Then – the mid-70s

First example year
100 freshlings sign up for MOB.

They have come from a traditional high school marching band – with company fronts, step-two drills, diamond formations, counter-marches. It’s the kind of show that the Aggies are still doing (very well) even today. What came to be known as “corps-style” – what most high schools and colleges do today – was still a few years off. Scattering with The MOB is different, easy, fun. Nearly every game brings a competing SWC band, still doing the same thing, and the contrast with The MOB is stark. Everyone else does the same thing. We’re different – and that’s entertaining.

The season moves along, and the shows are still entertaining, but the fuzzy new MOBsters learn that Rice isn’t like high school, where they were all valedictorians, and that a 3 really is average, and 1s are not so easy. 
(Rice didn’t use letter grades, and the numbers were the opposite of most HS systems. 1 was the equivalent of an “A”. 2 was a “B”, etc) 

Quite a few of the freshlings cease to show up by that annoying Thanksgiving weekend game. Quite a few of the other classes don’t show up as well. That late November game might see half of the original band on the field, and maybe less.

Second example year
100 freshlings sign up for MOB.
50 sophomores return – the other 50 are not entirely a mystery, but we’ll leave out all of the possibilities to simulate brevity.

Third example year
100 freshlings sign up for MOB.
50 sophomores return.
25 juniors return.

Fourth example year
100 freshlings sign up for MOB.
50 sophomores return.
25 juniors return.
10 seniors return (pressure to graduate drives the number down).
The single game cumulative total never quite adds up to the sum of the signees, simply because. Stuff happens. And the cumulative total steadily declines throughout the season as each class sees attrition to what I’ll call “natural causes”. It’s Rice.

Travel forward through time across the decades to 
Now…

Today’s band musicians arriving with a pool of freshlings are now almost entirely corps-style performers. DCI even. There was intense pressure in high school band to perform flawlessly, with many schools taking the band to regional competition(s).

They get to Rice, sign up for MOB, come to two rehearsals and don’t come back. Something feels wrong.
The MOB is easy.
That can’t be right.
Why is that? We don’t march.
There is never going to be any pressure to move 37 14” steps  to the left rear, while facing at an oblique, and playing your horn.
They cannot comprehend a band that is easy.
Being in band just for the fun of being in band seems wrong to them.
Chuck describes it as “Stockholm Syndrome” – they have been held captive by a program that torments them to entertain for so long, that they now identify with the torment. 

The Patty Hearst High School Marching Symbionese Liberation Band.
“Sorry, I’m outta here.”

Does it matter at all that the pool of possible musicians is larger – that the undergraduate population is 88% larger than it was in the Seventies?

Apparently not.

Take the aforementioned recruiting and retention environment, combine it with a whole bunch of students who care very little for college sports, toss in a sea of very worthy volunteer and enrichment programs, then add a music school that is successfully modeled on European conservatory programs that gets the best of the musicians in each class (admittedly, they did recruit them) and they are far too busy to join us, 

Shake well… and pour…

25 freshlings sign up for MOB.
13 sophomores return.
7 juniors return.
4 seniors return.

With any luck the numbers add up to more than the cumulative total, because about a dozen old-farts add to the numbers.
See those black fedoras?
Those are past “outstanding bandsmen” wearing those black fedoras.
They love being in the band and supporting the team so much that they keep coming back.

Half time starts with a field full of Fidgets.
Adorable children in cheer costumes or with hula hoops whose parents had to buy tickets to the game.

Then The MOB performs.
Is there a schedule full of opposing bands basically all being the same band in different colored uniforms, like there were in the ‘70s?
No.
Many of our opponents are from Directional U, and it is far too expensive to send their band to Houston.
So…
We have The MOB and the Fidgets.
The MOB is doing something different every show, and yet the audience sees it as the same. 
They are jaded. 
Where is the contrast?
It was tied to the opposing team’s band, the band that isn’t here.
Is it The MOB’s fault that the music stopped and we changed conferences again?
No.

Admittedly, it should better in the AAC, where we will theoretically get to play the member schools that are closer to Houston on a regular basis – UTSA, UNT, SMU, Tulsa, and Tulane – and they might even bring their band(s). That would help – a lot.
Still – right now – some of the fans are pushing to make us different by being the same as everyone else.

