| FTBL BAMA fans owe a thanks to this man - Former TX coach, Darrell Royal, passes

[tidentrue]

http://msn.foxsports.com/collegefoo...s-coach-darrell-k-royal-dies-at-age-88-110712
.
.
.AUSTIN, TEXAS (AP)

Darrell Royal, the former Texas football coach known as much for his folksy, simplistic approach to life as for his creative wishbone offenses and two national championships, has died. He was 88.

University of Texas spokesman Nick Voinis on Wednesday confirmed Royal's death. Royal had suffered from Alzheimer's disease and recently fell at an assisted living center where he was receiving care.
Royal, who also starred as a defensive back and quarterback for the Oklahoma Sooners, didn't have a single losing season in his 23 years as a head coach at Texas, Mississippi State and Washington. During his 20 years at Texas (1957-1976), his teams boasted a 167-47-5 record - the best mark in the nation during that period. One season ended with an even record.
''It was fun,'' Royal told The Associated Press in 2007. ''All the days I was coaching at Texas, I knew this would be my last coaching job. I knew it when I got here.''
Royal was just 32 when Texas hired him. The Longhorns hadn't had a winning season since 1953, and Royal immediately turned the program around. Under Royal, Texas won 11 Southwest Conference titles, 10 Cotton Bowl championships and national championships in 1963 and 1969, going 11-0 each time. The Longhorns also won a share of the 1970 national title.
The son of a cotton farmer, Royal credited hard work and luck for his success. He had a knack for delivering pithy quotes about his team and opponents.
''Football doesn't build character, it eliminates the weak ones,'' was one of Royal's famous lines.
The national title season in 1969 included what was dubbed the ''Game of the Century,'' a come-from-behind, 15-14 victory by the top-ranked Longhorns over No. 2 Arkansas to cap the regular season.
In Texas lore, it ranks as the greatest game ever played. President Nixon, an avid football fan, flew in by helicopter to watch. Afterward, Nixon greeted Royal with a plaque proclaiming Texas the national champion.
The Longhorns also were named national champions by United Press International in 1970, a year in which Texas lost its final game to Notre Dame in the Cotton Bowl and finished 10-1.
Royal and assistant Emory Ballard changed the football landscape with the development of the wishbone in 1968, which features a fullback lined up two yards behind the quarterback and a step in front of two other backs.
It almost didn't work. After a tie and loss in the first two games that season, a frustrated Royal inserted backup quarterback James Street to take over.
''We were struggling,'' Street said in 2007. ''Coach Royal grabbed me and he looked for a minute as if he were having second thoughts about putting me in. Then he looked me straight in the eye and said, `Hell, you can't do any worse. Get in there.'''



Texas won its next 30 games. Soon, rival Oklahoma and other schools started using the wishbone as well.
Royal faced criticism over the lack of black players on his first 13 Texas teams, although he had coached black players at Washington and in the Canadian football league.
At the 1960 Cotton Bowl, Syracuse accused Texas of hurling racial barbs at Syracuse's black players, which Royal denied. Texas became the first SWC school to announce it would fully integrate the athletic program in 1963, but the football program didn't have a black letterman until Julius Whittier in 1970.
Royal, who acknowledged being unconcerned about racial discrimination for much of his life, credited former President Lyndon B. Johnson with turning around his viewpoint. Johnson, who attended Texas football games after his presidency ended, was close friends with Royal.
''I'm not a football fan,'' Johnson once said. ''But I am a fan of people, and I am a Darrell Royal fan because he is the rarest of human beings.''
Royal's program faced other criticism as well.
In 1972, former Texas lineman George Shaw published ''Meat on the Hoof,'' a searing critique of the Texas program that accused the coaches of having a class system within the program and of devising sadistic drills to drive off unwanted players.
''I want to be remembered as a winning coach, but also as an honest and ethical coach,'' Royal said in 1975.
Royal was among the first football coaches in the nation to hire an academic counselor to ensure athletes went on to graduate. He also set aside a fund for a special ''T'' ring, which he awarded to his players upon their graduation.
When Royal inherited the Texas football program, it was in such disrepair that Memorial Stadium was surrounded by barbed wire and a chain-link fence with tall grass growing around it.
''I was disappointed,'' Royal said of his first impression of Texas. ''But I felt I could get changes made.''
The biggest victory that first season came against Paul ''Bear'' Bryant's No. 4 Texas A&M Aggies, clinching the Longhorns' first winning season since 1953. Texas went on to have 19 consecutive winning seasons until Royal's last in 1976, when the Longhorns finished 5-5-1.
Royal's last game was a 29-12 victory over rival Arkansas. Afterward, he and Razorbacks coach Frank Broyles announced they were retiring.



Royal also served as Texas athletic director from 1962-1979. He later became a special assistant for athletic programs to the UT president and was influential in the hiring of Mack Brown as football coach in 1997.
Texas honored Royal in 1996 by renaming the football stadium Darrell K Royal-Memorial Stadium. K was his middle name, not an abbriviation.

Royal, the youngest of six children born to Katy and B.R. ''Burley'' Royal, grew up in tiny Hollis, Okla., where he chopped cotton as a young boy to help his family through the Depression. His mother died before he was 6 months old, and he lost two sisters to a fever epidemic.
In 1938, Royal's father took the family from the Dustbowl to California to look for work. Homesick for Oklahoma, Royal soon packed his bags and hitchhiked his way back.
.
IN MEMORIAM

We remember those who died in the sports world in 2012.

