Ahead of Their Time

AUSTIN, Texas — If it wasn’t someone knocking on the door, it was the phone ringing.

“Edith, can you get that!”

People wanting tickets.

Ding-dong.

Bob needing a picture signed.

A photographer wanting to know where he could set up his tripod.

A visiting reporter looking for an angle.

A pest-control man -- unrelated, we think, to the reporter -- traipsing around the living room.

The visiting writer asking to see the trophy room and being told he’ll more likely find a Texas A&M; gift shop.

No wall of fame?

“It’s kind of like bragging, I feel,” the man explains as he stands on his deck overlooking the golf course at Barton Creek Resort & Spa.

It’s almost a round-the-clock job, being the football coach at Texas, five days before Christmas, two weeks before Texas plays USC for the national title in the Rose Bowl ...

... And almost 30 years since he coached his last game.

Darrell Royal can’t believe people still fuss over him.

He retired at 52, in 1976. His legacy was secured and his back nine beckoned.

Royal won three national titles, 11 Southwest Conference crowns and the admiration of many.

He played quarterback for the legendary Bud Wilkinson at Oklahoma, played golf with Alabama’s Bear Bryant and coached in the last “game of the century,” involving Texas -- vs. Arkansas, Dec. 6, 1969; President Nixon flew in via helicopter; Billy Graham gave the invocation; Texas won, 15-14, and former Arkansas coach Frank Broyles still refuses to watch the film.

Yet, somehow, Royal fancied he would fade to black like some cheesy ending to a Western.

“I thought when I quit coaching that all that would disappear in two or three years,” Royal says. “That’s just the way I envisioned it would be. But it hasn’t. I was wrong about that.”

Mack Brown is the coach of Texas football, but Darrell Royal will always be the face of it.

Brown is four quarters from winning his first national title but does not pretend to be anything other than a torchbearer.

Brown, as do most Longhorn-fearing Texans, refers to Royal as “Coach Royal,” never as Darrell.

Brown says, flat-out, he would never have left North Carolina for Texas in 1997 had not Royal approved, adding, “I’m not going to take the job unless he’s interested in helping me.”

Arthritis prevents the 81-year-old Royal from turning his own head, which sorely interferes with his golf game, but he still turns plenty in town.

How to explain it?

Bill Little reckons Royal burrowed into Texas at a time when Texas needed him.

Royal arrived in December 1956, but it was during the 1960s that he forged a connection. On Nov. 22, 1963, President Kennedy was going to stop in Austin after visiting Dallas.

Royal, who was leading Texas to the national title that year, had been designated to greet the president.

“At the time, we needed heroes,” Little, a Texas graduate, the school’s longtime sports information director and author of “Stadium Stories ... Texas Longhorns,” explains of Royal’s grip. “We had the war in Vietnam. Everything else was going to hell. We wanted someone to hang our hat on.

“Coach Royal was still a young man. He was just kind of dashing.”

On the Mt. Rushmore of 1960s college coaches, in the pre-ESPN age of limited network television glimpses -- there were Bear Bryant, Woody Hayes, Royal, Broyles, Ara Parseghian and John McKay.

Arkansas State didn’t get on television then -- there was no Champs Sports Bowl.

Bill Fleming and Chris Schenkel called the action on ABC; the graphics were primordial.

Royal was A-framed old school. He coached from a tower and, as a player, you never wanted him coming down from that tower and walking toward you.

A stickler for details, Royal was.

“He was big on planning,” James Street, who went 20-0 as a starting quarterback for Texas, says of his college coach. “We would go over the exact same things over and over. He would say the exact same things over and over.”

Royal will not technically have his hand in the game planning for this Rose Bowl, but his fingerprints are all over the game:

* Winning streaks?

USC has won 34 consecutive games and Texas has won 19.

Royal played quarterback for Wilkinson, who led Oklahoma to winning streaks of 31 and 47 games, the latter the longest in major college history.

Getting Royal to talk about Wilkinson is like getting a mom to talk about her son.

“He was the greatest influence of all,” Royal says. “He never raised his voice. I never heard him chew anybody. Never saw him show flashes of anger. He was a good speaker, which helped make him an excellent teacher.... Never at any time did I feel confused as a player, because he did such a great job of instructing us.

“So it boils down, it’s not how much football do you know, it’s how much can you teach.”

Royal asked a visitor to “take a pencil” to these numbers.

From 1948 through 1958, Wilkinson posted a record of 107-8-2.

“You add that up and that’s something that will never be matched,” he said.

Starting in 1968, under Royal, Texas reeled off 30 consecutive wins of its own en route to national titles in 1969 and 1970.

