Rice University has never exactly been known to be a hotbed for college football.
Even so, the school does house the great benefit of being located in Houston and, as most of us have probably realized by now, football always tends to hit a little different in the state of Texas.
Nonetheless, the stark reality of sitting with a mediocre record of 5-5 and very close to the bottom of the AAC (American Athletic Conference) in 11th place, has inspired the school to brilliantly load up its final home game with a sea of amazing perks in order to draw students to Rice Stadium on Saturday, November 22.
Free beer and ice cream, anyone?
Yes, that's exactly what's being offered—among other things—to students arriving at "The Nest" to watch the Owls this Saturday, so long as they provide a valid Rice student ID.
And said ice cream just so happens to be Ben & Jerry's, which isn't too shabby.
Amazingly, the student perks that the fine folks at Rice have dialed up don't even come close to ending there.
While the generous offer of free beer and ice cream would seemingly come across as more than enough to draw plenty of excitement for Saturday's game against rival North Texas, students in attendance will also receive a $15 food truck voucher as well as an opportunity to win a Turtlebox Speaker and a $500 gift card to H-E-B, a major supermarket chain across Texas and Mexico.
Now, if these remarkable perks don't end up being enough to draw Rice Stadium's largest attendance of the season, it might be difficult to say what actually would.
With that said, a sellout crowd could still be a long shot considering the stadium itself has a capacity of 47,000, as compared to the much smaller Rice student body of approximately 8,961 students.
According to the ticket link provided by the school in their official free beer/free ice cream promo post (which has since been deleted on X), plenty of tickets still appear to be available.
On a related note, as of the 2024 season, Rice reportedly held a five-year average of just over 20,000 fans per game.
Regardless of what the attendance numbers might end up being, the robust promotion has certainly managed to draw all kinds of attention that's unsurprisingly gone well beyond the range of "Rice college student."