Bill Little Articles XII

Bill Little articles For https://texassports.com–

• Start Overs vs. Do Overs

• Remembering the Rebels

• Back to the Future

• The Person Over There

• Imperfectly Perfect

• For Each Other

• When Duke Became King

• The Circle of Life

• The Quiet Man

 09.15.2013 | Football

Bill Little commentary: Start overs vs. do overs

Angst is not an option when you are trying to get somewhere. You keep driving and figure out how to get where you want to go.

Bill Little, Texas Media Relations

One of the poignant songs from the musical drama “Jesus Christ Superstar” is the lilting melody entitled “Could we start again please?”

It is rare in life, and particularly in sports, that you get that chance. You don’t get “do-overs” in sports — that opportunity to go back and change what has happened. And by the way, you don’t get that in life, either. But the Texas Longhorns are faced with a rare opportunity to wipe the slate clean and put a 1-2 start behind them as they begin Big 12 play against Kansas State in Darrell K Royal-Texas Memorial Stadium Saturday.

To do it, they will have to correct the negatives and build on the positives that came out of the 44-23 loss to Ole Miss on Saturday. In that game, there was a stretch in the first half when the Longhorns played as well both offensively and defensively as they have in years. From the middle of the first quarter — when they found themselves trailing, 14-0 — until a second before intermission they scored on five straight possessions and allowed the Rebels just 60 yards to take a 23-17 lead into halftime. Problem was, they didn’t sustain it.

Make no mistake. This 2013 season’s beginning has been far from what the coaches and the players wanted or anticipated. Coming in, they knew they had two tough non-conference games at the front end of their schedule. Both were as advertised, and both — when the season is over — likely will acquit themselves quite respectably. Brigham Young is a good team that is strong at home, and Ole Miss may wind up being the surprise of the SEC.

And while the dream of winning all the games hasn’t worked out, they now find themselves with that rare chance to begin again.

That was the theme of personal accountability which permeated the Longhorns video reviews on Sunday as the coaches went over every play and keynoted every player from the Ole Miss game.

In Saturday’s remarkable window of success from the middle of the first quarter through much of the first drive of the second half, quarterback Case McCoy was brilliant as he led his team to 23 unanswered points by the time the first half was ending. He completed 14 of 16 passes for 140 yards through the start of the second half. Meanwhile the defense was playing shutdown football against the explosive Rebels.

The crowd of over 100,000 was excited and involved. And then, it began to slip away.

Finally, in the end, it reminded me of an airline pilot who, on a snowy night in Des Moines, Iowa, turned the wing of our departing aircraft into the jet bridge. The damage caused the airline to bring in another plane, forcing an overnight stay in Dallas on the way back to Austin.

To his credit, the embarrassed pilot calmly made an announcement as to what had happened, and then he added these words: “No excuses. No explanation.”

The former serves no purpose when you don’t get the job done as the Longhorns failed to do on Saturday. But the focus must be on the latter. The “what” that happened is chronicled and available on video. It is the “how” and “why” that become important teaching tools as Texas moves forward.

It is easy at times like these to get caught up in the negative. But if you want to make it different, you can’t immerse yourself in what “might” be. You have to go to work and reach for what “can” be.

“Could we start again, please?”

The answer as Big 12 play begins for Texas in game four of this 12-game regular season is most assuredly, “Yes.”

It is, after all, part of life’s lessons.

In the movie Silverado, Stella is a very short woman who surprises the movie’s star by using a ramp to walk up to a level where she can tend bar in her saloon. When the guy looks at the ramp in amazement, her reaction is, “The world is what you make of it, friend. If it doesn’t fit, you make alterations.”

Angst is not an option when you are trying to get somewhere. You keep driving and figure out how to get where you want to go. Darrell Royal’s 1968 Texas team was tied in its first game and lost the next, and at 0-1-1 embarked on a journey that began a 30-game winning streak. Mack Brown‘s first team was 1-2 with big losses to UCLA and Kansas State and then went on to a 9-3 season.

In both cases, the early record included a conference loss. This one is different. Conference play begins Saturday and the record is yet to be written.

How will it turn out?

All-American defensive back turned Frito Lay executive Lance Gunn spoke to the team a couple of weeks ago and offered this as a shared commonality for those who play the game about those who don’t.

“They think they know, but they have no idea,” he said.

And he had the players repeat it.

“Might” is trumped by “could” and better still by “can.”

And that is why they went back to work on Sunday.

09.13.2013 | Football

Bill Little commentary: Remembering the Rebels

The series began years before, when both schools were embarking as fledgling new colleges, entering the game of football in the early part of the 20th Century.

Bill Little, Texas Media Relations

With the 2013 football season traveling the parallel track between honoring the 50th anniversary of the 1963 National Championship and the competition of today’s world in the Big 12 and the SEC, Saturday night’s Texas-Ole Miss game offers a glance at the past and a glimpse of the present and beyond.

The power of the game in Darrell K Royal-Texas Memorial Stadium offers a dissection that strikes at the very essence of the collegiate football experience. It is not, as some might think, about despair. There is hope, resolve, anticipation and wonder. There is – most of all – opportunity.

From the Texas point of view, it follows a week of determination and hard work within the team. Make no mistake, this is a group that despite a setback in its second game of the year, still believes it has the ability to win every game it plays. If you want to quit, you are in the wrong house.

Ole Miss also enters the game with high hopes. After finishing last year at 7-6 with a strong showing as its season drew to a close, the Rebels have won their first two games and have earned a place in the nation’s top 25.

The season of 1963 enters the equation because it was a time in college football history when both of these institutions were regulars on the national landscape. In fact, in the seasons of 1961, 1962, and 1963, only three teams were ranked in the nation’s top ten every year. One was Bear Bryant’s Alabama, and the others were Johnny Vaught’s Rebels and Darrell Royal’s Longhorns.

The series began years before, when both schools were embarking as fledgling new colleges, entering the game of football in the early part of the 20th Century. The first meeting came in Houston in 1912, and it replaced the Longhorns’ annual meeting with Texas A&M at that neutral site. The Aggie series (I know this will surprise you) ended in anger following a near riot in downtown Houston after the ‘Horns won the 1911 game, 6-0.

