NCAAF Rice Owls

General Information

• NCAA Division: Division I
• Conference: Conference USA (2005-present)
• City: Houston
• Stadium: Rice Stadium

Championships

• National Championships: None
• Conference Titles: 8 (1934, 1937, 1946, 1949, 1953, 1957, 1994, 2013)
• Divisional Championships: 2 (2008, 2013)

Past Conferences

• Southwest
• Western Athletic

Team History

The Rice Owls are a Division I program located in Houston. Rice, a member of Conference USA since 2005, is coached by Mike Bloomgren.

Rice has won eight conference titles, but none since 2013. The Owls went 7-1 in C-USA play and 10-4 overall that season under David Bailiff. They played in the Liberty Bowl, which they lost 44-7 to Mississippi State. They won their last bowl game the following season, routing Hawaii 30-6 in the Hawaii Bowl.

Rice has participated in 13 bowls overall, most recently in 2022. The Owls went only 5-7 in the regular season — one wins shy of the threshold for bowl eligibility — but without enough six-win teams to fill all 41 bowl games, they were granted a game based on their success in the classroom. The Owls had the highest Academic Progress Rate — a metric that measures the success of a school’s student-athletes — of any five-win team. Despite unlikely odds, they wound up in the LendingTree Bowl and lost 38-24 to Southern Mississippi.

By going 5-8, Rice finished last season with its eighth straight losing record. Bloomgren, the former offensive coordinator at Stanford, has been at the helm for five of those. His overall record is 16-39.

He was preceded by Bailiff, who was 57-80 over 11 seasons and was twice named the C-USA Coach of the Year.
The Owls’ best stretch was from the 1930-50s, when they combined to win six Southwest Conference championships and went 4-1 in bowl games. They made their postseason debut in the 1937 Cotton Bowl Classic, beating Colorado 28-14. The school also won the 1946 Orange Bowl (Tennessee, 8-0) and the Cotton Bowl in both 1949 (North Carolina, 27-13) and 1953 (Alabama, 28-6).

In 1996, the Owls became a part of the Western Athletic Conference. The program is slated to join the American Athletic Conference in 2023.

Rice’s alumni base includes several NFL players: Pittsburgh Steelers kicker Chris Boswell and Los Angeles Chargers cornerback Bryce Callahan, along with former players Bert Emanuel, Larry Izzo, Vance McDonald, Frank Ryan and Luke Willson.

All-Time Records

Passing Yards

o Chase Clement: 9,785
o Tommy Kramer: 6,197
o Randy Hertel: 6,161
o Taylor McHargue: 6,117
o Driphus Jackson: 5,912

Rushing Yards

o Trevor Cobb: 4,948
o Charles Ross: 2,698
o Quinton Smith: 2,505
o Michael Perry: 2,496
o Chad Nelson: 2,415

Receiving Yards

o Jarett Dillard: 4,138
o Jordan Taylor: 2,588
o David Houser: 2,358
o Eric Henley: 2,200
o James Casey: 1,914