University of San Francisco Athletics

Thomas Rice was born on February 19, 1914, in Bozeman, MT and after a move to California, attended Visalia Union High School. He graduated at the height of the Great Depression, and was forced to postpone college to find work. Four years later he attended USF on a football scholarship, playing for the Dons as a defensive tackle and was captain of both the football and rugby teams his senior year. As a senior, he earned the Boyle Loyalty Award and was chosen All-Pacific Coast Tackle. One teammate stated: “Everyone on the squad respected and looked up to Tom. He was our leader as well as our best player (USF Athletics).” 
 
After graduation in 1939, he served in World War II for the United States Coast Guard. After the war, he entered professional wrestling. Rice wrestled all over the world and played the bad guy in the days of wrestling when matches between a “good guy” and “bad guy” players were popular. A friend was quoted as saying the audience loved to boo him, and “he always said you made more money as a bad guy, but underneath he was really a good guy (SFGate)."
 
Following his wrestling career, he became an insurance executive and a community activist while working tirelessly to raise funds for USF. Rice swam every day in the San Francisco Bay, and at the age of 67 was still strong enough to swim the Bay towing the 120-ton Blue and Gold Fleet’s Oski, loaded with USF alumni, for 200 yards as part of his fund-raising efforts. He created the President’s Ambassador’s Club, telephone fund-raising campaigns, and the Father Hub Flynn Dinner to honor sports teams new and old. 
 
Rice was a member of the Hanna Boys Center in Sonoma, helped organize the Petaluma People’s Service Center, and was president of the Old Time Athletes Association and the National Foundation Football Hall of Fame. When he was named Alumnus of the Year in 1981, Father John LoSchiavo stated that “there were few Tom Rices in this world (USF Athletics)."  He was inducted to the USF Hall of Fame in 1969.