URI Football: “Think Bigger. Stop the Pain.”
Monday, November 06, 2017
Last year, James Madison beat the University of Rhode Island football team 84-7.
This year, the loss was equally embarrassing. URI lost 38 to 3.
URI has fielded an uncompetitive team that over the past ten years has achieved a conference winning percentage of 10 percent.
GET THE LATEST BREAKING NEWS HERE -- SIGN UP FOR GOLOCAL FREE DAILY EBLASTYes, a 90 percent losing percentage. The worst in their conference by orders of magnitude and while some teams have gone up and down — URI has just kept losing.
The Rams were humiliated nationally off the field this year, when the top college football coach in America, Nick Saban of Alabama, said of the perennial college winners -- and losers -- at a press conference, “I think it’s always been that way. When they play games, you know up when Rhode Island plays whoever they play they have a picnic after the game. That doesn’t happen around here. We have 100,000 people, we have the SEC Championship Game, we’re trying to get into the playoff. But we all have the same rules.”
Winning sports programs elevate the reputation of schools. Schools with top-tier academics and superior athletics dominate the rankings — Notre Dame, Stanford, Duke, and so on.
URI’s tagline is, “Think Big. We Do.” It's a bold brand claim. The claim is that URI is a top-flight school, but a perennially non-competitive football program undermines the claim. The worst college football team in America may force the tagline to be rewritten — “Think Mediocre. We Do.”
Over the past ten years, the Rams have a combined conference record of:
13 wins
65 Losses
10 percent winning percentage.
It will only take six-plus consecutive years of being undefeated to get to a .500 winning percentage.
Newly appointed University of Virginia Athletic Director Carla Williams said in her introductory press conference,"Winning championships and getting a great education, those things aren't mutually exclusive. You can do both. You should do both. This is one of those places in the country where the foundation is there."
For URI, the past ten years and upwards of $30 million could have been better spent on expanding other athletic opportunities to men and women student-athletes.
URI football has been futile. It continues to be futile.
"Think Bigger. Stop the Pain."
The past ten seasons of URI football conference records:
2017
1-5
2016
1-7
2015
1-7
2014
1-7
2013
2-6
2012
0-8
2011
2-6
2010
4-4
2009
0-8
2008
1-7
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