NKyTribune
Northern Kentucky's Newspaper
By Terry Boehmker
NKyTribune sports reporter
The first group inducted into the Highlands High School Athletic Hall of Fame in 2015 included Homer Rice, an innovative football coach who laid the foundation for one of Kentucky’s most successful high school programs in that sport.
Rice went on to coach college and professional football teams before becoming the long-time athletic director at Georgia Tech University. That’s why his death on Monday at the age of 97 drew nationwide media attention.
In August of 1999, Rice returned to Highlands and was honored at halftime of the football team’s season opening game.
As a student, he was a three-sport athlete for the Bluebirds. As a football coach, he gave fans in Fort Thomas even more to cheer about.
During his eight years as coach from 1954 to 1961, Highlands teams compiled a 71-11-6 record that included three undefeated seasons, five Northern Kentucky Athletic Conference championships and back-to-back Class 2A state titles in 1960 and 1961.
I talked with Rice and one of the players he coached for a feature story that appeared in The Kentucky Post 1999 high school preview issue.
“He established the winning tradition at Highlands and set the standard for other teams to follow,” said John Burt, a running back on Rice’s two state championship teams. “I think he had an influence on how the level of play escalated all over Northern Kentucky.”
Highlands has won a total of 23 state football titles. The only Kentucky high school with more is Louisville Trinity with 27. But Rice’s career with the Bluebirds didn’t get off to a blazing start. In his first two seasons, they finished 4-2-4 in 1954 and 4-1-5 in 1955.
“A lot of critics were wondering about this new guy and what he was trying to do, but once the kids got into our program it paid off,” Rice recalled in the 1999 interview.
“We got into weight lifting, which no one else was doing in those days, and we ran and ran those kids until they were in great shape. We wanted a team that was lean, quick and fast.”
After posting an 8-2 record in 1956, Highlands went 55-2-1 over the next five seasons with perfect records in 1957 (11-0), 1960 (12-0) and 1961 (12-0). The Bluebirds’ only loss in 1957 came in the Class 2A state final, but they won state titles the next two seasons to finish undefeated.
“I’d have to say that was due to the influence of Homer and his entire coaching staff,” Burt said of the program’s success in the first three years of the state playoffs. “They were great motivators.”
One of Rice’s assistants during the string of winning seasons was Owen Hauck, another local coaching legend. Together, they designed plays that allowed the Bluebirds to use quickness to defeat bigger, stronger teams.
“We did things like spread the (defensive) linemen so teams didn’t know how to block us,” Rice said. “And we developed some triple-option plays (on offense) that were new to just about everyone back then.”
College football was the next step in Rice’s coaching career. He was an assistant at Oklahoma and Kentucky before his head coaching stints at Cincinnati (1967- 68) and Rice (1976-77).
He joined the Cincinnati Bengals coaching staff in 1978. After the team got off to an 0-5 start, he was promoted to head coach and ended the season with a 4-12 record. When the Bengals finished 4-12 under Rice the following season, he was replaced.
Rice started his career as a college athletic director at North Carolina and then spent 17 years in that same position at Georgia Tech. There’s a statue of him outside the Georgia Tech football stadium and the Homer Rice Award is presented annually to a college athletic director who makes significant contributions.
During the 1999 interview, Rice said friends in Fort Thomas kept him posted on the continuing success of the Highlands football teams through the years.
“Naturally, I’m proud of what they’ve done,” he said of the program at that time. “They’ve taken it to a much higher level since I was there.”
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