From 1951 to 1961 Rice coached high school football in Tennessee and Kentucky, compiling a record of 101–9–7. In 1962, Charlie Bradshaw hired Rice to be his offensive coordinator at the University of Kentucky. He coached the offense at Kentucky for four years, leading the SEC in offense and winning the national passing title. During the 1966 season, he served as Offensive Coordinator for the University of Oklahoma under head coach Jim McKenzie. From 1967 to 1968, he served as the head football coach at the University of Cincinnati, where he compiled an 8–10–1 record. After accepting the head coaching position at the University of Cincinnati, Oklahoma's coach McKenzie died of a massive heart attack. Upon McKenzie's death, Oklahoma's athletic director and president called Rice to request that he return to replace Jim as head coach at Oklahoma. He had already hired his staff at Cincinnati and turned down the Oklahoma job to stay committed to his staff at Cincinnati. From 1969 to 1975, he served as the athletic director at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and from 1976 to 1977, he served as the athletic director at Rice. From 1976 to 1977, he also coached at Rice University, where he compiled a 4–18 record. He was the head coach of the Cincinnati Bengals of the National Football League from 1978 to 1979.
Georgia Tech
His longest tenure as an athletic director though, came at the Georgia Institute of Technology, where he served from 1980 to 1997. He took a $62,000 a year pay cut to leave the Cincinnati Bengals, despite stiff opposition from Paul Brown who strongly favored Coach Rice staying with the Bengals, in pursuit of fulfilling his life's mission of building an athletic program with the student-athlete Total Person Program as a cornerstone. Athletic success during Rice's tenure included a 1990 National Championship in football, 1990 Men's Basketball NCAA Final Four, nine consecutive appearances in NCAA Tournament in basketball, three ACC Tournament Championships in basketball, 18 players selected in NBA draft, 1994 College Baseball World Series runner-up, 13 consecutive NCAA appearances in baseball, six first round selections in Major League Baseball draft, 1994 NCAA runner-up in golf, two golfers named Player of Year in 1990s, three Olympic gold medalists in track and three Olympians in baseball, four top ten finishes in Track and 14 ACC team championships including football, baseball, basketball, golf and volleyball.
