Rice graduated from Vanderbilt University in 1901, after which he worked as a sportswriter for the Nashville (Tennessee) Daily News and other Southern newspapers, including the Atlanta (Georgia) Journal. Between 1907 and 1911 he traveled the South umpiring and refereeing at gridiron-football and baseball games. In 1911 he was hired by the New York Evening Mail, and in 1914 he joined the New York Tribune, later the Herald Tribune. He wrote sports stories for both papers; with the Tribune and the Herald Tribune, he established a reputation as a sports authority. By one estimate, Rice wrote more than 22,000 columns and more than 67,000,000 words. His syndicated column, “The Sportlight,” was the most influential of its day, and he also produced popular short motion pictures of sporting events. In 1924 Rice gave the backfield of the University of Notre Dame's football team its enduring name, the “ Four Horsemen,” and his annual selections of All-America (All-America team) football teams for Collier's magazine were considered to be authoritative. He published three books of poetry and coined the famous phrase that it was not important whether you “won or lost, but how you played the game.” His autobiography, The Tumult and the Shouting, appeared in 1954.