NCAA Football Rice Football

Here's a nice moment from the weekend: Tulane tailback Matt Forte has crossed the 2,000 yard threshold this season. Forte entered Saturday with 1813 rushing yards and added another 195 today against Rice for good measure. That leaves Forte with 2,008 yards. For good measure, five touchdowns were among those 39 carries.

Forte was lightly recruited out of high school, with Tulane his only I-A offer. He's made a lot of people look foolish in notching 4,146 yards and counting over his career.

Forte may not be the only back to notch 2,000 yards this year, as UCF's Kevin Smith has 1947 yards after an impressive 179 yard, three-touchdown performance of his own today against SMU.

It's a passing era in college football, but the days of the 2,000 yard back aren't dead yet. Update: Forte is just the 12th back in D-I history to surpass the 2,000 yard mark, and the first since 2004.

Full Name: R&L Carriers New Orleans Bowl

Vitals: Rice Owls (7-5, C-USA 6-2) vs. Troy Trojans (7-5, Sunbelt 6-1)
Friday, December 22, 8 pm, New Orleans, Louisiana, ESPN2
Spread: Rice by 4.5 to 6.

How Rice Got Here:
By having more wins then 6 win teams in BCS conferences and being a relatively short drive or flight from Houston to hopefully bring more fans. The Owls started out the season 1-5 before winning their final 6 games to clinch their first bowl bid since 1961. They have a budding star in WR Jarrett Dillard who caught 20 of Rice's 27 TD passes and accounted for about half the total receiving yards on the team.

How Troy got here:
By holding the tie-breaking win over Sun Belt Conference Co-Champion Middle Tennessee State. Troy is in its first bowl game ever. The Trojans are led by QB Omar Haugabook who led the Sun Belt Conference in yards, completions, touchdowns and interceptions.

What you absolutely have to know about Rice:
Forget the fact that they had a 1-10 record last year. Forget that Rice Stadium was the site for Superbowl VIII. It's important to note that the Rice Coffeehouse, as of November, is now serving Fair Trade Coffee. There's also the annual Beer Bike for graduate students. Oh, and the offense is averaging around 28 points a game.

What you absolutely have to know about Troy:
The school, when opened in Troy, Alabama in 1887, was called the State Normal School. Last year, the school dropped the "State" from their name to be simply Troy U. One of the top patsy road opponents in 1-A college football, that trend continues next year with the SEC-centric troika of Florida, Arkansas and Georgia.

What you absolutely have to know about this bowl game:
R&L Carriers is a trucking company, and as the title sponsor might be the more absurd since the Poulan Weed Eater Independence Bowl. This is the 6th year of the New Orleans Bowl with C-USA holding a 4-1 edge over the Sun Belt. The player gifts consist of a New Orleans Bowl Watch ($85 retail) and Ring/Pendant ($250 value).

Why to watch:
Who doesn't like offense? Neither team is particularly good at defense, but have nice offenses. Troy has a lousy secondary and Rice has Jarrett Dillard ready to sprint freely down the sidelines. Rice had the 110th ranked defense. Odds are good on seeing some spectacular offensive plays when little defense is displayed.

Score Prediction:
Rice 42 Troy 37

Lost in this year's topsy-turvy college football season -- Miami and Florida State puttering along at 6-6, Rutgers and Wake Forest one win away from the BCS -- is perhaps the season's most miraculous turnaround: the Rice Owls, 1-10 a year ago. How odd is it for a Rice football team to be any good? I have a personal anecdote to offer.

Once Michigan brought in Rice to serve as one of their annual preseason sacrifices to the god of better facilities. I had no idea what sort of school Rice was -- all I knew is that it was in Texas and sucked at football -- until halftime, when the Rice band did all the revealing I would need. As the various bandos scrambled to their proper positions on the field and assembled, it gradually became clear. There was some sort of lower-case e in the middle. A smallish cross -- no, wait, that's an x -- was placed slightly to the right and above the e. To the left, some sort of curvy, s-type thing...

Oh God.

They're doing calculus.

Then, as soon as I realized that these... dorks were doing calculus on a football field the dorks composing the integral symbol dispersed and ran to the other side of the e and x and reassembled themselves as a "+ c", because when you integrate e^x you get e^x plus an indeterminate constant. I understood this and was horrified at myself, at the band, at the cruel world. At some point in the postgame I read somewhere or heard somewhere that the purpose of the integral stunt was to spell out "SEX" -- since an integral symbol does, indeed, look like an S -- on the field in front of 110,000 people.

So please let this anecdote inform your opinion of the Rice football team and the news that they've secured their first bowl bid since 1961. They're just 7-5 and they're probably going to play the not-so-mighty Troy Trojans of Troy (We're From Troy) in the New Orleans Bowl, which is so rinky-dink it doesn't even have a sponsor, but they've overcome so, so much just to get here.

Noble dork-tolerators of the Rice football team, the Fanhouse salutes you! And since I'm a Michigan fan I hope you beat the snot out of the Sun Belt champion 342-0.

What the hell?

Rice freshman football player Dale Lloyd died early Monday morning after collapsing on the practice field Sunday afternoon. He was conscious and taken to an ambulance after the collapse, but died the next morning, around 9 a.m., school officials said. His condition had worsened throughout the night and no official word has been given about his illness pending an autopsy.

The Rice family is obviously shocked and saddened by his death. Representing the program, Athletic Director Chris Del Conte had this to say:

I just can't describe the pain we're feeling right now and the shock. It will take a long time to digest. The coaches are crushed. This is a tough time for all of us.

I'll say...

My condolences and the condolences from everyone at AOL Sports at this young man's shocking death.

More:

---Rice Athletics Department official release

---Houston Chronicle

---MySpace: R.I.P. Dale Lloyd