The Owls played their home games at the Rice Stadium in Houston, Texas, and competed in the West Division of Conference USA (C–USA).

They were led by eleventh-year head coach David Bailiff.

The 2017 schedule consisted of 5 home, 6 away and 1 neutral site game in the regular season.

The Owls hosted CUSA foes FIU, Louisiana Tech, North Texas, and Southern Miss, and traveled to Old Dominion, UAB, UTEP, and UTSA[2] The Owls hosted one of the four non-conference opponents, Army, who was independent from a conference, and traveled to Houston from the American Athletic Conference and Pittsburgh from the Atlantic Coast Conference.

Rice traveled to Sydney, Australia to face Stanford from the Pac-12 Conference.