Grantland Rice

Grantland Rice
Grantland Rice in 1921
Born	Henry Grantland Rice (1880-11-01)November 1, 1880 Murfreesboro, Tennessee
Died	July 13, 1954(1954-07-13) (aged 73) New York, New York
Occupation	Sportswriter
Alma mater	Vanderbilt University
Spouse	Fannie Katherine Hollis
Children	Florence Rice

Henry Grantland Rice (November 1, 1880 – July 13, 1954) was an early 20th-century American sportswriter known for his elegant prose. His writing was published in newspapers around the country and broadcast on the radio.

Grantland Rice was born in Murfreesboro, Tennessee, the son of Bolling Hendon Rice, a cotton dealer, and his wife, Mary Beulah (Grantland) Rice. His grandfather Major H. W. Rice was a Confederate veteran of the Civil War.

Rice attended Montgomery Bell Academy and Vanderbilt University in Nashville, where he was a member of the football team for three years, a shortstop on the baseball team, a brother in the Phi Delta Theta Fraternity, and graduated with a BA degree in 1901 in classics. On the football team, he lettered in the year of 1899 as an end and averaged two injuries a year. On the baseball team, he was captain in 1901.

In 1907 Rice saw what he would call the greatest thrill he ever witnessed in his years of watching sports during the Sewanee–Vanderbilt football game: the catch by Vanderbilt center Stein Stone, on a double-pass play then thrown near the end zone by Bob Blake to set up the touchdown run by Honus Craig that beat Sewanee at the very end for the SIAA championship. Vanderbilt coach Dan McGugin in Spalding's Football Guide's summation of the season in the SIAA wrote, "The standing. First, Vanderbilt; second, Sewanee, a mighty good second;" and that Aubrey Lanier "came near winning the Vanderbilt game by his brilliant dashes after receiving punts." Rice coached the 1908 Vanderbilt baseball team.