Rice–Texas football rivalry

The Rice–Texas football rivalry is an American college football rivalry between the Rice Owls and Texas Longhorns. Texas leads the series 72–21–1 through the 2017 season.

Kennedy speech
On September 12, 1962, Rice Stadium hosted the speech in which President John F. Kennedy challenged Americans to meet his goal, set the previous year, to send a man to the moon by the end of the decade. In the speech, he used a reference to Rice University football to help frame his rhetoric: "'But why, some say, the moon? Why choose this as our goal? And they may well ask, why climb the highest mountain? Why, 35 years ago, fly the Atlantic? Why does Rice play Texas? 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.'" Kennedy's comments implied Rice had a history of losing to Texas; however, the two football teams had split 5–5 in their previous 10 meetings and would tie the following month. On the other hand, Kennedy's comments about Rice-Texas might have been as forward-looking as his statements about going to the moon (which did occur in 1969): Since 1963, Rice has gone just 2-42 against Texas, including 28 straight losses between 1966 and 1993 and 12 straight from 1995 to the present.