Tell Me About Rice

[msucolt45 4236]

My wife and I went to Las Vegas during October 1994. We walked into Caesar’s Palace early that evening and I wanted to check out their Sports Booking area. It was the day we were playing Rice, so what did we have to lose?

Upon entering the area, I saw a wall full of more TV screens than I’d ever imagined! As a youngster and new to the “betting game” I asked how to place bets and etc. I put down like $40-50 on Texas to cover. This was my first ever “legal” sports bet! After watching all the screens and mesmerized by the atmosphere for an hour or so, we left to go eat dinner (can’t remember where).

What I do remember was walking back into Caesar’s, hoping to claim my $10-12.50 winnings and seeing that Rice had just won the MFg game!!!! I couldn’t believe the fact that Rice beat Texas and I’d actually lost money on that event!

Since then, I’ve never betted on the Horns, even with just a friend. Not even during the VY or Colt eras - I’ve never bet when the Horns are playing!

[msucolt45 4236]

I was still in the Army back then and 40-50 was a good chunk of my “rationed/daily betting spend.” And it was all gone during dinner!

[Frank Gallagher 97]

On 5/15/2018 at 7:18 AM, Viper said:

Valhalla is the shit. I think I paid more for parking at a lot on campus than I did for my tab for the night.

Drank beer next to Dostoevsky several times at Valhalla.

[Machinator 32103]

 

[MaybeACoordinator 8350]

 

On 7/17/2020 at 9:13 PM, BevoSwag said:

I've gone through eight decades with Rice football.  As a youngster in 1950, the year beautiful Rice Stadium opened, I sold cokes in the stand.  The Stadium was a gift from Brown and Root and was built in record time between the end of 1949 season and beginning of 1950.  At the time, Rice was a powerhouse in football led by Jess Neely who was a thorn in DKR's side for a few years.

Rice only cared about three games.  They opened every season with the big one, LSU and near capacity crowds of 70k when played every other year in Houston.  The biggest two were playing UT and aggy.  In those days all Rice/aggy games were played in Rice Stadium.  They didn't play in College Station until the late 1960's.  When Rice was competitive (Neely won the SWC every four years like clockwork and went to the Cotton Bow) they were a power.  When he wasn't in the Cotton Bowl he was in Sugar or Orange.  In those days, the jocks didn't have to qualify academically.

In the first days of televised games I remember an announcer saying when the Rice band was on the field with the team that over 10% of the entire student body was on the field.

Not too many on here will remember when when DKR beat ou in his second year ('58) and came to Rice undefeated but got blind sided by Neely and lost to Rice by four TD's.

Then there was 1962 when Rice tied us and LSU.  It was the only blemish on our otherwise undefeated season and LSU only lost one game that year.  We played LSU that year in the Cotton Bowl.

The second most famous aggy game was when the Rice students learned the aggy band marched according to the drum major blowing a whistle.  Hundreds of Rice students in the stand brought whistles and the resulting chaos was the aggy band members falling all over themselves, stumbling in formations and running off the field ending the show way early.

The other incident was when Rice spoofed the aggys with the MOB playing like drunk aggys in uniform.  The Rice band was chased into a food truck by aggy corp members.  Fortunately no one was killed like the former riot in Waco.

I'll always have a warm spot for Rice in spite of the fact it took DKR four times to finally get a win over Rice in Houston. 

 

My dad was there selling Cokes in the stands probably about five years after you...I grew up maybe a mile from the stadium on a little street called Institute Lane, so Rice was always on the edge of my imagination. When I was really little and got caught doing something bad, I'd blame an imaginary nemesis I called "the Owl." "I didn't break the cookie jar -- the Owl did it." Never worked. One my my earliest memories is our street being full of cars and people headed over to the Super Bowl...They'd leave the stadium open year round. I went in there and chunked a football around with some friends and made a sliding catch on that turf. Whoa, lesson learned about turf burn. I basically peeled off my forearm on that shit. Around the same time I was poking around a concession stand in the empty stadium and found an old hand-painted sign that said "COLORED ONLY." I stole it and gave it to my grandfather, who was kind of disturbingly pleased to have it. I don't know what he did with it...This was about 1986. I was madly in love with this incredibly gorgeous and whipsmart homegirl I met at Coaches Driving School. 