“The odds are against anyone doing it,” Royal says of a streak of that magnitude. “Because I can’t tell you how many games in that 30 that were really squeakers, but there were a number of them we had, and so has USC. Like the Notre Dame game. Like their game against Fresno State. We had games that way too.

“I was asked a lot of times, did I feel the pressure building up? No, my pressure wasn’t building up. Life was easy. I’ll tell you what’s pressure. When you’re 6-4.”

* Game of the century?

On Dec. 6, 1969, No. 1 Texas faced No. 2 Arkansas in Fayetteville and, well, the government almost came to a standstill.

ABC publicist Beano Cook, in a stroke of programming genius, got the schools to move the game to December -- then waited for the payoff.

Ohio State was defending national champion and No. 1 in 1969 until it was stunned by Michigan and its first-year coach, Bo Schembechler.

Texas-Arkansas took on a life of its own.

“It was No. 1 vs. 2 and there was extra time to hype it,” Royal recalls. “They started talking about Texas and Arkansas about midway through the season.

“Now it’s the same thing. They’ve been talking about SC and Texas all year long. So the hype has started before there ever was a true match.”

Texas, down 14-0, rallied in the fourth quarter to beat Arkansas in 1969, the game-winning touchdown set up when Street hit tight end Randy Peschel on “Right 53 Veer pass” for 43 yards on fourth and three from the Texas 43.

It was a tough game to lose.

A few years ago, sitting in his Fayetteville office, Arkansas’ Broyles, by then athletic director, confessed he had never seen film of the defeat.

Why not?

“We lost,” Broyles said.

* Designing a game plan to defeat USC?

Royal was 0-2 against McKay-coached USC, but he was responsible for one of the most memorable defeats in Trojan history.

In 1970, USC shocked Alabama in Birmingham, 42-21, the game in which the Trojans’ African American running back Sam Cunningham made such an impression on Bear Bryant -- 135 yards, two touchdowns, 12 carries -- some say it helped integrate Southern football.

Bryant decided he not only needed a new recruiting plan -- he needed a new offense.

Before the 1971 season, Bryant called Royal and told him to clear out a few days because he was headed to Austin.

“He stayed for several days,” Royal recalls. “And they were long days.”

In 1968, coming off a 6-4 year, Texas had switched to a triple-option offense, later dubbed “the wishbone,” the brainchild of assistant coach Emory Bellard, with tinkering by Royal.

Texas used the triple option to win 30 straight games and Bryant wanted the goods delivered.

Why would Royal teach Bear Bryant the wishbone?

“He had helped me when I was young and in coaching,” Royal says, “and he’d put in a kind word for me here and there. He helped me so it was only natural that I’d help him.

“Some of my staff didn’t think I should be so generous.”

Bryant took the offense back to Tuscaloosa and hoped to have the kinks worked out before Alabama’s season opener: at USC.

“SC had embarrassed him,” Royal recalls of Bryant’s motivation.

Royal spoke to Bryant before the game and recalls the conversation going like this:

Royal: “Do they have any idea you’re in the wishbone?”

Bryant: “I don’t think so. We’ve got this thing tight as we can make it around here. I think they’re expecting us to be in the same attack we were in last year.”

Royal: “Then, you may have some fun.”

Alabama beat USC, 17-10.

*

It’s funny how it worked out. For years you couldn’t pin Darrell Royal down.

During the Great Depression, his family left dust-bowl Oklahoma for California.

In high school, Darrell, the youngest of six children, asked to move back so he could finish up his football back home.

He wed Edith -- the marriage is running 60 years strong -- served in World War II, completed a stellar playing career at Oklahoma before becoming the traveling salesman of football coaches.

“I moved around a lot,” he says.

Royal coached in Canada, with the Edmonton Eskimos, and made stops at North Carolina State, Tulsa, Mississippi State -- he even spent one season, 1956, as coach of the Washington Huskies.

“By this time, I had the reputation of being kind of flighty,” he says.

Why was Royal so antsy?

“I was getting a better job,” he says.

And then, Texas called, Royal answered, and a coaching vagabond found a home.

“I have been here 48 years,” he says with a wry smile. “I was never tempted to leave when I got here.”

Few men who live past 80 can say it all has been a fairy tale.

Royal coached in difficult times, at a segregated school, his 1969 squad being the last all-white team to win a national title.

Royal bristles at this distinction, saying he wanted to integrate long before Julius Whittier joined the team in 1970.

“I had black players in Canada, I had black players at the University of Washington,” Royal says. “ ... You know, it has never made one bit of difference to me what somebody’s color is.... You want the best players you can get. Once you recruit and get them, they’re yours, and you just play the best. I never had any problems.”