The two schools played in Austin in 1914 and 1925, and didn’t meet again until an ill-fated appearance by UT in the 1958 Sugar Bowl game following the 1957 season. In that one, a young Darrell Royal took into New Orleans his “Cinderella” team which had finished at 6-3-1 after a turnaround from a 1-9 season in 1956.

Years later, Royal would observe that he worked his team too hard before the game, but the result was that a thoroughly out-manned UT team ran into one of the juggernauts of the time in college football and got beat handily, 39-7. Legend has it that Royal was so disgusted with the game that he gave away his Sugar Bowl watch to a stranger outside the postgame dinner held for both teams.

That was the first of three post-season meetings within a ten year span. The 1961 team, which included as sophomores many of the players who would lead the team to a National Championship two years later, gave Royal his first bowl victory with a hard-fought, impressive 12-7 win over Ole Miss in the Cotton Bowl Classic.

The scenario was considerably different five years later when the two schools met in the Bluebonnet Bowl in Houston. Both were bruised from battle as they had slipped from the national spotlight. Texas, however, rode a strong defense to a 19-0 shutout.

Since then, the series had remained dormant until conversations between former Ole Miss star and college football icon Archie Manning and Mack Brown and some friends began to germinate the idea of the two schools meeting. The 2012 trip to Oxford has been lauded as one of the best road trips for Longhorn fans in recent years. They immersed themselves in the hospitality of the deep South, tailgating with the Ole Miss faithful in the Grove before, during and after the game.

The game itself was a coming out party for UT sophomore quarterback David Ash and running back Malcolm Brown. The ‘Horns put up 66 points. The Rebels, however, also flexed some offensive muscle by scoring 31 – signifying what would become a strong point-scoring run to the end of last season.

So in the series which began just over one hundred years ago, Texas has a 6-1 record.

Saturday night’s game is a true testament as to why kids play games. It is why it is impossible to predict this game of college football. It underscores the fact that while all have opinions and questions, only the guys on the field will provide the answers.

09.09.2013 | Football

Bill Little commentary: Back to the future — Greg Robinson returns

When Robinson agreed to help the Texas staff last August, it was never intended as a stepping stone back to his old job with the Longhorns.

Bill Little, Texas Media Relations

A light breeze wisped through Darrell K Royal-Texas Memorial Stadium on Sunday evening as the gray-headed man in the black tee shirt and orange workout shorts came sprinting through the tunnel at the south end of Joe Jamail Field to join a Longhorn practice which had just gotten underway.

These, in their own way, were the winds of change.

Fewer than eight hours before, Greg Robinson was getting ready to take the hour and a half drive from his home in Southern California to Los Angeles International Airport, where he would board a flight to Austin to help the Texas coaching staff begin to prepare for their upcoming game with Ole Miss on Saturday.

It was shortly after 11 a.m. when the phone rang as he was packing to leave. And Mack Brown made him an offer he couldn’t refuse.

Hours earlier, on the flight home from Texas’ disappointing performance in a 40-21 loss to BYU, Brown had studied the video of what had been a record setting offensive performance by the Cougars. He knew what he had to do.

There is nothing – absolutely nothing – harder in the game of college football than making changes on a coaching staff. It is hard because it strikes at the very core of the profession. It deals with relationships, it goes to the very heart of “family.”

But two games into the 2013 season, following a tough year before, Mack Brown realized that he had no choice but to reassign defensive coordinator Manny Diaz and go in a new direction. As it turned out, he went in an old direction – one that had been immensely successful.

That is why the phone rang at the home of Greg and Laura Robinson on Sunday morning. In late summer, Robinson had agreed to help the Longhorns in a role as an analyst in the new area of player personnel, breaking down the opponents’ videos each week for the Texas staff. It was a role he had filled last season for his old friend Pete Carroll of the Seattle Seahawks of the NFL.

That was why he was on his way to Austin originally. When he jogged into the Sunday practice, he was the ‘Horns new head man on defense.

If ever there was a call for “Mr. Fix-It,” it had come for Robinson. And he wasted no time in getting started. For the Texas defense, it would be back to the “old school” basics. Facilities assistant Brook Whitaker had already begun refurbishing “The Duke,” an apparatus geared to help players with proper technique for tackling form and handling blockers.

It was Robinson’s first practice as the man in charge of the Texas defense since he coached his last practice in preparation for the ‘Horns historic inaugural Rose Bowl game in a victory over Michigan following the 2004 season.

At the team meeting at the end of Sunday’s practice, Mack Brown had talked about the togetherness of the Longhorn program.

“We lost a family member today [Diaz], and we gained one [Robinson],” he had said. And with that, Robinson began the challenging task of taking over a program two games into the season and fixing that which is broken.

The excitement was evident, and pervasive. It came through his eyes.

“I have always wanted to get back in the game,” said Robinson, whose resume includes time as a head coach at Syracuse and as a defensive coordinator both at Texas and Michigan in the college ranks. “My hair may be gray, but I can still run.”

At a “young” 62 years of age, few people in the game can match his “been there” list

In the beginning, it was to the law profession that he had been channeled, this political science major who was following a family path that seemed his destiny.

Destiny, as we have said many times however, is an interesting traveling companion.

The newspapers that sixth grader Greg Robinson sold on the corner of Wilshire and Western in the heart of Los Angeles told of the accomplishments of the guys he looked up to growing up…the Dodgers’ Duke Snider, the Rams Jon Arnett, Elgin Baylor of the Lakers. After all, this was a kid who lived close enough to the LA Coliseum that he could ride his bicycle there.

But make no mistake about it. Those may have been guys whose careers he followed…and Magic Johnson would later join that group, but those sports figures were not his hero. That was reserved for a former B-24 Bomber pilot who spent part of World War II in a Nazi POW camp. He was now one of the top trial lawyers in all of California, and one of his eight children, No. 5 in the order and No. 1 in your heart, was young Greg Robinson.

If being a competitor is the obvious trademark, the new Longhorn defensive coordinator comes by it naturally.

“I was fifth in eight kids,’ says Robinson. “You’re just trying to get some air.”

If law seemed an obvious choice, consider this: “My father was an attorney, my uncle was a judge. My brother-in-law was a lawyer. My older brother had become a lawyer. My younger brother, who I coached in college, became a lawyer.”

Football, however, had also been a thread for the family. But what others took as an avocation, Greg Robinson took as a vocation.

His love of the game was pervasive. As he sat in Father Alzedo’s Latin class in junior high, he spent time drawing up plays for his flag football team for the PE class that would follow.