I took her to a movie and things went well, or so I thought. She was nowhere near as into me as I was into her. So anyway I took her out again, hoping to get her drunk at Hungry International (where they served everybody) and at least beat out an infield hit to first base. We'd see where things went after that. She had other plans. She, we'll call her Laura, brought a friend with her -- one who was as into me as I was into Laura. And Laura was trying to fob me off on this other girl ("Susan"), who was perfectly fine, but just not in Laura's league. Laura was then, and remains now, pretty close to being a league of her own. It's hilarious -- 35 years later, people who know her now and knew here then are impressed at my 16-year-old game just for getting her to go out on even one date with me.

So I ended up buying us all Black Mamba beers and we got a little buzz on and headed over to the stadium and climbed to the top to watch the city lights...Me in love with Laura, Susan in love with me, and none of us getting anywhere. And that is where that sad triangle ended. 

And oh yeah, I saw some games there too. I remember seeing a Yeoman veer juggernaut flatten a Tommy Kramer-led Rice team...Saw us struggle through some Akers games, one of which was that Bluebonnet Bowl vs Air Force. Others just random games -- you could just walk over there at halftime and stroll right in for free. 

When my son was a toddler we'd be at Valhalla every Friday, which is unofficial family day. A bunch of us would go and spread blankets and get smashed while our kids would roam the campus free as birds. My son is still friends with his little Valhalla bunch to this day, twenty years later. He used to think Rice, the university, was kind of an adjunct to Valhalla, the real nexus of the school. And it was funny / sad -- he got to where he could lead us walking all the way back to our house at age four or so. He knew the whole mile back and forth by heart. 

Edited February 14, 2021 by MaybeACoordinator

[Machinator 32103]

 

[PGFrog 25]

I am not sure what Rice's ceiling is as a program, but Bloomgreen is trying to make them competitive in their conference which is progress for that program.

[Longboard Horn 41395]

On 2/14/2021 at 2:25 PM, PGFrog said:

I am not sure what Rice's ceiling is as a program, but Bloomgreen is trying to make them competitive in their conference which is progress for that program.

The ceiling is always to win the C-USA, which Rice did soundly in 2013. I was at that game and Rice completely annihilated Marshall. They shocked the confernce, as well as everyone residing in the Houston area, by finishing 10-4. 

 

[Longboard Horn 41395]

https://riceowls.com/news/2021/1/27/2021-football-schedule-revealed.aspx

The Owls are starting their season with 3 straight SWC rivalries: at Arky, UH, at Texas 

[Machinator 32103]

 

[Da Fino 2821]

Weird turn of events. I wonder if Louisville hinted at a position change and he bolted? 

[Longboard Horn 41395]

The Rice home opener from last season 

[Born Burnt 6276]

Rice RB Tackled Off Bench in the 1954 Cotton Bowl Has Died
https://www.nbcdfw.com/news/sports/rice-rb-tackled-off-bench-in-the-1954-cotton-bowl-has-died/2674866/

Sent from my SM-A326U using Tapatalk

[Bama Llama 1510]

Football - terrible, band good. 

I attended RIce from 1969-72.  Man, we even cheered first downs.  A favorite chant we yelled with gusto after a fumble, interception, missed extra point, failed fourth down and similar FUBAR type plays, which occurred all too often, was this: "oooooooOOOOH SHIT!  GOD DAMN!"  Lots of students left at half time, which was usually the high point of a Rice football game because the band was so fucking hilarious.  At halftime of a Rice-Houston game in the early 70s, the PA guy announced, as the band tried to form the outline of the Astrodome, "The Marching Owl Band salutes Judge Roy Hofheinz and the Houston Astrodome, the WORLD'S SMALLEST INDOOR FOOTBALL STADIUM!"  at which point Hofheinz himself, whose box was nearby, stormed into the PA booth and yanked the mic and cord out of the wall and chased the PA guy out.  The MOB carried on sans narration.

