Rice has fired head football coach Mike Bloomgren, a source confirmed to Dave Campbell’s Texas Football. The Owls fell to 2-6 after a Week 9 loss to UConn. Bloomgren, who became the head coach on South Main ahead of the 2018 season, was 24-52 eight in seven seasons. He led the Owls to two bowls games but never a winning record. Pete Alamar will serve as interim head coach. 

Bloomgren raised the floor of the Rice football program in his tenure, but his inability to reach the ceiling prompted the move. The Owls won one game in 2017, the season before he arrived. They had won a combined nine games over the last three years of the David Bailiff era. Bailiff had led Rice to 10 wins in 2013 and eight in 2014. 

Bloomgren’s first team won two games in 2018. In what became a defining characteristic of his tenure, his teams kept getting better. The Owls won three games in 2019 and four in 2021. They reached a bowl game in 2022 and finished with a 6-6 record in the regular season in 2023. Bloomgren needed to reach the seven-win mark and register his first winning record of his tenure to keep his job. The loss to UConn made that unreachable in the regular season. 

Rice hired Tommy McClelland as athletic director in 2023. This will be his first major hire in the seat. The Owls are in a better position as a program now than when they last hired a head coach because of Bloomgren’s roster building and more money as American Athletic Conference members. 

ESPN first reported the news.