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UH vs Rice: Bayou Bucket trash talk

Editor’s note: To prepare for Saturday’s game, The Daily Cougar and The Rice Thresher have exchanged a few words — all in good fun, of course. Both editorials will appear in the Cougar and Thresher.

From: The Daily Cougar

Dear Alcoholics,

If you’re reading this, it means you’ve managed to stop weeping into your Harvard rejection letters long enough to check the news. Congrats.

With the Bayou Bucket around the corner, we Coogs just wanted to remind you how much we love your football team. The “just for fun” mentality you all play with is adorable.

It’s heartwarming to see a school like Rice jeopardize its reputation by allowing such a talentless team the opportunity to play with real college football players.

No matter how pitiful your team’s performance is to watch, you still humbly ignore the pressure to improve. As long as everybody gets an orange slice at half time, the Owls can go home happy.

However, some of your students still don’t seem to understand that your team is not meant to be serious.

We find it surprising that Rice students are even aware the football team exists. We just didn’t think you all had the time to notice, in between lighting piles of money on fire and collecting BMWs.

Nonetheless, a number of you believe that by some miracle Rice has a chance this Saturday. Aren’t you all supposed to be smart?

For Rice, the Bayou Bucket is an opportunity to prove your worth. For us, it’s two bye weeks in a row.

During the last 20 years, Rice has taken the game of football and turned it into its own mutilated creation. It’s like Frankenstein’s monster, except worse to look at and nobody would ever spend time reading about it.

Watching Rice play is like watching rice. The last time something exciting happened at Rice Stadium, John F. Kennedy was talking about going to the moon.

Rice’s inability to recruit decent football players is not the fault of a coach with a 45-56 career record, a crumbling stadium or the school’s admissions standards. Good football players don’t go to Rice because when they visit campus they meet 3,000 scarf-wearing “artists” with fake British accents trying to read them poetry.

Don’’t be bitter that the Big East didn’t want anything to do with you. Conference USA needs you. Who else is going to make UAB and Marshall feel good about themselves?

All jokes aside, we really do look forward to seeing you this Saturday at Reliant. It’s been a while. You remember where it is, right? It seems like away games are the only time you snobby birds leave your golden-laced nests.

Let’s have a good game this weekend. We hope for a strong turnout but of course we don’t expect many Rice students to show up once they find out there’s no valet parking.

Go Coogs.

From: The Rice Thresher

While Rice University students have grown accustomed to the Staff Editorials displaying the full splendor of the English tongue, this week the University of Houston has challenged us to a match of verbal jousting to precede Saturday’s Bayou Bucket.

We fear that if we hurl insults at the University of Houston using our regular lexicon the message will be entirely lost on their not-entirely-refined intellects. Therefore, we apologize to our Rice readers for writing the rest of this editorial to the lowest common denominator so that the Cougars may understand.

U of H sucks. Imagine Nicki Minaj and Rebecca Black performing a song without autotune and at full volume. Now multiply that by 10. (Note to U of H freshmen: Multiplication is like adding again and again. Never mind. You’ll learn about it in your sophomore math classes.)

Rice does not suck. In fact, it is quite good at many things like winning Nobel Prizes and getting its undergraduates jobs. No, we are not the prettiest people, but we marry the prettiest people because we earn lots of money.

One thing at which we are not always great is football. That’s because we are a small school, and our football team goes to class with the rest of the students. Apparently that’s not a thing at other schools. Anyway, when Rice plays big state schools, we are always the underdogs. Oh, did we say big state schools? We meant big state schools that aren’t U of H.

You see, in the last three years, Rice has beat U of H for the Bayou Bucket twice. This means that U of H loses at the one thing at which they should win. When we see you guys yelling “Go Coogs” and throwing up your shocking hand symbol, two things come to mind for a Rice fan. The first is that no one should do that with their hands in public. The second is pity.

You will say that we are wrong and that for a while U of H did well at football. The reason for that was Case Keenum, and that reason graduated. Now you are set to join the Big East, and some of you are very excited, but like Sarah Palin trying to be elected vice president, it probably won’t work out quite like you think. (You may not get that joke, but that’s okay.)

Teasing aside, we are sure you will succeed in the Big East, just like you did in Conference USA. If your definition of success means having a losing record to us.

So when Chris Boswell kicks the extra point that cements Rice’s victory, know that while we cheer in joy, we shed a small tear for you guys. We don’t know how it feels to lose like that, but we can imagine it is quite unpleasant. (Note: Unpleasant means sad.)


32 Comments

  • Statistics are funny. Rice winning 2 of the last 3 can easily turn into Houston winning 5 of the last 7. 5 out of 7 is also the record when both teams were in CUSA, so I’m not sure about the “losing record to us.”

    • it doesn’t really matter that you won 5 out of the last 7 games – bragging rights mean much less to RIce students. and that statistic really proves nothing, seeing as how the coaching staff and players of those years are essentially all gone. this was for a laugh man, enjoy it and don’t be offended.