Royal’s retirement after a 5-5-1 season in 1976 is also shrouded in mystery.

He put in 20 seasons at Texas, posted a 167-47-5 record, then walked away in his prime.

“I just felt like it was time for me,” Royal says. “I wasn’t tired of anything. Climbing is fun, maintaining the high level was pressure. It got so that I wasn’t elated when I won a game, I was just relieved. And if we were defeated, it just took me forever to get over it.

“I said, ‘This is getting to be the wrong mix.’ I needed to get out.”

Royal lost a lot of his edge in 1973, when his daughter was killed in a car accident. He admits football didn’t matter as much after that.

Royal wanted Mike Campbell, his defensive coach, to succeed him as coach, but Fred Akers got the job. Royal distanced himself from the program until Brown arrived.

“He’s been more open-armed than I’d experienced before,” Royal says, diplomatically, of Brown.

So maybe Royal has a bigger role than we think in Texas playing USC for the national title.

If not for Royal, would Brown even be at Texas?

When Brown was coaching at Tulane in 1985, Royal went to New Orleans for a visit and program inspection.

Brown said Royal took a long look at the players and facilities and offered some sage advice.

“Coach Royal said, ‘Boy, this is a tough place. I’d get out of here,’ ” Brown says with a laugh. “ ... I’ll never forget that. He was so nonpolitical.”

Brown left Tulane in 1987 for North Carolina, which would become the career bridge to Texas, a 12-0 season, and a berth in Wednesday’s national title game.

Royal says he doesn’t know what’s going to happen in the Rose Bowl.

“I don’t predict,” he says.

Know, though, that his heart is deep in Texas.

And eyes are still fixed upon him.

*

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX)

Darrell Royal biography

* Who: Darrell K. Royal was born July 6, 1924, in Hollis, Okla. After graduating from high school, Royal served in World War II and later attended the University of Oklahoma.

* Playing career: Royal became the starting quarterback for the Sooners in 1948 after playing halfback for his first two years. He was considered an expert at running the split-T option, was an accurate passer, a good punter and a skilled defensive back who intercepted 17 passes.

* Pro coach: Head coach of the Canadian Football League’s Edmonton Eskimos in 1953 (17-5 record).

* Mississippi State coach: Compiled a 12-8 record in 1954 and 1955.

* Washington coach: Had a 5-5-0 record at the University of Washington in 1956.

* Texas coach: Took the job in December 1956. The team went from a 1-9 season -- the worst in school history -- in 1956 to a 6-4-1 season and a berth in the Sugar Bowl. In Royal’s 20 years as head coach, Texas never had a losing season. Royal finished with a 167-47-5 record at Texas. His overall coaching record was 184-60-5. With Royal on the sidelines, Texas won three national championships (1963, 1969, 1970), won or shared 11 Southwest Conference championships and made 16 bowl appearances.

* Innovations: Royal was known as a great innovator on the football field and off it. He introduced two key changes to college football -- the “flip-flop” and the wishbone formation backfield. He was also the first coach to employ an academic counselor. Four out of every five of his players went on to earn their degrees.

* Etc.: Royal retired from coaching after the 1976 season but kept the position he took as athletic director in 1962 until 1979. He currently serves as special assistant to the university president on athletic programs. In 1996, the university honored him by renaming Texas Memorial Stadium “Darrell K. Royal-Texas Memorial Stadium.” Royal was elected to the College Football Hall of Fame in 1983.

Source: Times research

*

COACHING RECORD

*--* MISSISSIPPI STATE Season W-L-T Bowl

*--*

*--* 1954 6-4 -- 1955 6-4 -- Total 12-8 WASHINGTON 1956 5-5 -- TEXAS 1957 6-4-1 Sugar 1958 7-3 -- 1959 9-2** Cotton 1960 7-3-1 Bluebonnet 1961 10-1** Cotton 1962 9-1-1** Cotton 1963* 11-0** Cotton 1964 10-1 Orange

*--*

*--* 1965 6-4 -- 1966 7-4 Bluebonnet 1967 6-4 -- 1968 9-1-1** Cotton 1969* 11-0** Cotton 1970* 10-1** Cotton 1971 8-3** Cotton 1972 10-1** Cotton 1973 8-3** Cotton 1974 8-4 Gator 1975 10-2** Bluebonnet 1976 5-5-1 -- Total 167-47-5 Overall 184-60-5 (.749) Bowls 8-7-1 (.531)

*--*

Note: * National champions

** Southwest Conference champs