This was by far the biggest, most exciting and best game of the season. After last week’s win over well-regarded Arkansas, confidence was growing in the locker room, on campus and in Houston. That confidence proved to be well placed. Rice’s 7-6 defeat of the number one football team in the nation in a hard-fought contest was an emotional high point in the college careers of the players and many of their fellow students. This article by one of those students, Jim Greenwood, ’58, appeared in the Rice Historical Society’s magazine, The Cornerstone, in 2007. He tells the story of this game far better than I could:
TheGame(1957)RICEvsA&MbyJimGreenwood
Interestingly, the files on this game contain much more scouting material than is typical for other games. (Not, I suspect, because A&M was more heavily scouted but rather because they hung on to the reports in the aftermath of the game.) Here’s a short list summing up key points, which must have been passed out to the players:
The next day the Houston newspapers were jammed full of stories and photographs. Here are some of my favorites:
Bonus: There’s so much activity on campus right now I’m struggling to keep up, but here’s my single favorite landscaping improvement: the replacement of the Anderson Hall Mud Pit with some groundcover that will thrive in the shade. Whoever thought of this is clearly a genius.
Extra bonus: I’ve never seen these doors at the Brochstein Pavilion open before.
