Chapel Hill Review

Dr. Homer Rice, former athletic director at the University of North Carolina (UNC) and Georgia Tech, passed away on Monday at the age of 97.

Georgia Tech, where Rice served as athletic director from 1980 to 1997, announced his passing on Monday night.

Rice was UNC's athletic director for six years, a period during which Dean Smith established the Tar Heel men's basketball program as one of the nation's best. Several future influential figures in college athletics were undergraduates at Carolina during Rice's tenure, including John Swofford, Jim Delany, Anson Dorrance, and Roy Williams.

"Homer Rice was my inspiration to pursue a career in athletic administration when I graduated from UNC in 1971 while he was the Athletic Director," Swofford said on Monday in a statement. "He was my mentor then and has been throughout my adult life."

Before arriving in Chapel Hill, Rice coached football at the high school level and at the University of Cincinnati. After leaving UNC, he served as both head coach and athletic director at Rice University from 1976 to 1977 and later as head coach of the NFL's Cincinnati Bengals in 1978 and 1979.

At Georgia Tech, Rice made notable hires including men's basketball coach Bobby Cremins and football coaches Bobby Ross and George O'Leary. Under his leadership, Georgia Tech won a share of the 1990 football national championship and its first Atlantic Coast Conference basketball championship in 1985 while advancing to the Final Four in 1990.

During his tenure at Georgia Tech, the Yellow Jackets secured 16 ACC championships across five sports. In recognition of his contributions, Georgia Tech dedicated a statue of Rice outside Bobby Dodd Stadium in 2021. He joins Dodd and John Heisman as one of only three figures commemorated with statues by Georgia Tech athletics.

Rice's wife of 64 years, Phyllis, died in 2013. He married his second wife, Karen, in 2015.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.