#88 Rice

Houston, TX

Rice Stadium

September 5, 2026

Rice 31 - Houston Christian 3 (ESPN Recap)

When I arrived at Rice’s stadium 30 minutes before scheduled kick, my Lyft dropped me off in the driveway of the stadium. There were no policemen or other cars or foot traffic. You would not have known there was a game about to be played 50 yards away. There were two ticket takers at the main gate who turned me away due to lightening weather delay of 30 mins, so I walked a couple of blocks to Little Woodrows, which was a really cool bar on a great little drag of college bars. Caught the end of Oregon/Boise St and headed back to the stadium.

Got to my seats in time for the coin flip, but probably should have just stayed at Little Woodrows to multi-screen bigger games and capitalize on their $4 Saturday draught special. There were not many people attending this game.

This stadium is grossly too large for Rice’s program and it really hit home while sitting through a terrible football game. The stadium used to hold 70,000 and now holds 47,000. The stated attendance for the game was 15,128 but there were not more than 2,500 fans there, and it was probably closer to 1,000. Good news is they are planning a renovation to further reduce capacity to 30,000 in 2028. They might want to consider going a little deeper with the cut to capacity.

This program and field and team was sad. HCU definitely had the louder fanbase despite only having 500 fans and Rice having 1,000 fans.

HCU scored a FG on its opening drive and didn’t score the rest of the game, though moved the ball effectively and only were outgained 493-244, which was similar to SMU outgaining FSU in a 3-pt win. Rice ran the ball 70 times for 465 yards and went 4-10 passing for 28 yards…against Houston Christian. They play at Notre Dame next week in what might be a sub 150 yards total offense game for the Owls.

I want to like Rice because it’s a great academic school and in a city I enjoy, but this was easily a bottom 3 game day experience for me right there with Troy and UMass. Every MAC and MWC stadium I have been to have been much more energized than this game, and for Rice to throw for only 28 yards against

a FCS team is really something.

Check out this 4th down throw in Q2 by Rice and think about how that offense is going to do next week when they travel to South Bend

I had a small bet on HCU +23.0 for the game and they had this throw with 34 seconds left to back door cover

..but the ref in the endzone didn’t want that and called offensive pass interference somehow here. Crazy call.

The lounge at Rice was also sad.

Most of the people in there were not watching the game. The food was dry brisket (with no sauces available), cold Carolina pulled chicken, dry mac n cheese, and the best baked beans I’ve ever had. This is the view from the lounge of a random Rice TD:

When the game ended, I got picked up in the same main driveway of the stadium on a 1-minute wait with no foot or car or police traffic issues at all. That game may as well have been played at my buddy Jay’s house down the road. Troy is still the worst because Troy, AL has nothing to offer and the surrounding area around Rice is really nice, but please don’t make that stadium a destination for.

Went back to hotel to watch Michigan lose to Western Michigan, and then beat Western Michigan, and then most importantly see UCLA cover the -2.0 @ Cal.

88 down, 50 to go! Next weekend another 3 stadiums in 24 hours with KU Border War, KState, and Univ of Utah lined up with some lads. Going to be fun!