Now, it was early in his senior year as a walk-on who had earned a scholarship at the University of Pacific in Stockton, California. His position coach, Jim Coletto, who later became the head coach at Cal State Fullerton, asked him if he had ever considered becoming a coach.

“I looked at him and said, ‘funny you should ask, because yeah, I do have interest in that,'” recalls Robinson. “I think that I just needed somebody to say something like that, because it was something that had been there all along. I knew I loved football, and I loved sports, but it was more than that. The reason it was appealing to me is that I really do believe that I learned the most about myself through football.

“I liked the idea of being able to give back. I was a walk-on player that basically earned a scholarship. From the minute I decided to become a coach, I always believed in my mind that in the coaching world, I was gonna be that scholarship guy. I had the talent, and so I decided I was going to give it a go. And you know what?  I never looked back.”

Competition is, indeed, pervasive. And so, in the case of the Longhorns’ new ramrod of the defense, is self confidence.

“It was through football that I really was able to excel, and to achieve,” said Robinson. “You learn so much in the game of football about yourself…in those quiet moments that only you could know. That’s why I got into coaching, because I could see that I could inspire people. I knew I was intelligent enough to learn the game. I liked the thought of getting to coach young people. I knew I could do it, and do it well. And the thought of me being behind a desk or being in an office all day long wasn’t me.”

And so it was that Greg Robinson finished his college degree and his playing career at Pacific, and became a football coach.

His odyssey has taken him to the heights of both college and professional football. He has three Rose Bowl championship rings (including the 2005 one with the Longhorns and two while coaching with Terry Donahue at UCLA), and two Super Bowl rings achieved as the defensive coordinator of the Denver Broncos.

Throughout his life, family, people, and faith have been the common bonds, and the reason to be Greg Robinson. His values run deep, and so does his drive. That comes from the family. It comes from parents who held to the right things, and to a disciplined work ethic.

If a coach is to be judged by the respect of his peers and his pupils, then Robinson is successful indeed. Besides Brown and that Texas staff of 2004, guys such as Monty Kiffen, Jim Colletto, Terry Donahue and his best friend, Pete Carroll, dot his resume references. Major Applewhite served with him when Robinson was head coach at Syracuse. His outstanding college players are led by Derrick Johnson, who was a star for him at Texas.

In that season of 2004, Robinson brought an aggressive defense which became famous for ball stripping and hard-hitting tackling.

Of his 36 seasons in coaching, 14 were spent in the NFL, including the Super Bowl seasons with the Denver Broncos.

His time in the NFL taught him some of the strongest of the game’s life lessons.   

“You may have the cream of the crop to work with, but you have to motivate, you have to teach, and you have to have people who have a passion for the game,” he said.

It is the passion that will determine the characteristics as he takes over the Texas defense.

“When I see defense, I see a style. It’s wild and reckless and flying around. It’s the challenge of getting that ball back for the offense, and doing it as fast as you can. You have to create plays. Our whole objective, the philosophy I have built in my own mind, is that we are going to challenge all 11 players in every way shape or form. Now how do you go about doing that?  It takes great fundamentals to whip a guy across from you…to cover a guy that can run 4.3, or to win on a pass rush. All of these things take great fundamentals, great techniques. Then, you have to generate the reckless kind of game where you are trying to create chaos. You get that by studying the offense and really learning what you are dealing with, and attacking it as opposed to being attacked. I’m not a big believer in sit back and read and react. Are there times when you have to be able do that?  Sure. What we want to do is win, and do everything we can to do that.”

It has been ten football seasons since Robinson left Texas to become the head coach at Syracuse. A season later, Texas won its first national championship in the Mack Brown era, and played for another in 2009.

Robinson’s verve for the game has never waivered.

His eyes brightened when asked if he still had a desire to get back in the game. You could see the excitement, almost as if you were looking at that kid whose competitive juices were driven by his siblings and his dad.

When Robinson agreed to help the Texas staff last August, it was never intended as a stepping stone back to his old job with the Longhorns.

“I never expected that offer when I answered the phone this morning,” he said after the Sunday evening practice. “It’s funny how things work.”

The game of football is in his blood, and now he takes the somewhat daunting task of working with a group of young people who woke up on Saturday morning with one defensive coordinator and went to bed Sunday night with another – all is the midst of a quest for excellence that Brown and his team still believe is attainable in 2013.

Robinson, at 62, fits in the category of those considered “forever young.” And with only six days to prepare for the Ole Miss Rebels, he will muster all of that competitiveness and join it with his love for the kids and the game to see if he can help get Texas back on track.

If ever there seemed a perfect fit, it may be Robinson.

He is the first to tell you, however, that there is a huge dose of humility couched within that fierce competiveness. Asked if he had come into town as a hero riding a white horse or a chariot, he simply said:

“Just say I came riding in on a pony. It is about the game, the other coaches and staff, and most of all the players. It has never been about me.”

It is a unique situation, in that it is rare for a coaching change to occur in mid-season, and instilling principles and goals on the fly won’t be easy. He is an “old-school” fundamental style football coach who believes the game was meant to be played hard and tough. But if Mack and the ‘Horns had to pick a guy for the task, it would appear that an old friend who knows the school, the program, and most of all the game, is the absolute perfect choice.

09.06.2013 | Football

Bill Little commentary: The person over there

As the Longhorns prepared to go together on their first road trip of the 2013 season, they took time to remember those who often walk alone.

Bill Little, Texas Media Relations

About seventy Texas Longhorn football players will be heading this weekend to Provo, Utah, in the valley below the Wasatch Range of the Rocky Mountains, in the towering shadow of Mount Timpanogos. And as they prepared to go together on their first road trip of the 2013 season, they took time to remember those who often walk alone.

While students had a day off from class on Monday because of Labor Day, Longhorn football players mustered to write letters and pack boxes to be sent to deployed U.S. troops as part of a project called Caring For Camo — a unique student organization started by three UT undergraduates, including Longhorns team manager Alan Dukor and two classmates in the McCombs School of Business.

With a mantra of “Be a hero, for a hero,” Caring for Camo defines itself on its website (caringforcamo.com) as a “student organization dedicated to supporting currently deployed U.S. troops by sending letters and care packages.”

Dukor and two of his classmates came up with the idea last December.

