Royal and his OU and Texas Roots

 RICH OKLAHOMA-TEXAS RIVALRY INCLUDED MANY ROYAL OCCASIONS

By Sam Blair and Dallas Morning News

Chicago Tribune

•Oct 13, 1991 at 12:00 am

DALLAS — Fifteen years after he coached his last game at the Cotton Bowl, Darrell Royal still feels the heat and emotion of the Texas-Oklahoma football rivalry. Chances are, he always will.

When he recalls his unique life on both sides during 24 seasons, the games, players, personalities, conflicts, and crowds all surge back to life. Royal, a 67-year-old golf addict enjoying his sunset years in Austin, Texas, again feels the pride and passion that always brought him to Dallas, eager to, as he once described it in his folksy way, ”dance every dance.”

The memories reach all the way back to 1934 when Royal was a 10-year-old boy growing up in Hollis, Okla., during the dark Depression and Dust Bowl days. But for young Darrell, life was bright and so right on autumn Saturday afternoons.

”My friend Don Fox and I used to play football in the front yard, and we`d plug in the radio on the porch and listen to the Oklahoma games,” Royal said. ”When the band played `Boomer Sooner,` we thought it was for us.”

The memories stretch to the October Saturday in 1976, which would end in the bitter 6-6 tie that closed Royal`s 20-year run as University of Texas coach in the series.

Just before kickoff, Royal walked up the locker room ramp at the Cotton Bowl to meet President Gerald Ford and escort him to midfield for the coin toss. Royal`s ears still rang from a barrage of boos aimed at him by OU fans. Two days earlier, Royal had publicly charged Barry Switzer and his Oklahoma coaches with using a spy at Texas practices for several years to help them prepare for the annual border war. Royal said Larry Lacewell, OU defensive coordinator, and assistant head coach, arranged the spying with Switzer`s knowledge. Then, on Friday, after a news conference in Austin, Royal referred to the OU coaches as ”sorry bastards” in what he believed was an off-the-record comment.

Robert Heard, an Associated Press writer, believed otherwise and used it in a national story. Now Royal knew half of a packed stadium would rage at him when he reappeared on the field, and he didn`t want Ford to think he was provoking the boos.

”I got to his limo first, and I said, `Mr. President, there`s probably going to be some reaction when I come out of this tunnel. This is the Oklahoma end of the stadium, and they`ve already booed me once out there. They may start booing and raising hell again.

”He grinned and said, `Well, I`m big enough to handle it.` ”

Through Royal`s 24 Texas-OU games as a Sooners player (1946-49) or Longhorns coach (1957-76), he was also big enough to handle anything that happened. Just about everything.

Edith Royal, who married Darrell in 1944 while he was training as a B-24 tail gunner during World War II, remembers meeting him at midfield when he was an OU sophomore in `47.

Angry OU fans in the tunnel end of the stadium were throwing soft drinks and whiskey bottles on the field after a 34-14 loss. The target of their rage was referee Jack Sisco, who had awarded Texas a controversial touchdown just before halftime. UT quarterback Bobby Layne had fumbled near the goal line, fallen to his knees to retrieve the ball, and then shoveled it back to Randall Clay, who stepped into the end zone. The Sooners believed the play had been blown dead, but Sisco signaled a touchdown.

”Dallas police had brought a squad car to the center of the field to take Sisco and the other officials out of the stadium, and I found Darrell standing behind it,” Edith said. ”He put his helmet on my head, grabbed my hand, and we ran off the field behind that police car.”

Ten years later, when longtime Royal assistant Mike Campbell moved with Royal to Texas from the University of Washington, he quickly realized his boss knew how to prepare the Longhorns to play Oklahoma.

”I remember the week of our first game in `57, when Oklahoma was heavily favored and had won more than 40 straight games, including a 45-0 licking of Texas the year before,” Campbell said. ”Darrell`s approach was to downgrade the importance of playing Oklahoma. The workouts were brief, and he let the players take off their pads and practice in shorts.

”He didn`t have to get the players pumped up. He knew that by Saturday, they would have themselves ready.”

Royal`s experience as a four-year starter at OU, first as a halfback, defensive back, punter, and quarterback, and finally as a quarterback, served him well when he took over a Texas program that had beaten Oklahoma only once since 1948.

”It always has been the BIG GAME,” Royal said. ”I quickly learned as a freshman that you were not accepted as a player until you did something real good in the Texas-Oklahoma game. There were so many things that naturally pumped the players up the team buses edging toward the stadium through the huge State Fair crowd wearing red and orange, the field always seeming so hot and dusty you couldn`t seem to get your breath, and the stands always packed with an extremely excitable crowd.

”This is the showdown between bordering state universities, and both campuses and the fans are electric from Monday on before the game. At Texas, I never said much to the players or did much that week. I wanted them fresh and eager to play.”

From the opening kickoff of that 1957 game, the Longhorns were that. They battled the mighty Sooners to a 7-7 draw until the fourth quarter before losing 21-7. That was the last time that Bud Wilkinson, Royal`s former OU coach and one of the era`s finest college football minds, would beat Texas.

In `58, Texas fought back for a 15-14 victory on Bobby Lackey`s jump pass to Bobby Bryant for a late touchdown. That began an eight-game UT winning streak. The first six came against Wilkinson, who resigned after the `63 season, and the next two against Gomer Jones, promoted from line coach when Wilkinson left.

