Berry Tramel: Homer Rice was the man who would be king of OU football (2024)

Homer Rice died Monday, at age 97.

Some of you never have heard of Homer Rice. Others know the name but can’t really place him. Only a scattering remembers his Oklahoma connection. And just a few know the full Rice story.

He was the man who would be king.

Homer Rice could have been the Oklahoma Sooner football coach, at a most opportune time. Rice could have become the OU coach in 1967, instead of Chuck Fairbanks.

Oh how history might have changed.

But Rice declined the job on the basis of a now-foreign concept. Honor. It wasn’t the right thing to do.

If you find a collegiate coach with such honor these days, notify the masses and then flee the streets, lest you be overrun with curiosity seekers worthy of the Klondike Gold Rush.

But 1967 was a different time.

Rice twice told me the story, once in 2005 and again in 2021, when he was a mere 94 and still teaching a class at Georgia Tech, which is not exactly the local junior college.

Let’s go back.

In 1966, OU hired Jim Mackenzie as head coach, the first break from the Bud Wilkinson era in two decades. Mackenzie put together what proved to be a staff for the ages: Fairbanks, Barry Switzer, Larry Lacewell, Galen Hall, Pat James. And, as offensive coordinator, Homer Rice.

Rice was from the Kentucky side of the Cincinnati suburbs. He went to Centre College in Kentucky, became a high school coach and eventually landed the offensive coordinator job at the University of Kentucky.

Mackenzie was a Kentuckian himself, having played for Bear Bryant at UK. When Mackenzie came to Norman, he turned to his alma mater to lure Rice.

Few are left from that ‘66 staff. I broke the news of Rice’s death to Switzer this week.

“Gawd, that takes me back,” Switzer said. “Long time ago.”

Switzer’s memories of Rice are not deep. Switzer didn’t know or know of Rice until that season. And Rice stayed in Norman for only that one year.

Switzer figures Mackenzie’s buddies at Alabama, where Bryant was building quite the legacy, pushed for Rice.

“He obviously wasn’t someone on my radar at all,” Switzer said. “I’d never heard of him. I know if he’d stayed, he’d probably been named head coach instead of Chuck Fairbanks.

“He (Rice) was one of those guys regents hire and fire. Most of ‘em never covered a kickoff or brought one back. He (Rice) dressed like a vice president of the university. He wore a coat and a tie every day. He was dressed in a suit every day. How many coaches do that? Homer was like that. Image was a lot to him.”

But Rice was more substance than style.

“He was a really nice guy, treated me with respect, gave me a lot of responsibility,” said Jerry Pettibone, a player under Wilkinson who was a graduate assistant coach in 1966 and went on to a long career in college football.

“Shared a lot of thoughts about his philosophy on how to handle players, his love for football. A really good experience for me. Really strong, Christian guy. Never heard a cuss word come out of Homer Rice’s mouth. Very good communicator. Just really kept everything under control.”

The ‘66 Sooners were an interesting team. OU finished 6-4, beating Texas for the first time in eight years but losing to OSU for the second time in 20 years. Those Sooners lost 38-0 to top-ranked Notre Dame but beat fourth-ranked Nebraska 10-9.

“Everything was great,” Rice told me in 2021. “That was a pretty good staff we had at that time. I knew he (Mackenzie) was going to get it going. I thought so much of him. I thought he was going to be one of the great coaches of our time.”

After the season, Rice was a hot coaching candidate. He said he turned down offers from North Carolina, Kansas, Vanderbilt and Kansas State. But Rice’s hometown University of Cincinnati won the derby, hiring him away as head coach.

And in April 1967, Mackenzie died of a heart attack at age 37.

The OU program was reeling.

Then-OU president George Lynn Cross later wrote in his glorious book, Presidents Can’t Punt, that the OU regents sought a national search but that Cross believed stability was paramount and by executive order appointed Fairbanks interim coach for the 1967. The ‘67 Sooners went 10-1, won the Big Eight title, beat Tennessee in the Orange Bowl and finished No. 2 in The Associated Press poll. The interim tag was tossed to the wind.

But according to Rice, Cross left out a quite relevant fact. Fairbanks was not Cross’ first choice.

Rice told me the story twice. Then-OU athletic director Gomer Jones, Wilkinson’s successor and Mackenzie’s predecessor as head coach, called Rice in the wake of Mackenzie’s death and offered the job.

