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Bailiff produced a total of 14 All Southland Conference first team selections, and 13 of his players were named to the academic all conference squad in the last two years. David Bailiff
David Bailiff Named Rice University Head Football Coach David Bailiff was introduced on January 19 as Rice’s 18th head football coach by athletics director Chris Del Conte. Bailiff, 48, has spent the last three seasons as the head coach at Texas State University in San Marcos, Texas, where he posted a 21–15 record while leading the Bobcats to their first Southland Conference championship and the semifinals of the NCAA Division 1-AA playoffs in 2005. He replaces Todd Graham, who led the Owls to a 7–6 record and their first bowl bid since 1961 before resigning on January 11 to become the head coach at the University of Tulsa. Bailiff’s roots with Texas State already ran deep when he was named the Bobcats’ 14th head coach in 2004. During his playing career at what was then Southwest Texas State University (1977–80), he served as a team captain in 1980, was named All-Lone Star Conference, and was an honorable mention for both All-America and the Lone Star Team of the Decade. He began his coaching career as the defensive line coach at New Braunfels High School (1982–84). His first collegiate coaching position was at Texas
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State, serving as a defensive graduate assistant coach in 1988 before being promoted to the Bobcats’ defensive line coach in 1989. Bailiff left Texas State in 1992 for an assistant coaching position at New Mexico, where he handled the defensive line and recruiting. He returned to Texas State in 1997 as defensive coordinator and added assistant head coach responsibilities to his role in 1999. That year, Bailiff was selected the NCAA Division I-AA Assistant Coach of the Year by the American Football Coaches Association. He then spent three seasons on the staff at Texas Christian University (TCU), serving as the Horned Frogs’ defensive coordinator in both 2002 and 2003 while working with the team’s defensive linemen. While at TCU, Bailiff was honored as the Top Assistant Football Coach by the All-American Football Foundation following the Horned Frogs’ 2002 season. Bailiff, who is known as one of the premiere recruiters in Texas, returned to coach at Texas State in 2004. The team that
Bailiff inherited was picked to finish last in the Southland Conference (SLC), but the Bobcats posted a 5–6 record and headed into the final week of the season with conference championship aspirations. Texas State ended up 3–2 in the SLC and finished third in the league, the team’s highest ranking in the SLC since 2000.
In his past two seasons at Texas State, Bailiff produced standouts both on the field and in the classroom, including both the Southland Offensive and Defensive Players of the Year in 2005 (Barrick Nealy and Fred Evans) and the league’s Student Athlete of the Year for football in 2006 (Walter Musgrove). Overall, he produced a total of 14 All Southland Conference first team selections, and 13 of his players were named to the academic all conference squad in the last two years. While his own background has been as a defensive coach, Bailiff’s squads have led the league in total offense in each of the last two seasons. In addition to re-energizing the Bobcats fortunes on the field, Bailiff also engineered a program that was
embraced by the community in San Marcos. For the past two summers, Bailiff and the Bobcats made a point of getting out in the community to meet with area business leaders and involve themselves in various projects, from making appearances at San Marcos elementary schools’ Citizenship Days to lending a hand to Habitat for Humanity. The Bobcats also took time away from preseason drills to help students move in to the dorms. Thanks to these efforts, Texas State set school records for total attendance as well as attendance average during the 2005 season and then bettered that mark in 2006. For his efforts, Bailiff was named the American Football Coaches Association’s Region 5 Coach of the Year and finished third in the voting for the Eddie Robinson Award presented annually to the top coach in Division I-AA. Bailiff is married to the former Angie Daniels of Versailles, Missouri. He has a daughter, Brooke, 22, and the couple has twin 9-year-old sons, Grayson and Gregory.