More than one star college athlete has returned to his alma mater to become a coach. Scott Wise, a standout pitcher at division one Rice University, rejoined his brainy school to become . . . a chief investment officer. A 1971 economics grad, Wise started out as Rice’s comptroller and seven years later, in ’86, became the college’s CIO. In 21 years overseeing Rice’s now nearly $4 billion endowment, he achieved an 11 percent annual average return.

But in mid-2010, Wise left Rice to start a fund within the fund family of TIAA-CREF, which manages roughly 100 times as much as the Houston school. He thus joins a roster of former CIOs who’ve become outsourced-endowment managers. Wise’s Houston-­based Covariance Capital Management, launched this spring, plans to customize portfolios for endowments of $100 million and up. He says of his career changeup: “Timing is everything.