“People would ask ‘do you support the troops,’ and people would say yes – but how can I do that?” Alan says. “So we said, ‘help us.'”

It didn’t take long for Alan and his friends to draft Longhorns deep snapper Nate Boyer, a Bronze Star winning Green Beret who remains in the military and was deployed this summer with the U.S. Army serving with Special Operations Joint Task Force-Afghanistan, working with Special Forces from other NATO countries.

With Boyer’s backing and an appearance last spring from former Longhorn Colt McCoy at an event to raise funds for postage and other materials, the Austin chapter of Caring for Camo embarked on their project. At the same time, students at three other universities – Wisconsin, Alabama and Central Florida, began their own chapters.

The Longhorns’ team theme — “for the man on my right and my left” — was chosen because of the close connection of teamwork and camaraderie shared by football and America’s fighting men and women. Boyer, who came up with the idea for the theme, is the first to acknowledge the difference.

“We understand there is a great difference between the football field and the battlefield, but the main message — that you have to be responsible, trust each other and count on each other, is the same,” he said.

To underscore the commitment to the theme and for those for whom it stands, Mack Brown and the staff joined the UT team in dedicating their BYU game to the military. While the players wrote and signed letters of support that were destined to men and women they had never met, equipment manager Chip Robertson came up with some extra Longhorn tee shirts to put in the boxes along with things the players had brought.

“There are some things you can’t send,” said Sarah Smith, a student associate in the athletics directors office who served as events director for the organization. “Chocolate and bubble gum are out because they would melt. We try to get DVD’s and staples such as jerky — things they would like.”

Boyer says, from personal experience, that “there are a lot of young people there who are the same age as our students, and often they have no contact with folks back home. It really means a lot to let them know they are appreciated.”

All of that brings us full circle, to the game, the valley and the mountain. Mack has always said a college football team is in the education business during the week and the entertainment business on the weekend, and Saturday’s trip to Provo should prove to be both. The entertainment part is certainly covered – just thirteen miles up the mountain to the east, Robert Redford’s Sundance Resort with its Sundance Film Festival, mirrors the South By Southwest Film Festival which is held in Austin in the spring.

Texas football is making its second trip to Provo — the first came in 1988 — and the game is a rematch of a 2011 meeting in Austin when Case McCoy came off the bench in the first of his several rescue efforts to bring the Horns from behind in a 17-16 victory. The game also featured the debut for young quarterback David Ash, who contributed as a true freshman and now, as a junior, leads Texas into this meeting.

The teams come into the game from totally different directions. Texas opened at home and scored 56 unanswered points to come from behind to beat New Mexico State, 56-7. BYU opened on the road at VIrginia in a torrential rainstorm with lightning that delayed the game for more than two hours, and lost, 19-16.

So, with a national television audience tuned in, the two teams which feature “hurry up” offenses will go at it in a picturesque setting that should showcase a really pretty evening of college football.

Within a few days — at  some point next week — deployed U.S. troops will receive a surprise and welcomed care package. Some will have stayed up until 3 a.m. to watch the game in faraway places where they stand in harm’s way so that young guys their age can play a game called football.

And Sarah and Alan, the rest of the UT chapter of Caring for Camo and those who have joined the movement around the country will be getting ready for fund raisers (it costs about $40 a box to send overseas) and packing parties.

There is one final sidebar to all of this. High on Mount Timpanogos lies the remains of a World War II B-25 bomber which crashed during a training mission in 1955. You have to figure that the ghosts will be watching, far down in the valley, as the Longhorns proudly wear their white “storm trooper” uniforms, where young people celebrate because of the sacrifice of so many.

And they will be very pleased to know that somebody really does care.

09.01.2013 | Football

Bill Little commentary: Imperfectly perfect

It wasn’t perfect, but it turned out to be an evening that offered flashes of brilliance, opportunities of potential, and most of all, something to build upon.

Bill Little, Texas Media Relations

The perfect opening game, as all coaches will tell you, is one that is not perfect.

When you say to players after their first game of the season that it had been a “good start,” and they go immediately to missteps that need to be fixed that occurred early in the evening (rather than being satisfied with a record-setting, blowout victory) – then you know you are going somewhere.

Such was the story of the Longhorns’ 56-7 win over New Mexico State in front of 99,623 sweltering fans in Darrell K Royal-Texas Memorial Stadium Saturday night. It was the body of work, and not the beginning of it – it was the forest and not a tree.

It likely will go down as one of the most lop-sided “come-from-behind” victories in school history. And it happened in the blink of an eye.

Trailing, 7-0, with just 1:18 remaining in the first half, the Longhorns scored twice in the ensuing seventy-eight seconds before intermission, and by midway through the third quarter (eight minutes and seven seconds on the clock) the ‘Horns led, 35-7.

Up tempo offense and shut-down defense had arrived for Texas, 2013.

An Aggie offense which had displayed a good ball control game in the first half was stymied by the defensive adjustments the ‘Horns and their coaching staff made at intermission. Through the first two periods, New Mexico State had run 47 plays netting 196 yards. In the third quarter, they ran only 15 plays accounting for only 66 yards.

By the end of the game, Texas had put up a record 715 yards of total offense, almost dead-even between the rush (359) and the pass (356). The Longhorns, who had managed only 29 plays in the first half, had 43 offensive snaps in the second half – including an 88-yard, 12-play fourth quarter drive directed by senior quarterback Case McCoy.

The best opening games offer glimpses of the possible, and Saturday night was really good at that. When New Mexico State chose to commit to stop the running game, the ‘Horns opened up a bag of big plays that offered a feel of presents on Christmas morning – and not only were they big plays, they were big plays that ended in touchdowns.

Those first two lightning scores that ignited the team and the fans late in the first half came on David Ash‘s passes of 54 yards to John Harris and 66 yards to Daje Johnson. Johnson added a 24 yard run; Ash went for 55 and then hit Malcolm Brown for 74 and Mike Davis for 25 before Jalen Overstreet finished the scoring with runs of one and 38 yards.

In the end, the 42-point second half was one of the largest in UT history.

The kicking game was another of those areas where the video will be a great retrospective tool. Near misses often show up in first games, and this one was no exception. The guys in the block party came close to getting two punts. On the flip side the day was particularly special for punter-kicker Anthony Fera, who endured a painful season in 2012 after transferring from Penn State amidst the turmoil in that program.

