Fix Your Danged Stadium Already! (No. 3: Rice University)

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In honor of Halloween, here is the third in my series on problem stadiums that haunt programs at the FBS level.

These recommendations were originally conceived in a thread I wrote a few years back at Collegesportsinfo.com.

For every FBS program, football should be the university's No. 1 or 1A revenue generating sport. Potentially, football revenue and football-inspired alumni donations could pay for all of the other sports. If you blow football, you will lose massive amounts of money on sports.

At the bottom end of the FBS, stadium troubles often cause a lot of issues.

With Eastern Michigan and Kent State discussed, I am going to turn the harsh spotlight from the MAC.

In attendance terms, FIU and FAU would be among the next schools to address, but frankly, they are in the process of doing what is needed at their schools.  They get a flyer.

Today I am going to skip a bit ahead and talk about Rice University.

DISCLAIMER

OK, in the interest of full disclosure, as a senior in high school I applied to Rice and didn't cut the mustard in the interview process.

I hope Owl fans will still judge the suggestions on their own merits rather than suggesting they originate in any kind of sour grapes. I still have quite a lot of fondness for Texas's premier university.

Rice Stadium, and why it doesn't work for Rice University

Rice University is a tiny private school with a little over 3,000 undergraduates. They only have 44,000 alumni, 12,000 of which live in Houston.

Rice Stadium (originally called Houston Stadium) was built to seat 70,000, and now seats 47,000. 

The Owls attendance has generally stayed between 10,000 and 15,000 since the NFL Texans moved in next door, but they averaged 20,000 last year with the team's excellent play on the field.

A Little backstory on Rice/Houston Stadium

Back in the 1940s when the Texas publics in the Southwest Conference were much smaller, Rice fielded a competitive team.

They were so competitive, in fact, the city of Houston decided to build a 70,000-seat shrine to the SWC Champion Rice Owls to replace their 37,000 seat existing stadium, Rice Field.

This new stadium, initially called Houston Stadium, was to host both Rice games and the "startup" University of Houston Cougar games.

(UH, located 4 miles from Rice, launched football in 1946 as a member of the Lone Star Conference. They would eventually form the Gulf Coast Conference and play in the Missouri Valley Conference before the prestigious SWC finally let them in, in 1971.)

It is important to understand Rice football was the top level of football in Houston up to 1945.

The launch of football at UH was only the first blow in a series of hits to Rice University's program.

Bud Adams and The AFL destroy college football in Houston

In 1960, a rich Texas oilman by the name of Bud Adams decided to buy into the AFL and put a pro team in Houston at Jeppesen Stadium (now UH's Robertson Stadium), 3.5 miles away from Houston Stadium.

This move would destroy college football in Houston for the next 50-plus years.

As the Oilers grew in prosperity, they became the team the unaffiliated Houston football fan would spend their money to see, not Rice.

The Oilers fans felt comfortable sitting the appropriately sized 36,000-seat Jeppson Stadium, while the Owl fans felt more and more uncomfortable sitting in an increasingly vacant Houston Stadium.

The Oilers established what I call a pro football "killzone," an area of consumer dominance that consumes the finances of area fans a college program might otherwise be able to tap.

Things only got worse when the Oilers and Cougars moved into the much larger Astrodome a mere three miles from Rice in 1965.

It was the end of Rice football dominance, and it permanently stunted the development of UH Cougar football.

Flight of the Oilers

The Owls and the Cougars had an opportunity to change the direction of their programs in 1995 when the Oilers, a mere eight years after successfully extorting $67 million in upgrades to the Astrodome from the city, tried to demand a new stadium. Houston mayor Bob Lanier told Adams to take a long walk off a short plank, and the team moved to Tennessee.

Both Rice and UH drew higher attendance numbers in the years the NFL was absent from Houston.

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