Rice Remembers Frank Ryan
1/2/2024 2:22:00 PM | Football
Led Cleveland to the NFL title in 1964
Dr. Frank Ryan, a member of the Rice Athletics Hall of Fame who went on to lead the Cleveland Browns to the NFL title, passed away on Monday at the age of 87.
Ryan teamed with King Hill to give Rice a powerful 1-2 punch at quarterback from 1955-57, with the duo leading the Owls to their final outright Southwest Conference title in 1957, highlighted by a defeat of top-ranked Texas A&M at Rice Stadium.
He majored in nuclear physics at Rice and while he began his NFL career as a fifth-round selection of the Los Angeles Rams in 1958, he also completed work on his PhD in Mathematics at Rice during his off-seasons while also teaching undergraduate courses and conducting tutoring sessions for math students.
After five seasons as a backup with the Rams, he was traded to Cleveland before the 1962 season and took over as the starter after an injury to Jim Ninowski. When not handing off to Hall of Famer Jim Brown, Ryan threw 117 touchdowns over the next five seasons, leading the Browns to an NFL title in 1964 and a return to the NFL Championship game in 1965 while posting 51-20-1 record. He threw for a career-high 2,974 yards and 29 touchdowns in 14 games in 1966.
In 1967, he became an assistant professor at Case Institute of Technology in Cleveland, teaching advanced math electives. While at Case, he learned computer programming and applied those skills to compiling advanced statistics for the Washington Redskins after he joined the team in 1969.
After retiring from football, he was hired by the U.S. House of Representatives to head up a technology group that created its first computer-driven electronic voting system. In 1978, he was hired as the director of athletics and lecturer in mathematics at Yale and later returned to Rice in 1990 to serve as vice president of external affairs and professor of computational and applied mathematics.
He was inducted into the Rice Athletics Hall of Fame in 1973 and was honored with the Distinguished R Award in 1993.
Ryan teamed with King Hill to give Rice a powerful 1-2 punch at quarterback from 1955-57, with the duo leading the Owls to their final outright Southwest Conference title in 1957, highlighted by a defeat of top-ranked Texas A&M at Rice Stadium.
He majored in nuclear physics at Rice and while he began his NFL career as a fifth-round selection of the Los Angeles Rams in 1958, he also completed work on his PhD in Mathematics at Rice during his off-seasons while also teaching undergraduate courses and conducting tutoring sessions for math students.
After five seasons as a backup with the Rams, he was traded to Cleveland before the 1962 season and took over as the starter after an injury to Jim Ninowski. When not handing off to Hall of Famer Jim Brown, Ryan threw 117 touchdowns over the next five seasons, leading the Browns to an NFL title in 1964 and a return to the NFL Championship game in 1965 while posting 51-20-1 record. He threw for a career-high 2,974 yards and 29 touchdowns in 14 games in 1966.
In 1967, he became an assistant professor at Case Institute of Technology in Cleveland, teaching advanced math electives. While at Case, he learned computer programming and applied those skills to compiling advanced statistics for the Washington Redskins after he joined the team in 1969.
After retiring from football, he was hired by the U.S. House of Representatives to head up a technology group that created its first computer-driven electronic voting system. In 1978, he was hired as the director of athletics and lecturer in mathematics at Yale and later returned to Rice in 1990 to serve as vice president of external affairs and professor of computational and applied mathematics.
He was inducted into the Rice Athletics Hall of Fame in 1973 and was honored with the Distinguished R Award in 1993.
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