Fera was perfect in placements (all extra points) but had the ‘Horns highlight play of the first half until the two long TD passes when he unloaded a 68-yard punt that Bryson Echols downed at the NMSU one-yard line.

 Mack’s goal of getting playing time for a lot of players was realized. A total of 27 Longhorns showed up on the defensive tackle chart (which does include special teams tackles), seven players ran the football (including Ash and McCoy). The balanced numbers reflected 92 yards on nine carries for Overstreet, eight carries for 91 yards for Ash, 79 yards on nine carries for Joe Bergeron, and six carries each for Johnson and Jonathan Gray netting 62 and 28 yards, respectively.

Even more impressive were the total offense (run and receiving) numbers. Eight players caught passes, led by Davis and Jaxon Shipley, each with five catches for 63 and 40 yards, respectively. Malcolm Brown, who carried just three times as a rusher, had three catches for 109 yards, including the 74-yard touchdown. Johnson had three catches for 67 total yards, Harris two for 59, Gray two for seven, Marcus Johnson and Geoff Swaim each had one catch.

Ash connected on 20 of 28 passes for 343 yards and four touchdowns, matching a career-high for touchdowns thrown in a game.

The opening of the 121st season of Texas football, and the 90th year in Darrell K Royal-Texas Memorial Stadium, was an upbeat beginning for a season of promise. True, the competition gets tougher, but Saturday’s first game of 2013 was, a “good start.”

It wasn’t perfect, but it turned out to be an evening that offered flashes of brilliance, opportunities of potential, and most of all, something to build upon.

     

  08.30.2013 | Football

Bill Little commentary: For each other

Whatever this season shall hold, it begins with a commitment from a band of brothers to do this thing together.

Bill Little, Texas Media Relations

Years after World War II had ended, author William Manchester returned to a scene of his youth — visiting the battlefield where he had seen many of his Marine Corps comrades die in the bloody fight for Sugar Loaf Hill on the island of Okinawa.

The images had haunted him, and he sought some understanding of what had happened in the battle for a small, insignificant-looking mound that was only about 300 yards long and 50 feet high. There, almost 1,700 Marines had died and another 7,500 were wounded in fighting that lasted a dozen days against entrenched Japanese forces.

As a reference point, as of Tuesday, Aug. 26, 2013, 1,766 American military personnel have died in operations in Afghanistan in the twelve years since 2001.

After his visit to the island, Manchester wrote in his book, “Goodbye Darkness,” these words:

“Men do not fight for flag or country, for the Marine Corps or glory or any other abstraction. They fight for one another.”

Fast forward, then to 2013. In an era of where far too much emphasis has been placed on the “me” generation where a single individual is spotlighted (for better or worse) in the world of sport, the Texas Longhorn football team has decided its goal will be to play for each other.

Such is the genesis of the team theme, “For the man on my right and my left.”

“We understand that there is a great difference between the battlefield and the football field,” said deep snapper and highly decorated Green Beret Nate Boyer (who came up with the idea based on his military background), “but the idea is still the same. You have to take care of each other, and trust each other.”

As the excitement mounts for the 2013 season opener which comes Saturday night against New Mexico State, that attitude of togetherness has been one of the hallmarks of the pre-season practice which the Longhorns began on August 5. While there has been no lack of competition among the players, there has been a greater sense of self-improvement – which translates into opportunities for everybody to get a chance to play.

Mack Brown and the staff have been vocal about the fact that they are planning on playing a lot of players, seeking to be at least two-deep at every position. Experience abounds, with 19 of 22 starters returning to the offensive and defensive side of the ball. Where 2011 and 2012 brought a plethora of freshmen players actually playing key roles, it would appear the 2013 class will get the luxury of watching and learning before they are thrown into the fire. As of Friday, only one freshman (receiver Jacorey Warrick) was considered a sure bet to play against the New Mexico State Aggies.

While Mack Brown is embracing the modern age of technology with all the available electronic accompaniments, the ‘Horns of 2013 are actually taking pages out of key times in the 120-year history of Texas football which began with the 1893 season.

D. X. Bible, who is credited with the transformation of UT football in the late 1930s and 1940s, was the first to follow a plan which included building teams to peak performance over the tenure of their classes. Bible’s 1938 recruiting class, for example, were the seniors when the Longhorns burst on the national scene with their 1941 team.

Twenty years later, Darrell Royal was involved in two “runs” of excellence — from 1961 through 1964 and again from 1968 through 1970 — which produced conference and national champions.

The Longhorns played for the national championship in 2009, and after being derailed in 2010 for various reasons, Brown began an intensive reconstruction effort in 2011. Over the next seasons, there were flashes of brilliance (the win over Texas A&M in the final meeting between the two schools in College Station and a Holiday Bowl win in 2011 and the 9-4 season culminating with a victory in the Alamo Bowl last year), the consistency the Longhorns and their coaches sought have sometimes evaded them.

Now, comes 2013, with exciting new plans which will include veteran personnel and up tempo offense and an equally aggressive defense, as well as a much improved kicking game.

While Mack has kept notes on every year and every practice since he began his head coaching career thirty years ago, the mantra for this team has not been to dwell in the past, but to learn from it and move forward.

If there is a key word to describe the operation, it would be “energy.”  This is a physically fit team, with both speed and strength.

As Mack put it, “We’re gonna look good getting off the bus.”

Saturday night will be a milestone for Longhorn football, as the 1963 team will be recognized as it gathers in reunion recognizing the 50th anniversary of UT’s first consensus college football National Champion. The two surviving tri-captains, former UT head coach David McWilliams and Tommy Ford, will take part in the pre-game coin flip as honorary captains on Saturday night.

The meeting with New Mexico State is also a memory mark for Mack Brown, whose first game as the Texas head coach came against the Aggies in the inaugural contest of the 1998 season.

The evening will also feature the 50th anniversary of the Longhorn Alumni Band (affectionately known as the “Blast from the Past”).

More than anything, however, Saturday is the essence of what college football means in Texas. It exudes excitement, anticipation, hope and dreams. It reflects nostalgia, hard work, agony and ecstasy. Most of all, it is about loyalty and family. Awash in the memories — perhaps from college days or, more likely, from the little kids who grew up watching the ‘Horns on television — is the realization that with each season, there are new heroes and defining moments.

What we know is this: Whatever this season shall hold, it begins with a commitment from a band of brothers to do this thing together.

