As we prepare for the Rice Owls this Saturday, BON thought a historical perspective would be best to begin the dialogue.
President Kennedy's Take of Texas vs. Rice
Forty four years ago today, President John F. Kennedy traveled to Houston, TX and Rice University to deliver a speech on space exploration and the moon. The United States was in the middle of a space race with the USSR. President Kennedy thought we couldn't get there fast enough and couldn't resist the temptation to test the next boundaries of human existence. He spoke at Rice about reaching, literally, for the stars and for the moon. He spoke about doing something so daunting, yet so necessary. And standing in that football stadium over forty years ago, President Kennedy compared Rice vs. Texas to man vs. space.
We choose to go to the moon. We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win, and the others, too.
Texas is a 31 point favorite on Saturday afternoon in Houston. But if we believed in President Kennedy then, why can't we believe in Rice this week?
Sorry, Mr. President. We won't make it to the moon on Saturday.
Rice last beat #12 Texas, 19-17 on October 16, 1994. Texas leads the all time series 66-21-1 including a 51-10 victory last season in Austin.
BTW, we did make it to the moon before the end of the decade, July 21, 1969.
--AW--