The Owls began playing football in 1914 as a member of the Southwest Conference. Until 1950, when Rice Stadium was completed, they played at Rice Field, the site of which is now Rice Track/Soccer Stadium. During its first 40 years, Rice's football program was a regional and national powerhouse. By the early 1960s, the program found it difficult to compete against schools that were ten times its size or more—and in some cases, had more freshmen than Rice had undergraduates. In 2006, the football team played in the New Orleans Bowl, the first time the team had gone to a bowl game since 1961, ending the second-longest bowl drought in the country at the time.