Empty seats are nothing new.  Rice Stadium was filled for only two games in the three years I was a student there: Texas in 1970 (LBJ was there, along with 55,000 Texas students and fans) and LSU in one or two of those years.  I remember seeing Rice torch the VMI Keydets 55-0.  We had some memorable wins over Aggie, one in particular I recall in Aggieland in which Rice was trailing at the half, did not make a first down in the second half and somehow won the game.  The Rice OWl mascot dude had a sign pasted to his ass, covered by his tail feathers.  He would strut from section to section, waving at the fans, then would bend over, flip up his tail and show the sign, which read, in block print same font as Aggie helmets, "EATME."  The guys in khaki pelted him with cups and ice, just did not understand the sporting humor.

Great link to Rice band adventures: https://www.texastribune.org/2016/09/19/five-other-times-rices-marching-band-made-people-m/

Direct quote from the link:  During a 1973 game against Texas A&M, Rice’s marching band made fun of several Aggie traditions. The band marched out to the field in a military-style goose-step and turned the Aggie War Hymn into "March of the Wooden Soldiers.” The band also made fun of Texas A&M’s school mascot, the dog Reveille, by forming a fire hydrant. An angry group of Texas A&M students gathered outside Rice’s stadium, and the band eventually had to be transported out via food service trucks. The performance has since been dubbed “The Halftime of Infamy.”

In fairness to the Owls athletics of that era, in 1971 (70? 72?) Rice was #1 in the SWC in every sport but football.   So, we had that going for us for one year anyway.

[Judge Roybeanbag 11860]

48 minutes ago, Bama Llama said:

Football - terrible, band good. 

I attended RIce from 1969-72.  Man, we even cheered first downs.  A favorite chant we yelled with gusto after a fumble, interception, missed extra point, failed fourth down and similar FUBAR type plays, which occurred all too often, was this: "oooooooOOOOH SHIT!  GOD DAMN!"  Lots of students left at half time, which was usually the high point of a Rice football game because the band was so fucking hilarious.  At halftime of a Rice-Houston game in the early 70s, the PA guy announced, as the band tried to form the outline of the Astrodome, "The Marching Owl Band salutes Judge Roy Hofheinz and the Houston Astrodome, the WORLD'S SMALLEST INDOOR FOOTBALL STADIUM!"  at which point Hofheinz himself, whose box was nearby, stormed into the PA booth and yanked the mic and cord out of the wall and chased the PA guy out.  The MOB carried on sans narration.

Empty seats are nothing new.  Rice Stadium was filled for only two games in the three years I was a student there: Texas in 1970 (LBJ was there, along with 55,000 Texas students and fans) and LSU in one or two of those years.  I remember seeing Rice torch the VMI Keydets 55-0.  We had some memorable wins over Aggie, one in particular I recall in Aggieland in which Rice was trailing at the half, did not make a first down in the second half and somehow won the game.  The Rice OWl mascot dude had a sign pasted to his ass, covered by his tail feathers.  He would strut from section to section, waving at the fans, then would bend over, flip up his tail and show the sign, which read, in block print same font as Aggie helmets, "EATME."  The guys in khaki pelted him with cups and ice, just did not understand the sporting humor.

Great link to Rice band adventures: https://www.texastribune.org/2016/09/19/five-other-times-rices-marching-band-made-people-m/

Direct quote from the link:  During a 1973 game against Texas A&M, Rice’s marching band made fun of several Aggie traditions. The band marched out to the field in a military-style goose-step and turned the Aggie War Hymn into "March of the Wooden Soldiers.” The band also made fun of Texas A&M’s school mascot, the dog Reveille, by forming a fire hydrant. An angry group of Texas A&M students gathered outside Rice’s stadium, and the band eventually had to be transported out via food service trucks. The performance has since been dubbed “The Halftime of Infamy.”

In fairness to the Owls athletics of that era, in 1971 (70? 72?) Rice was #1 in the SWC in every sport but football.   So, we had that going for us for one year anyway.

Quote

John “Grungy” Gladu, who was a member of the MOB in the 1970s and now calls himself the MOB's "de facto archivist," said he was surprised by the reaction the performance got.

“This came completely out of the blue," Gladu said. "I had no idea that people would take it as making fun of sexual assault. It is nothing like that. We were simply sticking it to Ken Starr because he was institutionally ineffective at preventing harm to his students.”

Ha I love Grungy.  He’s been a family friend since my sister was in the MOB in the late 70s.  He worked at NASA for a long time.  Drove an old VW van painted up called the Bozo Bus.