Listen to that last sentence.
Does Rice really want to be like everyone else? It never has before.

That’s where we are today.

Rice is an Ivy League class school.

Ivy League reputation, Ivy League faculty, Ivy League students, Ivy League campus, Ivy League endowment.
At that, it would be the next-smallest of the Ivy League schools in terms of undergraduate population. (only Dartmouth has a smaller undergrad student body than Rice)

The table below is what I gathered for the Ivy League a year ago. I’ve been waiting for a response from the Harvard band to post it, but it seems that it cannot wait.
Cornell is the outlier, because they are the only band in the Ivies that marches – all the rest are scatter bands. 

Remember – the Ivies are FCS, not FBS.

College Name	Total Students	Undergrads	Band membership	Credit	Scholarship	Music Majors in band	part of music school	tuition	Show format
Ivy League
Cornell	23,620	14,743	150  (200 on paper)	available	no	possible	no – Athletics	no	march
Penn	26,552	11,155	30-80 (120 on paper)	no	no	yes	no	no	scatter
Harvard	30,391	8,527							scatter
Columbia	30,135	8,148	disbanded in 2020	n/a	n/a	n/a	n/a	n/a	scatter
Brown	9,948	6,792	35-50	no	no	yes	no – Student Activities	no	scatter
Princeton	7,853	4,774	35-50	no	no	yes	no	no	scatter
Yale	12,060	4,703	75nominal, 45.7avg	no	no	allowed (both ways)	sorta	no	scatter
Dartmouth	6,292	4,170	20-30	yes, PE	no	allowed (both ways)	No school, just music majors	no	scatter

See those Ivy League band sizes?
We’d fit right in.
Where am I going with this?

To come…
We’re moving to the AAC, and this is where we fit in the AAC.

College Name	Total Students	Undergrads	Band membership	Credit	Scholarship	Music Majors in band	part of music school	tuition	Show format
AAC (2023)
USF	50,626	38,582	372	yes	stipend available	“open to all”	yes	yes	march
North Texas	40,953	32,814	425-450	yes	not specifically	yes	yes		march
UTSA	34,742	29,959	320	yes	available	yes		yes	march
Temple	37,236	27,306		yes	yes	faculty approval	yes	yes	march
FAU	30,805	25,457		yes		yes	yes	yes	march
Charlotte	30,146	24,175	150+	yes	available	yes	yes	yes	march
East Carolina	28,798	23,056	250+	yes	available	“open to all”		march
Memphis	22,205	17,383		yes	available	“open to all”	yes	yes`	march
UAB	22,563	13,878	200+	yes	available	“open to all”	yes	yes	march
Tulane	13,927	8,537	100		yes	“open to all”	yes		march
SMU	12,373	6,827	99	yes	available	“open to all”		march
Navy	4,594	4,594	n/a	n/a	n/a	n/a	n/a	n/a	march
Rice	7,643	4,076	100-25	no	no	one in 2022 (shhh!)	no	no	scatter
Tulsa	3,960	2,929		yes and no	available	open to all Tulsa college students	yes		march

[The USNA band is Navy officers – paid pros – there is no valid comparison.]

Rice is an Ivy League school, and The MOB is an Ivy League Band.
How many schools in the AAC do not offer credit for band, do not offer a scholarship for band, do not have music majors in the band, and the band is not part of the music school?
One.
Rice.

Would I like The MOB to have 120 members (or more) again?
Of course I would.
Can we get there by changing the format to something more formal, and throwing some money at that change?
No.

That same audience will be bored with the new format within a year.
Not only would the band be boring, it would be boring like everyone else, and it wouldn’t be as big or powerful as anyone else.

The only way to create an FBS-class band these days is to have a music school that isn’t a conservatory, where students are required to be in band and receive credit for time in the band.

Would that work at Rice?
Do you see the Shepherd School adding music education to their conservatory model?
I don’t.
Do you see Rice adding a music education major, just so the band will be better?
There isn’t the will, the funding, or the facilities to do that.
That’s what it would take to have the Rice Band be like all the other bands.
It’s not going to happen.
What would grow The MOB is a modest increase in funding of The MOB, as it is.
This applies to the BOB, by extension.

Offer credit. A credit requires a class. A class requires attendance. Tie attendance to a credit.
Offer a modest scholarship (call it whatever you have to) to pay for that class credit.