<p>How popular are sports at Rice? Is football a big deal? Do all of the students go to the games and is there a lot of school spirit? Or are sports just a thing that some students are involved in, but not many people really care about? I would really love a school with the school spirit and sports of a Notre Dame or USC, and I know Rice isn't that into sports, but would i get that to a certain extent?</p>
<p>Rice has division IA athletics, so it is a presence on campus. That said, due to Rice's small size (I think we're less than half the size of the next smallest school in the conference.) and a low level of student involvement, you'll probably never have the giant stadium filled to capacity cheering on the football team here (for some reason Rice has a stadium that seats something like 70,000 - and 3000 undergraduates.).
As to the level of student involvement in varsity athletics, it isn't that high - I know quite a few people who have never been to a varsity athletics event while at Rice. Some weekends you have to ask several people before you find someone who knows how the game turned out.<br>
That said, there are some students devoted to sports and several of the athletic teams made a big drive to increase student involvement last semester (I don't know exactly how well that turned out since I was abroad last semester, but I heard that there was a noticeably higher level of involvement.)</p>
<p>Rice is very into participatory sports though - lots of intercollege teams, club sports. I know that lots of people turn out for beer bike, too! If you join the M.O.B. (which you can do, I think, even if you don't play an instrument) you can be fully involved in the sports spirit.</p>
<p>I know football gained in popularity this year because Rice actually had a winning record and went to a bowl game, which drew a lot more students to games then would normally come. Also baseball is a perennial powerhouse, a couple of years ago (2004) they had three starting pitchers go in the top 8 spots of the MLB draft, a year after they won the national championship. However maybe they were worked too hard as two have had Tommy John surgery and another some other serious injuries.</p>
<p>most of the sports have moderately good turnouts. basketball turnouts are horrendous and hopefully thatll change after the new stadium is built.</p>