”When we came to Dallas in `58, I had no hunch that we would win,”

Royal said. ”I just knew we would play hard. We started our winning drive with a few minutes left, and Vince Matthews (a seldom-used passing

quarterback) became a hero for taking us down the field. Then we got inside the 10 and didn`t move for a couple of plays. Oklahoma was playing a gap-eight defense, and I was scared when I subbed Lackey (the starter) back in at quarterback that they would change it. I knew the jump pass was a good call if they stayed in a gap-eight, and fortunately they did.”

Royal shrugged off rave reviews for a great split-second coaching decision after switching to Lackey for the winning score.

”Bobby was taller than Vince, and I thought that would help him complete the jump pass,” Royal said. ”When Oklahoma stayed in that gap-eight, it turned out both of our ends were open. I can`t take credit for out-thinking anyone. It was just blind luck.”

By December 1965, after losing to Royal`s Texas teams for eight consecutive years, OU knew Royal had a lot more than that going for him. OU officials tried to lure him back to Norman to coach his alma mater and gladly would have given him a colossal contract. Royal quickly decided to stay at Texas. By then, he and Edith and their three children had deep roots in Austin.

Ironically, he lost the next Oklahoma game, 18-9, in former Arkansas defensive coordinator Jim MacKenzie`s only season as Sooners coach. When MacKenzie died of a heart attack in the spring of 1967, Chuck Fairbanks was promoted to head coach. Royal quickly regained control of the annual contest. Texas won the next four games, and after the `70 victory, Royal stood 12-1 coaching against his old school.

In 1968, Royal had just made James Street his quarterback in a new offense, the wishbone, that changed college football for the next decade. The Longhorns had to drive 85 yards in the final minutes for a 26-20 victory that became the second step in a 30-game winning streak.

”We must have completed the same pass six or seven times in that long drive,” Royal said. ”Street kept throwing to our tight end, Deryl Comer. We read their linebacker. Our tight end just ran across or hooked, depending on which direction their linebacker moved. That pass got us down close, and then we knocked it in.”

Fullback Steve Worster exploded up the middle to score from the 7 with 39 seconds left, and Texas and Royal gained momentum for what proved the longest streak in school history.

Fairbanks switched to the wishbone before the 1970 Texas game but foundered 41-9. In 1971, however, the Sooners returned to Dallas with Jack Mildren quarterbacking a souped-up version of the wishbone, and Oklahoma won a 48-27 track meet. Royal had beaten Oklahoma for the last time.

The Sooners` new supremacy soared when Switzer took over in 1973, and he beat Texas 52-13 in his first try. Royal rallied Texas for three tough but non-winning efforts before he retired at the end of the 1976 season.

”We had better players on our streak, and I think they had better players on their streak,” Royal said. ”We started losing when a lot of the top players from the state of Texas went to OU. And Oklahoma came up with some great homegrown talent, too.

”The three best defensive tackles we ever faced in my 20 years at Texas were Bob Lilly of TCU, John Dutton of Nebraska, and Lee Roy Selmon of Oklahoma, and I`m not sure Selmon wasn`t the best. In all the games he played against us, we didn`t use a running play where we had to block him. It was impossible to do anything against him.”

In the long Texas-Oklahoma rivalry, Royal always respected a champion and pure athletic talent like Selmon`s, but he was disgusted by the spying against his Texas teams that Lacewell and Switzer confirmed long after that bitter 6-6 tie in 1976 was history.

To this day, Royal said he is glad he openly charged them with spying but realizes his image was distorted in the minds of countless OU fans because of that ”sorry bastards” comment.

”That really convinced them I was a bad guy,” Royal said. ”They didn`t like that we had the audacity to catch them spying, but they really got after me in Dallas on Friday night when they saw that `sorry bastards` in the early edition of the paper.

”They found out where we were staying, and they stood on the sidewalk and in the hall, yelling, `Sorry bastards.` At the time, I didn`t know what they meant. I didn`t know until the next morning that had made the wires.”

That one ugly weekend in what generally was a great college football rivalry was not what made Royal retire at the end of the season with a 167-47-5 record, the best in Southwest Conference history. He said he was weary of the illegal recruiting and backbiting he had encountered in recent years, which drained his desire to coach.

”I already knew before that game I was going to stop coaching,” he said. ”That kind of experience underscored the reason I decided to retire. I`m glad I made the spying public. And no matter how people in Oklahoma feel about me today, they know I was right.

”Lacewell later told me personally that it happened, then he told the press, too. And finally, Barry also admitted it last year in his book

(`Bootlegger`s Boy`).”

Royal grinned wryly: ”He didn`t say he had a part in it; he just admitted it happened.”

Through the years since he retired at 52, Royal has always enjoyed watching Texas and Oklahoma play.

”I have deep loyalties to the University of Texas,” he said. ”I also have loyalty to Oklahoma. It`s my home state. But I`m still for Texas. I don`t want any lingering doubts about that. But I`ll always have feelings for my alma mater.”

Royal`s eyes shone through his wire-rim glasses, and he smiled wistfully. For a fleeting moment, he was 10 years old again, playing front-yard football with Don Fox in Hollis. Over the radio came “Boomer Sooner” just for them. A very special life was waiting for him out there.

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