Hill announced the addition of Rice, who was hired to the Golden Gophers staff in 2011, to SIU football in early January.
"For him, it's like me coming to SIU, he played there, he was a [graduate assistant there], I didn't even try to argue with him," Hill said.
Rice, who coached and played for Saluki Hall of Fame coach Jerry Kill at Northern Illinois, served "as Minnesota's defensive quality control assistant where he [was] in charge of opponent scouting, self-scouting and the day-to-day operations on the defensive side of the ball," according to his online biography.