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Did you ever hear the story about former UNC athletic director Homer Rice?
Rice died at 97 this week after an honored career as a football coach and college athletic director. He was so good at the latter for Georgia Tech that his bronze statue stands outside Bobby Dodd Stadium on the Tech campus.
He led the dormant Yellow Jackets, who had just entered the ACC, to a resurgence that included a national championship in football, a Final Four in basketball and six other Olympic sports programs that won ACC titles and reached the top of their rankings.
Rice helped Georgia Tech personify the much-maligned tag of student-athlete through his Total Person program that stemmed from a book his father had given him when he was 12 years old entitled “I Dare You.” He said it “stimulated” him to search for secrets to successful living. Almost everyone he mentored bought in.
At his core, Rice was a football coach from the high school level to Division 1 in college to the NFL, where he had his only losing record because Bengals owner Paul Brown wouldn’t give him the resources to sign players. That’s when Rice took over at Georgia Tech.
Rice had been the athletic director at Carolina from 1969 through 1975, when Bill Dooley built his juggernaut and Dean Smith won two ACC regular season and tourney championships. He succeeded Chuck Erickson, who served through the ’50 and ‘60s.
During training camp for the 1969 football season, a player named Bill Arnold collapsed on the practice field late on a blistering hot day and eventually died of complications from heat prostration. UNC put medical doctors and trainers in charge of practice and from there built one of the best sports medicine programs in the country.
But it seemed Rice could not get as close to athletes as he was as a coach, and he became itchy to get back on the sideline. Now comes the story that may surprise you.
Long-time N.C. State football coach Earle Edwards retired in 1970 and was replaced by assistant Al Michaels, whose Wolfpack went 3-8 for one season before State took a chance on quirky William & Mary coach Lou Holtz.
Before that hire, Rice and State AD Willis Casey had struck up a friendship during ACC meetings, and Casey tried to hire Rice as his new football coach. Rice seriously considered the job before he was convinced that both arch-rival schools would never get over it. Rice stayed in Chapel Hill for three more years before he left to be the head coach and athletic director at Rice, no relation.
Bill Cobey succeeded Rice and has long championed the leadership lessons he learned from his predecessor. So did John Swofford, who was a Morehead Scholar and football player during Rice’s tenure and eventually succeeded Cobey. Strange but all true.
Read Steve Hummer’s fascinating story about Rice in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
Featured image via UNC Athletic Communications
Art Chansky is a veteran journalist who has written ten books, including best-sellers “Game Changers,” “Blue Bloods,” and “The Dean’s List.” He has contributed to WCHL for decades, having made his first appearance as a student in 1971. His “Sports Notebook” commentary airs daily on the 97.9 The Hill WCHL and his “Art’s Angle” opinion column runs weekly on Chapelboro.Chapelboro.com does not charge subscription fees, and you can directly support our efforts in local journalism here. Want more of what you see on Chapelboro? Let us bring free local news and community information to you by signing up for our newsletter.
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