The 1949 Rice Owls football team was an

American football American football (referred to simply as football in the United States and Canada), also known as gridiron, is a team sport played by two teams of eleven players on a rectangular field with goalposts at each end. The offense, the team wi ...

team that represented

Rice University William Marsh Rice University (Rice University) is a private research university in Houston, Texas. It is on a 300-acre campus near the Houston Museum District and adjacent to the Texas Medical Center. Rice is ranked among the top universities ...

during the 1949 college football season. The Owls were led by 10th-year head coach

Jess Neely Jesse Claiborne Neely (January 4, 1898 – April 9, 1983) was an American football player and a baseball and football coach. He was head football coach at Southwestern University (now Rhodes College) from 1924 to 1927, at Clemson University f ...

and played their home games at

Rice Field Wendel D. Ley Track and Holloway Field is a stadium in Houston, Texas. It is primarily used for track and field and soccer for the Rice University Owls. It is bounded by Main Street (southeast), University Boulevard (southwest), Reckling Pa ...

in Houston, Texas. The team competed as a member of the

Southwest Conference The Southwest Conference (SWC) was an NCAA Division I college athletic conference in the United States that existed from 1914 to 1996. Composed primarily of schools from Texas, at various times the conference included schools from Oklahoma ...

, winning the conference with an unbeaten record of 6–0. They ended the regular season with an overall record of 9–1, and were ranked fifth in the final

AP Poll The Associated Press poll (AP poll) provides weekly rankings of the top 25 NCAA teams in one of three Division I college sports: football, men's basketball and women's basketball. The rankings are compiled by polling 62 sportswriters and broad ...

. Rice was invited to the

1950 Cotton Bowl Classic The 1950 Cotton Bowl Classic featured the Rice Owls and the North Carolina Tar Heels. Background The Owls won the Southwest Conference for the fourth time in 15 years. This was their second appearance in the Cotton Bowl Classic and their first s ...

, where they defeated

Southern Conference The Southern Conference (SoCon) is a collegiate athletic conference affiliated with the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) Division I. Southern Conference football teams compete in the Football Championship Subdivision (formerly k ...

champion

North Carolina North Carolina () is a state in the Southeastern region of the United States. The state is the 28th largest and 9th-most populous of the United States. It is bordered by Virginia to the north, the Atlantic Ocean to the east, Georgia and ...

Schedule

References

Rice Rice is the seed of the grass species '' Oryza sativa'' (Asian rice) or less commonly ''Oryza glaberrima'' (African rice). The name wild rice is usually used for species of the genera '' Zizania'' and '' Porteresia'', both wild and domesticat ...

Rice Owls football seasons Southwest Conference football champion seasons Cotton Bowl Classic champion seasons

Rice Owls football The Rice Owls football program represents Rice University in the sport of American football. The team competes at the NCAA Division I FBS level and compete in the American Athletic Conference. Rice Stadium, built in 1950, hosts the Owls' home f ...

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