Bill Little commentary: Passing through history

EDITOR'S NOTE: Texas' legendary publicist and Hall of Fame sports information director Bill Little was the preeminent historian of Texas Athletics and often weighed in with insightful and informative commentaries throughout his career. Little sadly passed away on August 18, but his many stories and legacy will live on forever. Here's a wonderful piece he wrote on the Texas-Rice football series in 2007.

I have told this story before, but as Rice University visits Darrell K Royal-Texas Memorial Stadium as the Longhorns' home facility is undergoing a transformation, it is worth telling again.

In the movie, Raiders of the Lost Ark, the bad guy says to Indiana Jones as he points to the Arc of The Covenant, "Indy, we are only passing through history -- this IS history."

And so it is with this Texas-Rice football series.

It began over 90 years ago, when Rice, playing in only its third football season, lost to a Texas team that included six players who would enter the Longhorn Hall of Honor after it was started more than 40 years later.

They were legendary names -- folks like Louis Jordan, the team captain, and Gen. K. L. Berry, Pig Dittmar and Clyde Littlefield. And that was only the beginning.

A year later, Rice and Texas met on October 16, 1915, in the Longhorns' first game in a new league alignment called the Southwest Conference. For 82 years, from that beginning season in 1914 through 1995, the two schools played every year. It was longest continuous streak of any Longhorns opponent.

Texas controlled the series in the early years, but the fledgling Owls did post a notable win in 1924 under their new coach, a guy named John W. Heisman (for whom the famous trophy is named). But beginning in 1930, the series between the university on South Main in Houston and the guys from the Forty Acres in Austin was second only to Texas A&M as the Longhorns' biggest rival.

In 1937, Texas hired D. X. Bible, and Rice followed in 1940 with the hiring of Jess Neely. Heisman not withstanding, the two coaches brought credibility and respectability to both the game and the coaching profession that was unsurpassed.

From 1930 through Neely's final win over Texas in 1965, Rice actually held the edge in the series, 18-17-1. In 1957, Darrell Royal took the Texas job, and he would go on to become the fourth member of the prestigious College Football Hall of Fame to coach in the series.

Royal finished as the winningest coach in Southwest Conference history. Neely finished tied for second in a career that spanned 26 years.

For years, the Rice-Texas game was the social event of the football season, and when the Owls opened their state-of-the-art stadium in the mid-1950s, it was usually packed with 70,000 folks for the meeting with Texas.

And the series took on an unusual quality. From 1954 until the Longhorns snapped the string with a victory in Houston in 1964 and Rice returned the favor by winning in Austin in 1965, the home team won. The only exception was a 14-14 tie in 1962, when a heavy underdog Rice team knocked Texas from its spot as the No. 1 team in the nation. Otherwise, Rice won in Houston, and Texas won in Austin.

But beginning with Neely's final season of 1966, Texas reeled off 28 straight victories until Rice ended the streak on a rainy Sunday night in Houston in 1994.

When the final SWC season ended in 1995, Rice was the first former league member that Texas scheduled.

The 2007 game in DKR-Texas Memorial Stadium recalls, for old-timers, that era 50 years ago when Rice opened its new stadium. Work crews, just as they have here in Austin, toiled 'round the clock to get the stadium ready. Now, after lots of hard work through a rainy spring and summer, fans sit in the squared-off north end that will comprise the first level of a multi-level end zone in Austin. The proximity to the field is striking. For years folks in this part of the country, as well as a Super Bowl crowd in 1974, thought Rice Stadium was the best spectator stadium in the country. It, too, had a similar vantage point from the end zone.

But it is important that Rice and Texas play for other reasons. Long after those who remember the "good ole days" of the Southwest Conference are gone, the two schools will be competing for excellence in academia as the state's premier institutions of higher learning.

There is a particular irony in this series for Longhorns coach Mack Brown. In recent times, his brother, Watson, served as the head coach at Rice. But his connection with the series goes back even farther.

When Mack was coming out of high school in Cookeville, Tenn., he had originally dreamed of playing at Alabama. But Watson was playing at Vanderbilt. And when Mack took his visit to Nashville, the guy who had the biggest influence on his decision was the Vandy athletics director.

He was a white-haired old gentleman with an unmistakable southern drawl. His name was Jess Neely.

Things have changed a lot since these two were the kingpins of the Southwest Conference. They play in different leagues, and to a large extent, with different aspirations.

What hasn't changed is the profile of the two universities, and the commitment of the coaches of today. Rice and Texas rank proudly as two of the finest academic institutions in the country, and their commitment to excellence has never wavered.

When Rice coach David Baliff was at Texas State, Mack Brown both befriended him and respected him. He not only was a good football coach; he had important values that fit Mack's view of what a coach should be.

Mack believes he and Baliff are both committed to the same principles of the game, and of the importance of student athletes, that their legendary predecessors were.

In 1962, in a speech at Rice Stadium, President Kennedy was talking about America's race against the Russians for pre-eminence in space.

"Why do we want to put a man on the moon?" he asked in that famous New England accent. And then he surveyed the crowd and simply said, "Why does Rice play Texas?"

The sudden switch to sports surprised the huge crowd, which included most of the student body of what was then called The Rice Institute, with a student population barely a tenth of the big university in Austin. And then he answered his own question.

"To achieve higher things."

That said far more than it seemed.

That is why these coaches are proud of the young people whom they coach, and why both of these schools walk proudly among the nation's elite universities.

They are driven by the higher purpose that Brown refers to when he says, "We're in the education business during the week and the entertainment business on the weekend," with a stated goal to "win championships with nice kids who graduate."

They will not all be perfect, and sadly, some will make life-changing mistakes. But the reason you coach in college is because you are a teacher, doing your best to influence lives.

Because long after the entertaining ends, the education will be the linchpin of the future, where you pass through history, to history.