.


Want more in-depth coverage of Texas football? Check out insider information, forums and exclusive video on Longhorn Digest.
Not a Texas fan? Find your team atScout.com.

 

[TerryP]

Darrell Royal Had Influence On Bryant
Mal Moore (below right) coaches wishbone		By Kirk McNair Posted Nov 7, 2012 <tbody> </tbody> Share on twitter Share on facebook | More Sharing ServicesMore It is the nature of college football that legends are born as the old legends pass away. When news came this morning of the death of University of Texas football legend Darryl Royal, one thought was of his immense influence on Alabama football success.
In 1968, Texas under Darryl Royal unveiled the wishbone offense, generally credited as an innovation of Emory Bellard, one of the assistants on Royal’s Longhorns staff. In 1969 Texas won the national championship. During the 1970 season, the primary rival of the Longhorns, the Oklahoma Sooners of Coach Chuck Fairbanks, switched to the triple option offense. Alabama had ended 1970 with the Crimson Tide’s second consecutive five-loss season. To finish the year, Bama had been in a mid-level bowl game, the Astro-Bluebonnet Bowl, played in the then-extraordinary Astrodome. Oklahoma and Alabama tied the game, 17-17, as Bama missed a short field goal on the last play of the game. Alabama’s team airplane left Houston for the return to Tuscaloosa on January 1. Crimson Tide Coach Paul Bryant often rode in the rear of the aircraft, but this day was sitting near the midpoint in an aisle seat. He reached into his briefcase and pulled out a yellow legal pad and unclipped a fountain pen from his shirt pocket. Bryant spent the hour in the air sketching out the wishbone ground attack. Bryant was familiar with the formation because he had just prepared his team to play against it. No one will ever know exactly when he made the decision to switch Alabama to the wishbone. Alabama went through spring practice working the same offensive plan it had used since early in the 1960s–the offense of Joe Namath and Steve Sloan and Kenny Stabler and Scott Hunter. Alabama had a record of 90-16-4 in the 1960s, better than any other college football team. But in 1969 and 1970 the record had been 12-10-1. “We don’t awe anyone now,” Bryant said before the 1971 season. “We are back among the ordinary folk, and I don’t like it.” “He told us in late August,” said Mal Moore, an assistant coach who was going to be coaching quarterbacks for the first time at Bama. A former quarterback himself, Moore had been coaching defensive backs. Steve Sloan, who had been coaching quarterbacks, had moved on to Florida State. Moore said Bryant and Texas Coach Darryl Royal spent time together during the summer and that Bryant no doubt quizzed Royal on the offense. “Coach Royal was going to speak at the coaching clinic we had every August during all-star week,” Moore said. “Usually the assistant coaches spent a lot of time during the clinic with high school coaches, but this year was different.” Emory Bellard was a member of the Texas coaching staff and the man credited with developing the wishbone. Bellard accompanied Royal to Tuscaloosa for the coaching clinic. Bellard’s clinic took place in a hotel suite for members of the Alabama offensive coaching staff. Moore said that he, offensive line coach Jimmy Sharpe, and running backs coach John David Crow spent the better part of three days learning the wishbone “We had a chalkboard and a projector,” Moore said. “We looked at cut-ups (wishbone plays) over and over and over. He coached us like we were students and it was a cram course. It was complicated. We went over footwork and blocking and counting the defense, everything that goes into it.” In the wishbone, Alabama went from two wide receivers to one. The fullback was right behind the quarterback. Slightly behind the fullback and to either side were the halfbacks. The offensive change also meant some moves among linemen. John Hannah had been the left tackle in Alabama’s passing game offense in 1970. In 1971 he moved to right guard, a key position for the wishbone. He would become one of the finest offensive linemen in the history of the game. Alabama had used a version of the formation for years. It was a power formation, used by the Tide when Bama was close to a goal line, either the opponent goal going in or the Alabama goal coming out. That Bama version of the full house backfield was grind-it-out power football. The triple option wishbone was a combination of power, deception and ball handling. Alabama unveiled the wishbone by opening the 1971 season against No. 1 ranked Southern Cal in the Coliseum in Los Angeles and upset the Trojans, 17-10 and never looked back. Alabama went 11-0 in regular season play before losing in the national championship game against Nebraska. The star of the first Alabama wishbone team was Johnny Musso. Musso said, “I think the wishbone energized Coach Bryant. I think the two previous seasons took a lot out of him. But he said, ‘Enough is enough.’ He got energized, got a new focus, and quickly turned the program around.” The win over USC was Bryant’s 200th head coaching victory. He would coach 12 more years and add 123 more wins before retiring following the 1982 season. Included in that total were three national championships and nine Southeastern Conference championships – added to the three national titles and four SEC crowns he had won pre-wishbone. Late in his career, Bryant agreed that “all the rules changes have benefited the offense.” Once they made “offensive holding legal” (his view of offensive men being able to use their hands in blocking) he thought it was time to change to a pro-set. But, he said, he would let the next guy do that. Royal’s influence didn’t extend to just Oklahoma and Texas. Numerous schools went to the offense, including Pat Dye taking the attack from Bama to East Carolina to Wyoming and finally to Auburn, where the Tigers had some of their greatest seasons. It is still employed, notably by the service academies, who are not recruiting NFL wannabes. When Adolph Rupp died, Bryant said, “The term ‘legend’ is thrown around pretty loosely, but Adolph Rupp was truly a legend.” So was Darryl Royal. RIP

<tbody>
</tbody>