For the man on their right, and on their left.             

08.21.2013 | Football

Bill Little commentary: When the Duke became the King

When Duke Carlisle arrived on the UT campus in the autumn of 1960, he joined a talented class of freshmen who were about to embark on one of the greatest runs of success in Longhorn history.

Bill Little, Texas Media Relations

His given name was Emmett Augustus Carlisle III, but folks just called him “Duke.”

In their own way, the early 1960s at The University of Texas were a time of innocence. True enough, the “Cold War” with the Soviet Union conjured fears of “the bomb,” and the country was embarking on a long awaited brave new world when it came to racial integration. But youth was prevailing. At 43, John Kennedy was the youngest president ever elected. College guys were in love with Elizabeth Taylor and Natalie Wood (and maybe not in that order), and college football was rivaling “America’s Past Time” (major league baseball) as the nation’s most popular sport.

A guy named Chubby Checker had everyone dancing “the Twist,” the Beatles hadn’t arrived in the United States, and church-going parents wondered what would become of their kids because they were intrigued by a gyrating young singer named Elvis Presley.

It was, by all accounts, a happy time.

And that was the time that a Duke became a king.

Bill Ellington was in his first year as an assistant coach to Darrell Royal at The University of Texas. He was as good a high school coach as the state had ever seen. He knew the game of football and loved the kids who played it. He had a kindly nature about him, yet he was competitive in everything from kickoffs to pitching quarters. When it came to recruiting, the World War II veteran could reach back to his farming days growing up in Quinlan, Texas, and charm moms and dads and instill confidence in young high school players like the ones he had coached to great success at various stops across Texas. If he hadn’t been a football coach, Ellington could have made a good living as a country lawyer or a politician.

Like they used say of the old lawmen in the black and white movies, Ellington always got his man. And this time, he was in Athens, Texas, to lobby a young quarterback named Duke Carlisle. Prior to Ellington’s arrival at Texas, Carlisle had become enamored with the success of the Longhorns’ top out of state rival — Oklahoma.

“When I was in high school in the late 1950s,” Carlisle recalled in the book “What It Means To Be A Longhorn,” “Oklahoma was coming to the end of their 47-game winning streak. I became more and more convinced that Oklahoma was probably where I wanted to go.”

 It was the spring of his senior year in high school, in 1959, when he first met Bill Ellington.

“I’ll never forget him, because if it hadn’t been for him, I might never have been a Texas Longhorn. That spring, he came into my life. He was a really good guy and a fine person. He was kind and patient and he spent time with my parents, and they got to know him. Everybody thought a lot of him. And he caused me to rethink this thing,” Carlisle remembers.

When Carlisle arrived on the UT campus in the autumn of 1960, he joined a talented class of freshmen who were about to embark on one of the greatest runs of success in Longhorn history. Freshmen were not eligible for the varsity then, but they played a five-game schedule against first-year players from other schools. Carlisle and his crowd won all five. Then, in three remarkable seasons from 1961 through 1963, Texas would lose only one regular season football game and during each season would achieve a ranking of No. 1 in the nation all three years.

In the era of single platoon football, where players usually played both offense and defense, Carlisle worked at both quarterback on offense and safety on defense in both 1961 and 1962. He was a back-up signal caller to Mike Cotten in 1961, and shared the quarterbacking duties with Johnny Genung and Tommy Wade in 1962.

The song “You Gotta Be A Football Hero” may have been written back in 1933, but in the early 1960s it was still the flag bearer of all popular songs about the college game. And nobody filled the role better than Duke Carlisle. Intelligent and personable, he had a truly Texan name, a slender athletic frame, blond hair and blue eyes.

With all of that potential, he was the image of all things darn near perfect in a football-crazed state. His coach, Darrell Royal once said that “all potential means is you ain’t done it yet.”  And in 1963, Duke Carlisle was about to realize that potential.

It was a perfect season for Texas, with a rugged defense and a power-driven offense. The victories, for the most part, came in close games, and there were many individual moments and significant stars. Royal always said games often come down what happens on five or so pivotal plays, and 1963 was no exception — and on those five plays, Carlisle would be exceptional.

Royal once said that “luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity,” so that leaves up to discussion whether good fortune or destiny figured in the outcome of the three games which earned Carlisle immortal status as a Texas legend.

The first, of course, came in the showdown with Oklahoma — the school from which Ellington had wooed Carlisle. With the Sooners ranked No. 1 and the Longhorns No. 2 in the nation, Carlisle led a ball control offense that rode the power sweep to a stunning 28-7 victory over OU which vaulted the Horns to a No. 1 ranking en route to their eventual national championship.

The second, however, was the most unexpected.

By all accounts, the Texas-Baylor game that season was the toughest ticket in what was then known as Texas Memorial Stadium history. The Bears, led by all-American quarterback Don Trull and his star receiver Lawrence Elkins, provided the stiffest challenge on paper to the Texas dream. The game turned out to be as it had been advertised. After scoring a touchdown in the third quarter, Texas held a 7-0 lead and had the ball at the Bear 13 yard line with just 2:14 to play.

Royal’s veteran assistant, offensive line coach Jim Pittman, remarked to his head coach, “It’s in the bag.”  But it wasn’t. Baylor recovered a fumble on the next play with 1:53 left in the game. In the press box, high above the west stands, Royal’s defensive chief Mike Campbell jumped aboard that fellow they call destiny. He told Royal to leave Carlisle — who had not played a snap of defense since his junior season — in the game at safety.

Relentlessly, Trull drove his team to the Texas 19. With 29 seconds left, Baylor went for the throat. The talented Elkins broke free and headed for the center of the field. He was wide open in the end zone when Trull threw the ball. It seemed the only question was whether Elkins would catch the ball, and if the Bears would go for two points after what seemed a sure touchdown that would have narrowed the score to 7-6.

But at the last second, Carlisle flashed into the end zone, crossed in front of Elkins and seized the football just as it was about to drop into the Bear receiver’s waiting hands. The photo — by Richard Pipes of the Houston Chronicle — captured the game’s sudden end.

“Maybe it (Campbell’s decision) was just a hunch,” Carlisle would say years later. “Jim Hudson was our starting safety, and he had had a fabulous game and year. I’m convinced the result would have been the same if he’d been in there. As it turned out, it was the only defensive series I played that year.”

