Wednesday, December 31, 2008

Texas Bowl

We are big college baseball fans. We've had season tickets to Rice baseball for 9 years now. This is the first year that we bought football season tickets and, my guess is, we'll be season ticket holders for another! The Rice Owl football team (members of Conference USA) went 9-3 in the regular season. They were invited to the Texas Bowl. Convenient as it is the hometown bowl. The game was held December 30 at Reliant Stadium home of the Houston Texans. Yep, we were there.



Reliant Stadium -- a really big place!


Bronze bull "dressed" for the season.



Rice Owls meet the Western Michigan Broncos (also 9-3).



This is a picture after the game. They've spent the week together at lunches, dinners and press conferences. They got to know each other. I really like both teams
getting together to congratulate each other
on a game well played.



I'm happy to report that the Owls won the game 38-14
for their 10th win of the season. It's been a
very long time since the Owls have seen such a
successful season. It's the Owls' first bowl win
since the 1954 Cotton Bowl game. 10-3 matched
the school single season record of 59 years ago.

Fireworks after the game.

As Richard Justice of the Houston Chronicle wrote:
"Rice wants to be a winning program that challenges
its kids academically and athletically."

That's why we are fans.

Go Owls!

4 comments:

Pat - Arkansas said...

Happy New Year, Snap!

Maria-Thérèse ~ www.afiori.com said...

Happy New Year!!!!

Why do you call it bowl? I know there's also the super bowl etc.

♥ visit me at www.afiori.com

Snap said...

Happy New Year ladies!

I have no idea why the "bowl" games are called "bowls". I googled and tried about.com. If someone knows the answer, I'd like to hear it! The Super Bowl is for professional football. The Sugar, Rose, Armed Services, Music City, Texas, etc are all for college football teams. I'll be dreaming about this tonight!

Snap said...

I'm still looking for *bowl* information, but my handsome and smart husband suggested I look at the history of the Rose Bowl since he thought it was the first college football bowl game. Looking at Rose Bowl history I found the following:

The Yale Bowl is a football stadium in New Haven, Connecticut on the border of West Haven, about 1-1/2 miles west of Yale's main campus. Completed in 1914, ground was broken on the stadium in August 1913. It was built by excavating the field area and then building up a berm around the perimeter with the excavated earth to create an elliptical bowl. It was the first bowl-shaped stadium in the country, and provided inspiration for the design of such stadiums as the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum, the Rose Bowl, and Michigan Stadium.

So, I think the *bowl* comes from the shape and has taken on additional meaning as time has gone on.