  • Wow. I keep forgetting that U of H exists. It’s only around this time of year that they keep sending yearly reminders.

  • So let me get this straight. UH is ragging on Rice students for being ambitious, successful, rich, and cultured? Rice definitely won this editorial scuffle, and just might win the game (Texas State?!) Note: I went to neither school.

  • Really guys…I don’t think it matters who wins at Football. Rice students win at life 🙂

    Here is a little example. I go to UT southwestern medical school. For the less aware who don’t quite know what that is, let’s just say it is Texas’ best medical school.

    Total number of Rice students in my class: Around 30 ish
    Total number of U of H students in my class: 1

    I would talk about Baylor where 1/4th of the class is filled with Rice students, but I don’t know how many U of H students made it there.

    Oh and U of H has 30,000 students compared to Rice’s 3500 🙂 You’re 8 times larger. Yet only one student in the best medical school of Texas huh?

    Anyway, you guys can go ahead and win at football as consolation 🙂 But, we’ll go ahead and keep winning at life 🙂 Afterall, after college, it’s life that really matters and not football 🙂

    • Rice has more medical students, sure. However, at UH there are more business majors. Our school’s focus isn’t on medical. Therefore, you shouldn’t claim that one school’s students will fail at life. Both schools will have successful students and both are good schools.

    • Excuse me, A. Hassan, winning at life is not the same thing as going to medical school, and I say this as a Rice alumna with a post-graduate degree in the medical field. Rice students are smart, talented, and ambitious, but most of us are tactful and kind, as well. Ragging on UH for their representation at UTSW seems more like an excuse to mention that you personally attend “Texas’ best medical school” than anything else. It saddens me to think that the quality of a post-college life relates solely to medical school for you – most Rice and UH students I know would be far more impressed by things like friends, family, travel experiences, financial stability, and so on. Just my two cents. Go Owls!

    • A Hassan: yes, Rice has some really ambitious and intelligent students. I’m amazed by how smart and driven my peers are here at Rice and I’m sure they will go on to do great things in the world. But I feel that you are misguided in saying that we “win at life” just because we have higher med school stats. As Rice owls, I feel that we should take pride in our accomplishments but not to let them get to our head and think that we’re so much better than everyone else. In the end, the important things in life are how you interact with others and the positive impact that you can make in the world. And I feel that Owls and Cougars are equally capable of making the world a better place.

  • First of all, the fact that Rice can compete with UH is incredibly sad, given the fact that there are little to no entrance requirements for UH athletes. Secondly, Rice is going to wipe the floor with UH on Saturday, proving that UH is simply the new Texas Tech; a school dependent on its QB and coach for any semblance of success.

    Furthermore, Rice students are some of the most economically diverse in the nation in terms of Pell Grants awarded. Want rich kids? Go to Greek houses at UT or Vandy/Duke, etc. (Btw those are good schools, unlike the mess of schools which I’m sure all of you applied to.)

    Hope you don’t get robbed walking back to campus. Can’t wait for you guys to Coog it again on Saturday!

    • Actually Rice, Vandy, and Duke all have roughly the same % of students getting pell grants.

      If Rice increased its class size to that of, say, Duke then who knows, Rice’s % of pell grant students might go down even further.

    • Cougar High? Weak. My cousin went to Rice and UH for grad school. I have another friend doing the same. Commuter school? That’s a thing of the past. Take the football rivalry for what it is. I’m glad we have it and I hope we keep it. With that said… Go Coogs!

  • “Good football players don’t go to Rice because when they visit campus they meet 3,000 scarf-wearing “artists” with fake British accents trying to read them poetry.”

    “We just didn’t think you all had the time to notice, in between lighting piles of money on fire and collecting BMWs.”

    Are we starving artists or rich jerks?!?!?! UH can’t decide!

  • I, for one, enjoy my scarf and my fake British accent.

    On a more serious note, I hope that people out there realize that this is in jest. I am a former teacher with several former students at both universities, and I am proud of all of them. College is what you make of it.

  • What? There’s no valet parking?! Are you UH grads are all taking the day off or something? Guess I’ll have to park the Beamer myself then… Sigh

  • This is hilarious. Many of my good friends go to Rice, and while we do “beef” when it’s time for the football game, normally all of Rice students like UH students and vice versa.

  • Sorry Hassan, this is the USA, and now more than ever before, where you end up depends on where you start. Those Rice students would be in med school no matter where they went 🙂 Settling this on the gridiron is a great way to help both sides rationalize away and/or forget that fact.

  • Hey, Rice, check your facts. “You see, in the last three years, Rice has beat U of H for the Bayou Bucket twice.” U of H won the Bayou Bucket in 2009 and 2011. Now, if you meant in the past four years, that’ll be correct. I expected better editing out of Rice.

  • If Rice was so classy it wouldn’t be smack talking about UH like a high-school dropout smack talks about people behind their backs. If you say you’re classy, stay classy. All you did was pay a bit more for tuition and drove farther into the medical area.

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