The Rice–Texas football rivalry is an American college footballrivalry between the Rice Owls and Texas Longhorns. Texas leads the series 73–21–1 through the 2019 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
Kennedy speech
On September 12, 1962, Rice Stadium hosted the speech in which President John F. Kennedy 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."
In hindsight Kennedy's comments may suggest a frustrated Rice with a history of losing to Texas, but as can be seen above, the two football teams had split 5-5 in their previous 10 meetings, 15-15 in their previous 30, and would tie the following month; presumably this parity would have been understood by both the President and the audience at the time. What made the comparison apt was not just that Texas was perennially strong, but that its enrollment dwarfed that of Rice, and Rice had admissions hurdles UT prospects didn’t face. That playing the Longhorns was “not... easy, but... hard” would have been obvious and appreciated at Rice Stadium. On the other hand, Kennedy's comments about Rice-Texas might have been as prescient as his statements about going to the moon : Since 1963, Rice has won just 2 games against Texas, including 28 straight losses between 1966 and 1993 and 14 straight from 1995 to the present.
