The Rice–Texas football rivalry is an American
college football
College football (french: Football universitaire) refers to gridiron football played by teams of student athletes. It was through college football play that American football rules first gained popularity in the United States.
Unlike most ...
rivalry
A rivalry is the state of two people or groups engaging in a lasting competitive relationship. Rivalry is the "against each other" spirit between two competing sides. The relationship itself may also be called "a rivalry", and each participant o ...
between the Rice Owls and Texas Longhorns. Texas leads the series 74–21–1 through the 2021 season.
Rice has won only twice since 1960. 17 of the 21 Rice wins came between 1930 and 1960, a span over which it enjoyed a slight edge over the Longhorns.
Game results
John F. Kennedy speech
On September 12, 1962,
Rice Stadium hosted the speech in which President
John F. Kennedy
John Fitzgerald Kennedy (May 29, 1917 – November 22, 1963), often referred to by his initials JFK and the nickname Jack, was an American politician who served as the 35th president of the United States from 1961 until his assassination ...
challenged Americans to meet his goal, set the previous year, to send a man to the Moon by the end of the decade. In the speech, he used a reference to Rice University football to help frame his rhetoric:
But why, some say, the Moon? Why choose this as our goal? And they may well ask, why climb the highest mountain? Why, 35 years ago, fly the Atlantic? Why does Rice play Texas? We choose to go to the Moon! We choose to go to the Moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win, and the others, too.
See also
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List of NCAA college football rivalry games
This is a list of rivalry games in college football in the United States. The list also shows any trophy awarded to the winner of the rivalry between the teams.
NCAA Division I Football Bowl Subdivision
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References
College football rivalries in the United States
Rice Owls football
Texas Longhorns football
1914 establishments in Texas
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