has to appeal to the brainy brothers of the Texas football world, and he seems uniquely qualified to do so. After all, it takes one to know one.