Stanford Athletic Director Ted Leland, who met Rice much later, observed the same quality: "She was a figure skater, a classical pianist, a national security expert, a football authority," all pursuits commonly associated with whites or men. "I don't think she ever accepted arbitrary limits. She just takes the talent she has and maximizes it."
It was in Denver that Rice progressed from a fan to a friend of football players. She moved there at 13, when her father became associate dean of the University of Denver and head of black student affairs. In 1975, when Rice was 20 and back home from getting a master's degree in economics at Notre Dame, several newly drafted Broncos found their way to the Rice home, where John Rice "became like our papa," Upchurch recalls. "He and Condi's mom would say, 'Come on over here and we'll cook for you.' John told us how to carry ourselves as professionals, what we needed to do to be successful. He'd say, 'You're pros. The cameras will be on you. Don't get caught up in bad things and ruin your career. Get that education.' "
Besides Upchurch and Moses, all-pro cornerback Louis Wright, tackle Rubin Carter and running back Eric Penick were regulars at the Rice home. They got Condi Rice choice tickets to home games and many road games. Moses still remembers the first time he saw her work a room of Broncos at a social gathering.
"She'd introduce herself and right away she was talking to them about their stats, about strategy, about how they played their positions, and guys were saying, 'Who is this person, especially a young lady in that time, barely in her twenties, to be able to talk intelligently about the sport?'
"She was asking, why did you run this play? What was the down and distance? Why was that a pass play when you had control of the ball and you were effective in the running game?" Moses says. "All of a sudden, she was one of the guys, and you'd look over there and have to remind yourself, 'Hey, that's Condi!' "
Louis Wright has similar recollections. "You could tell right away this was not an 'Oh-those-uniforms-are-cute' kind of girl," he says. "We'd rehash games afterwards and, oh yeah, she could get vicious about so-and-so getting knocked on his you-know-what and saying, 'You gotta bring on the heat,' talking like guys talk. You'd think: highly educated, prim and proper, cute little Condi. I'd never have believed it if I didn't see it with my own eyes. We knew then: This girl's tough."
Rice earned her PhD in international relations at Denver in 1981, and became an assistant professor at Stanford, where the football program was flagging. She went to every home game anyway, and met her best friend in the process -- Randy Bean, also a daughter of a minister who raised her to love football.
"People ask how we became friends and I always say, 'God and football,' " said Bean, a documentary filmmaker for Stanford. "I could forgive Condi her politics because she loved football, and likewise she could forgive mine."
In 1988, as a young associate professor, Rice asked for and won a seat on a search committee for a new coach. "It was very clear where the power of the committee was," recalls Bill Walsh, then general manager of the San Francisco 49ers, whom the committee interviewed about his then-assistant Dennis Green. "I've never met another person, another female certainly, with that kind of knowledge. It surpassed everyone's in the room except maybe mine." Green got the job.
It was also at Stanford that Rice met Gene Washington, then an assistant athletics director and now NFL director of football operations and a frequent companion of Rice's at social events. The two say they are good friends, not a couple.
Perhaps Rice's biggest impact on Stanford football was as provost in 1994, when according to Tyrone Willingham, she was "very, extremely instrumental in my becoming head coach."
Rice as provost and Willingham, one of the few African American head coaches in Division I-A, sent a powerful signal of Stanford's vision of opportunity, recalls athletic director Leland. In 1999, Willingham coached the team to its first Rose Bowl appearance in 28 years, and Leland remembers watching the game that clinched the bowl berth from the press box with Rice. With two minutes to go, Leland says, Stanford recovered a fumble, sealing the victory, "and right then, Condi jumped up and cried out, 'There is a God!' I said it was fitting that for 4,000 years we've debated this question, and Condi Rice has settled it -- at a football game."
In Washington, Rice joins a long line of football buffs entrusted with protecting America. Former president Richard Nixon called himself "the quarterback" and dubbed the mining of Haiphong "Operation Linebacker." More recently, there was Jimmy Carter's national security adviser, Zbigniew Brzezinski, and the elder George Bush's secretary of state, George Shultz, both aficionados of the game.
Shultz said he once found himself in Japan during the Super Bowl, and arranged to watch it from a military base. But Rice spokesman Sean McCormack says the new secretary is worried the sleep deficit would compromise her meetings Monday in Jerusalem and the West Bank. She is having the game taped, he says.
"I suggest she get Sharon to watch it with her," Brzezinski says of Israeli prime minister Ariel Sharon, "and wear him out and negotiate with him Monday morning."
For the record, Rice predicts the Patriots by three points on a late field goal by Adam Vinatieri.
Staff writers Robin Wright and Sally Jenkins contributed to this report.