After Texas beat TCU and survived a scare at Texas A&M, the Longhorns were voted National Champions prior to their meeting with Navy in the Cotton Bowl Classic following the season. Again, Carlisle would be called upon to play the hero’s role — this time in the unlikely position of a passing quarterback. When Texas had beaten Oklahoma, Carlisle had thrown only three passes. Navy lobbied hard for the media to re-vote after the game on the already-decided national championship, and put eight men on the line of scrimmage and dared UT to pass.

Carlisle responded by hitting two touchdown passes and setting a then-bowl game record with 234 yards passing, outshining Navy’s Heisman Trophy winning QB, Roger Staubach.

Following his Texas career, he was a fifth round draft choice of the Green Bay Packers, but after an injury Carlisle decided to return to UT for a graduate degree in business. He became an investment banker in New York, and then returned to his wife’s home in McComb, Mississippi, where he has been in the oil business for many years.

When Texas won the national championship in 2005, then President George W. Bush told Mack Brown in a telephone conversation that it was something that could never be taken away.

“A lot of people want to be the best at something,” he said. “The best dad, the best worker…what you know is that in 2005, you were the best in world at what you did.”

So let it be with Duke Carlisle and his teammates on that 1963 National Championship team. If the mettle of a man is proven by the heat of the fire, Carlisle did that. And, like in the old western movie, he climbed aboard his horse, and rode off with the girl into the sunset. He was, after all, a football hero

06.27.2013 | Football

Bill Little commentary: The circle of life

It could be said that Jim Hudson came riding out of La Feria, Texas, as one of the greatest athletes in the history of the Rio Grande Valley.

Bill Little, Texas Media Relations

“From the day we arrive on the planet, and blinking, step into the sun,” wrote Elton John, “…there’s more to see than can ever be seen…more to do than can ever be done….

“It’s the circle of life, and it moves us all through despair and hope, through faith and love, ’til we find our place on the path unwinding…in the circle, the Circle of Life.”

College sports, in a way, are like the movies. You can turn on vintage television channels and John Wayne is “the Duke,” and Judy Garland is a little girl looking for a wizard accompanied by a cowardly lion, a tin man and a scarecrow. Images are frozen in time. So it is with sports. We remember the moments, we remember the greatness, we reminder the larger-than-life image, for example, of the college football hero.

And that is how we remember Jim Hudson.

Hudson’s death early this week from traumatic dementia encephalopathy was our latest reminder of the reality of mortality. In a year when many of his Longhorn teammates from the early 1960s are preparing to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Longhorns’ first national championship, it is a sobering reminder of the frailty of the human body to realize that our idols are indeed, made from dust, and in time they return to dust.

Hudson’s impact on Texas football, however, really carried beyond his time on the campus. True enough, he was the football star who wooed the pretty cheerleader, but in a brief and shining window of sports history, he joined fellow New York Jets Joe Namath and Pete Lammons as icons of the sport of professional football. If Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin and Sammy Davis led “the Rat Pack,” as mega-star entertainers in the 1960s, Namath, Lammons and Hudson were the leaders of the “Jet Pack.”

In a very real sense it could be said that Jim Hudson came riding out of La Feria, Texas as one of the greatest athletes in the history of the Rio Grande Valley. But if folks thought he was going to be a Cowboy, they were wrong. Fact is, he turned out to be a Jet.

At the University of Texas, Jim was both a defensive safety and a quarterback in the days when athletes played both ways. He had a major role on defense during Texas’ first national championship season of 1963. And then in the 1965 Orange Bowl game following the 1964 season, he quarterbacked Texas to a 21-17 victory over Bear Bryant’s National Championship Alabama team. In fact, it was a stunning 69-yard touchdown pass from Hudson that gave the Longhorns the points they needed to upset the Crimson Tide.

The irony, of course, was that just a few years later, Hudson and some of his Texas teammates including Lammons, George Sauer and John Elliott, would hook up with Namath as members of the New York Jets. In six seasons starting at safety for the Jets, Hudson intercepted 14 passes. None was more important, however, than a dramatic theft just before halftime in the Jets’ stunning 16-7 win over the Baltimore Colts in Super Bowl III.

He had been part of the blossoming of the early Darrell Royal era at Texas, but when Hudson and his friends burst onto the scene in New York, they changed the image of Longhorn football. In a world where the electronic media was just beginning to grow — in the largest media market in the world – the Jets crowd in New York City ushered The University of Texas into professional football in a way in which it hadn’t been acknowledged since the legendary Bobby Layne came swashbuckling across the football landscape.

In the years that followed his playing days, Jim returned to his Texas roots. He carried his love for competition as he became a successful horse trainer in the thoroughbred racing business throughout the southern United States.

He was inducted into the Longhorn Hall of Honor last fall, and in a way it completed a circle that had begun with that trek from the Rio Grande Valley so many years ago. Hudson had kept a connection with Texas through the years. When the Longhorn Foundation was just getting started as a branch of the UT Athletics Department, Hudson and good friend and former Longhorn Ed Padgett were the organizers of a very successful fund-raising golf tournament.

In his time at Texas, the Longhorns won 30 games, lost two and tied one. He did marry the cheerleader, but when divorce ended that relationship, he remarried and formed a long union with his wife, Lise — a prominent figure in the radio broadcasting business in Austin.

The circle of life is relentless, and the ravages of time often overshadow the gentle, and more appealing moments of the memory.

But in the case of Jim Hudson, there will always be the tall, lanky star who was once named one of the greatest athletes in the history of the Rio Grande Valley. As the seasons change and the coming of spring eventually evolves into the fall, the chambers of the mind give us a chance to remember, and to forget.

In that space, Jim and all of those who played with him, and those whose passing seems to march too early to a distant, disconcerting drum, live again — just as do our heroes on the silver screen. That is because sport is far more than a record book or a picture file.

It truly is a circle. It disappoints us, thrills us, embraces us. And in its own way it is part of our heart, our mind, and our soul.

Hudson’s obituary and information about funeral arrangements may be found here.

06.22.2013 | Football

Bill Little commentary: The quiet man

When it came to describing Bill Wyman, Darrell Royal would call him the best center he ever coached.

They say a picture is worth a thousand words, and there is one photo of former Longhorn Bill Wyman that shows just that.

