Note: This story is featured in the 2026 edition of Dave Campbell's Texas Football's Summer Magazine, which you can order here.

_

The ghosts of Rice football don’t scare head coach Scott Abell. He’s resurrected programs before, including at his last stop when he turned Davidson into an FCS playoff team and Pioneer League champions despite a 7-49 record over the five seasons before his arrival.  

Rice hasn’t finished a season above .500 since 2014, which is also the last season the program won a bowl game. That fact doesn’t deter Abell from dreaming big, however. In fact, the possibility of getting the program back on its feet and into conference contention excites him. And he’s challenged his roster and the program at large to embrace higher expectations and the optimism required to reach new heights.  

“I get excited about our program changing the landscape of Rice football for years to come,” Abell said. “We say it and we mean it – if not now, then when and if not you, then who? That’s a real thing. Rice football will take a big step and there’s no better time than now.”  

Abell enjoyed a significant jump between Year 1 and Year 2, increasing the team’s win total from six to eight from 2018 to 2019 at Davidson. He plans to do the same at Rice after leading the Owls to five victories and a trip to the Armed Forces Bowl during his first season on South Main.  

He was satisfied with the foundation that the 2025 team laid for the future of the program, including a season-opening win at Louisiana and an overtime win over UConn at home in late November. But Year 1 wasn’t without hiccups. The Owls suffered through a rash of injuries and that revealed cracks in the roster. The depth simply wasn’t there, and that’s been the main focus of the offseason.  

“When we were healthy, we competed and played well and beat some really good opponents,” Abell said. “When we weren’t healthy, we struggled. It was a pretty big fall off and we hope that a year of recruiting and a year of development can raise the bar so it is not such a big fall off because you’re always going to have to rely on your depth in a football season.” 

Bowl games have long been viewed as the standard of success at Rice. Abell wants to raise the goals. He doesn’t want to back into a bowl game because of a high APR, which is how the Owls made it to the postseason in two of their last three trips to bowl games. He wants to be alive in the American Conference race heading into the last month of the season. And he feels like a full offseason and another year of development and recruitment makes that a realistic possibility.  

“Year 2, for us, is getting to a bowl game while we’re competing in the top half our league,” Abell stated in the spring. “We met our goal last year by back dooring it. Let’s get to a bowl game by competing in the top half of our league. There are 14 teams in the American, so when the dust settles, we’ve jumped from the ninth, 10th, 11th best team in the league to one of those top seven.”  

Abell is also realistic. He knows the rise at Rice won’t be an elevator. The Owls must take the stairs to break into American Conference championship contention alongside in-state rivals UTSA and North Texas. The AC is arguably the toughest G6 conference in football and it’ll take more than 18 months to build a program ready to knock off the likes of Tulane or Memphis or South Florida on a consistent basis.  

Abell won’t measure success in wins and losses. Instead, he wants to see progress.  

“Last year, we were probably 30 or 40 percent of what we needed to be successful for what we want to be in all phases,” he said. “I think this year, that number grows to 60 to 70 percent of what our expectations are for what our roster looks like.”