There was one stipulation. Jones needed an immediate answer. As in five minutes. Five minutes to decide yours and your family’s future.

But Rice didn’t need more time. He knew the right answer. He said no.

“I turned down the greatest job in America,” Rice told me in 2005.

Rice’s rationale: the Sooner staff largely was set. Rice would inherit Mackenzie’s staff, which was only proper. But there was no assurance that Cincinnati would do the same as OU and promote from within. Rice was worried about his Bearcat staff, which was just four months into the job. Worried, too, about bailing on UC, which had given him quite the opportunity, considering he was just 4½ years removed from coaching high school on the other side of the Ohio River.

Rice’s actions are not recognizable in the 21st century. These are the days of Chris Beard, who took the Nevada-Las Vegas basketball job in 2016 and 19 days later bolted UNLV because Texas Tech came open. These are the days of Manny Diaz, who took the Temple football job in December 2018 and 17 days later bolted because Miami came open.

We shrug and say coaches will be coaches. It’s every man for himself. Look out for No. 1. We act like honor is from a different time, and maybe it is.

But in 1967, Homer Rice turned down Oklahoma to stay at Cincinnati.

“I think I did the right thing,” Rice said in 2021.

It all turned out just fine for Rice and the Sooners.

OU, you know all about. Fairbanks got the Sooners rolling again, with Switzer’s 1970 in-season move to the wishbone igniting a generation of smashing success and three national championships. Fairbanks moved on to the New England Patriots in 1973, Switzer took over and now has a statue in his honor just beyond the walls of Owen Field.

But Rice has a statue, too.

Rice went 9-10-1 in two seasons at Cincinnati, then left to become athletic director at North Carolina. He went back to coaching, at Rice University from 1976-77, when his record was just 4-18, but he was hired away to be the Cincinnati Bengals’ head coach.

Along the way, Rice had become something of an expert in the air option offense; option football with a passing-game twist. We see that quite a bit in modern football. Not so much in the 1970s wishbone era.

And Rice had a connection with Bengals founder Paul Brown, the National Football League legend. Late in World War II, an 18-year-old Rice joined the military and was stationed at Great Lakes Naval Station.

As OU historians know, wartime athletics were part of the military system — Wilkinson earned his coaching chops at Iowa Pre-Flight, under Missouri coaching legend Don Faurot — and Rice was a catcher on the Great Lakes baseball team. The batboy on that team? Ten-year-old Mike Brown, whose father, Paul, had left the Cleveland Browns to join the service and was coaching the station’s football team.

Paul Brown became a mentor to Rice, and more than 30 years later, Brown named Rice the Bengals’ coach. If Paul Brown believes you can coach football, you’ve got a little something going on.

Like most Bengal coaches, Rice was not successful, 8-19, but in 1980, he was named athletic director at Georgia Tech.

Rice had found his calling. In 17 years as AD, Rice became a Yellow Jacket icon. He hired Bobby Ross to coach football and Bobby Cremins to coach basketball. Rice developed and implemented the Total Persons Program at Georgia Tech — sounds like Brent Venables’ Soul Mission — which became the model for the NCAA’s Life Skills Program.

In 2021, outside Bobby Dodd Stadium, Georgia Tech erected a statue of Homer Rice.

Rice retained Oklahoma ties. His daughter was a longtime resident of Edmond. His grandson attended OU. He told me he always followed the Sooners.

Who knows what would have become of OU football had Rice said yes to Gomer Jones 57 years ago?

No way could Rice have surpassed the Fairbanks/Switzer glory and likely would not have approached it. Perhaps that Mackenzie staff eventually would have scattered. Hard to imagine OU football without Switzer and the wishbone.

But no reason to try. Rice had his own glorious life and career. So revered at a prestigious school like Georgia Tech, a statue stands in his honor, just like those south of Owen Field.

John Swofford was a North Carolina student in Rice’s Tar Heel days. Swofford eventually became UNC athletic director himself and commissioner of the Atlantic Coast Conference.

“He was my mentor then and has been throughout my adult life,” Swofford said in a statement. “I had the privilege of serving for 17 years as an AD with him in the ACC … simply put, he was the best athletic director that I ever observed during my half century in college sports.

“He was the best leader, the most organized, the best motivator, the best innovator. He was full of integrity, decency and class.”

A befitting tribute to a man who would be king, a man we should remember not for his status or titles, but for his character and his actions, a man who did the right thing with only five minutes to think about it.

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