Shot in the bench area of a Texas football game in the season of 1973, the picture by the acclaimed sports photographer, the late Linda Kaye, shows the rugged face of an embattled center, his long hair dripping in sweat plastered across his forehead.

That will always be the lasting image of the man who was the lynchpin of the offensive line during part of one of the greatest eras of Texas Longhorns football.

Wyman, who died at 61 early this week due to complications of Parkinson’s disease, was a three-year letterman who earned all-Southwest Conference honors in 1972 and 1973 and was a consensus all-American in 1973.

A freshman in 1970, Wyman was part of the last group of NCAA Division I players who were eligible to play only three seasons with the varsity, and he made the most of it. By the middle of his junior season, he had become one of the best centers in Texas Longhorn football history.

But while Wyman’s presence was felt throughout his career, it was his tough, rugged leadership as a captain during his tumultuous senior season of 1973.

“He never said a lot,” recalls teammate Jay Arnold. “He led by example. Coaches and players alike remember [him] as the best there was.”

As the center in an offense which helped fullback Roosevelt Leaks earn all-American honors and a place in College Football’s National Hall of Fame, Wyman was a part of an offensive line which carried the Wishbone offense into the middle years of its success. From the season of 1968 through Wyman’s senior year of 1973, Texas won six Southwest Conference championships and went to a record six straight Cotton Bowl games. The 1972 team beat Alabama in the New Year’s Day game of 1973, finishing the season with a 10-1 record and a No. 3 national ranking.

Wyman’s senior season seemed headed for great things when the Longhorns were given a pre-season ranking of No. 1 in the country, but destiny had begun to play some really cruel tricks as early as the spring.

Royal’s personal world was shattered in April when a car driven by his only daughter, Marian Royal Kazen, was struck by a shuttle bus. She died after spending 19 days in a coma. Veteran sports writers who had covered the UT team since Royal’s first days at Texas quickly recognized a change in Royal’s personality.

Whether or not that affected the Longhorns’ season will never really be known, but from the first game of the year that September, things seemed headed in the wrong direction. The No. 1 ranked Longhorns opened the season in the Orange Bowl Stadium against Miami, and lost, 20-15. Texas never punted the football. The Longhorns fumbled eight times, and lost five of them — including one at the Hurricanes’ 30 yard line by a running back who was headed untouched for a sure touchdown.

The worst, however, was yet to come.

Just before the season had started, archrival Oklahoma had raided Royal’s coaching staff with the hiring of Jim Helms, a former Longhorn running back who had just spent the last several years as a coach at Texas. The last minute hiring fueled the resentment at UT toward Sooner coach Barry Switzer, since Helms had been a part of all of the spring and fall preparations for the season.

Whether or not Helms’ knowledge of Texas’ plans made a difference quickly became a point of contention, particularly after Oklahoma hammered the Longhorns, 52-13, and Helms was presented the game ball in the Sooner dressing room after the contest.

What followed, however, is one of the untold stories of a remarkable turnaround — and a lesson that would play itself out years later in another place and time. Texas was 2-2 as an angry Royal came into a team meeting the following Sunday.

Royal began by questioning the team’s desire and commitment, but before he had gone far into the speech, Arnold, who would become an all-SWC defensive back that year, interrupted him.

“That’s not right, coach,” Arnold said from the back of the room. “They changed everything we had prepared for — stuff they had done last year and this year. We played as hard as we could. We were going full-speed to the wrong places.”

The uneasy silence in the room was broken when defensive guru Mike Campbell spoke up. The 52 points OU had scored were by far the most ever against a Campbell-coached Texas defense.

“He’s right, Darrell,” he said. “They seemed to know everything we were doing before we did it.”

The following week, Royal called his team together.

“I need to apologize,” he said. “It is pretty obvious to me that none of us are having any fun, and I want to change that. I want to have fun, I want my coaches to have fun, and I want you guys to have fun. So let’s change things.”

The next week, Texas went to Fayetteville and clobbered a good Arkansas team, 34-6. They went on to win the rest of their regular season games. With Wyman leading the way, Roosevelt Leaks would be named all-American and finish third in the Heisman Trophy voting. In a 42-14 victory over SMU, Leaks would set a then Texas and Southwest Conference record, rushing for 342 yards.

Arnold, who went on to decline a chance to play pro football and became a very successful lawyer in his hometown of Liberty, remembers another important change that came after the Oklahoma game.

“We were part of the ‘old school’ when it came to physical and strength training,” he said. “We would lift and condition in the spring and off-season, but put the weights away during the season. Oklahoma did it differently. They were working on weights all year long. We changed after that game, and never looked back. We were in an era of enlightened transition as far as that was concerned.”

Royal’s ability to adjust and learn from mistakes and become an innovator had become legendary, and Arnold’s memories of the meeting in the locker room and the weight training reflects that. But no more so than an event which happened more than 25 years later.

It is a familiar story that Mack Brown uses often; how he was so frustrated with his team after a loss to Oklahoma that he told Royal, “Coach, my team quit.”

“No,” Darrell said, almost echoing the words of Arnold so many years before. “Teams don’t quit. Some players may have given up, and it may look like that. But some of your guys may have gone out and played the best games of their careers.”

Mack tells that story to laud all-American and all-Pro Casey Hampton, who did exactly what Royal described in the game.

When it came to describing Bill Wyman, Royal would call him the best center he ever coached, and he forever linked Wyman and his running buddy Leaks after Roosevelt’s record-setting day against SMU.

“Wyman was more consistent out there Saturday than any player we had. Over a career, I don’t think we’ve had any player who has been more consistent that Wyman. He and Leaks go together like ham and eggs,” Royal said.

Following his playing career, the 6-2, 238-pound Wyman was chosen to play in both the Coaches’ All-America game and the Senior Bowl. He was picked in the sixth round of the NFL draft by the New York Jets, but chose instead to return to his native Houston area roots and entered the construction business.

He battled cancer and won during the 1990s, but he couldn’t defeat the ravages of Parkinson’s.

Centers and other offensive linemen are hard to quantify when it comes to excellence. Running backs, receivers, quarterbacks — and all kickers and defensive players — have some statistics that can be pointed to.

Bill Wyman’s legacy will be left as that of John Wayne in the movie “The Quiet Man.” Folks never fooled with him. He was a tough, tough football player, but most of all he was a good man and a good friend.

And if that is how you’re remembered, that’s a pretty good deal.