ATLANTA (AP) — Homer Rice, who as athletic director hired some of Georgia Tech's most successful coaching staff and introduced the school's Total Person Program, has died. He was 97.
Georgia Tech announced Monday night that Rice died Monday.
Rice served as Georgia Tech's athletic director from 1980 to 1997. Notable hires included basketball coach Bobby Cremins, football coaches Bobby Ross and George O'Leary, and baseball coaches Jim Morris and Danny Hall. Georgia Tech won the 1990 football championship, its first Atlantic Coast Conference basketball championship in 1985, and advanced to the Final Four in 1990.
During Rice's tenure leading the athletic department, the Yellow Jackets won 16 ACC championships across five sports.
Rice was a high school, college and NFL football coach before beginning his administrative career, coaching with the NFL's Cincinnati Bengals from 1979-79 before beginning his coaching career at Georgia Tech.
Rice served as an assistant at Kentucky (1962-65) and Oklahoma (1966) and coached at the University of Cincinnati (1967-68) before serving as athletic director at the University of North Carolina for six years. In 1976, he was hired as athletic director and football coach at Rice University, a position he held for two years.
Rice University's Total Person Program is considered a model for NCAA life skills programs. The Homer Rice Award is presented annually to an FBS athletic director in recognition of outstanding contributions to college sports.
“Throughout his career, Homer reminded us that the ultimate goal of college sports is for student-athletes to develop fully as human beings,” Georgia Tech President Angel Cabrera said in a statement released by the university. “At a time of great change in the sports world, Homer's message and legacy of excellence is more important than ever.”
In a statement, ACC Commissioner Jim Phillips said Rice University's Total Person Program was “ahead of its time and paved the way for NCAA programs by preparing student-athletes for life beyond college sports. The seven pillars of the Total Person Program continue to resonate with me, as well as all of Dr. Rice's colleagues, peers and former student-athletes.”
Phillips said Rice, a Bellevue, Kentucky, native, “has had a tremendous impact on student-athlete development, not only at the University of North Carolina and Georgia Tech, but across the college sports world.”
Former ACC commissioner and UNC athletic director John Swofford said Rice, who was UNC's athletic director when he graduated in 1971, inspired him to pursue a career in sports administration.
“He was my mentor then and has been for my entire adult life,” Swofford said in a statement. “I had the honor of working with him as AD in the ACC for 17 years while he was at Georgia Tech and I was at the University of North Carolina. Simply put, he was the best athletic director I have ever encountered in my half-century in college sports. He was the best leader, the most organized, the most motivating and the most innovative. He was full of integrity, class and integrity.”
Rice recently taught leadership classes at Georgia Tech and has written several books on successful leadership.
Georgia Tech erected a bronze statue of Rice outside Bobby Dodd Stadium in 2021. Dodd and John Heisman are the only two Georgia Tech athletes to be memorialized with statues.
Rice's wife of 64 years, Phyllis, died in 2013. Rice married his second wife, Karen, in 2015.
