7th at the NCAA Championship    

The Team won 4 consecutive tournaments ( a record)

Mark Brooks won two regional tournaments in 1982 and two in 1983. Mark Brooks was an All-American in 1983.

Brandel Chamblee is the SWC champion, medalist at the Pan American Intercollegiate, and the Alarcon Intercollegiate. He won the Morris Williams in 1984.

Horns finish 3rd at the SWC tournament.

1983- Jim Clayton 6-2 and SWC champs- Second in the Nation

The Longhorn team has had the most tournament victories since the early 1970s. Winning 6 tournaments and 4 in a row. Paul Thomas had a chance to win the medalist honors at the NCAA tournament, but he lost in a 4 man playoff.

Texas also lost to Oklahoma State to finish runner-up for the NCAA championship, but the Horns still received the MacGregor/Jack Nicklaus trophy which is given to the #1 team in the nation.

1984- Jim Clayton Team  is 16th at the NCAA Championship- pending information

1985 Pending Content- Jim Clayton 5th at the NCAA Championship

Three Longhorn freshmen, 19 years old, play golf like tournament-hardened seniors. The Horns are ranked 11th in the nation, with Bob Estes, Brian Nelson, and Blair Manasse leading the Team. Bob Estes had a great year, winning the Pan America Intercollegiate, and finished in the top 5 in four of six tournaments with a scoring average of 71.5. Brian Nelson’s scoring average is 75.1, finishing 8th at the Rafael Alarcon tournament and 15th in the Morris Williams tourney. Blair Manasse had the least experience of the three, but he won 4 major titles in Junior play. 

1986 – Jim Clayton 17th at the NCAA Championship

                                                                Team wins 3 tournaments

1986-1987 Pending Content- Jim Clayton 20th at the NCAA Championship

Brian Nelson finished in second in the NCAA with 6th other golfers. It was the second time in the 1980s that a Longhorn finished as runner-up at the NCAA tournament. It was Texas’s 10th consecutive top 20 finish.  Bob Estes  was the 1988 Collegiate Player of the Year

Bob Estes is the medalist in six regional tournaments from 1985 to 1988.

·       Three-time All-American and four-time All-SWC selection

·       Won four tournaments during senior year

·       1988 NCAA Player of the Year

·       He was the 1989 PGA Tour Rookie of the Year

Bob Estes became the first player since Ben Crenshaw to win both the Williams and Harvey Penick tournaments in the same year.

1987-1988 Pending Content- Jim Clayton- 11th at the NCAA Championship

The golf team finished 2nd in the SWC, winning three tournaments for the season.    Estes and Board lead the Team.

1988-1989 Jim Clayton SWC Champs- runner-up for NCAA championship

Jim Clayton is the Conference Coach of the Year. 2nd at the NCAA Championship

The Team wins four tournaments

Taylor Tipton is a medalist at a regional tournament. Omar Uresti is a medalist in two tournaments, in 1989 and 1990.

Brian Nelson, recovering from major back surgery in 1988, makes the All-SWC team in 1989 with Brad Agee, Kyle Jerome, and Omar Uresti. Uresti finished 12th at the NCAA tournament.

1989-1990 Coach Jim Clayton -SWC champion- 22nd nationally

Horns were picked 4th in the Fall of 1989 national polls, but the Team struggled in the Spring of 1990. Brad Agee and Omar Uresti led the Team all year long with top 10 rankings, but they were ambushed at the nationals, finishing 22nd.

It was a lackluster year, but the Horns were SWC champions and tournament champions. They won two of three essential tournaments, and Omar Uresti won the Harvey Penick and All-America tournaments. They were in the top 10 all year long.   

Men’s golf- The Team places first at the Morris Williams Tournament. Bob Estes was the medalist. The Team won the SWC championship. Brad Agee and Brian Nelson led the Team.

Still, the Team placed in the top 5 in 7 of the 11 tournaments that they played.

1990-1991 – Jim Clayton was first in the SWC and 9th at the NCAA tournament. 

A year of highs and lows. Teams finished in the top 4 in the first 4 tournaments.

SWC Champs with the help of Cameron Greenwood, Kyle Jerome, and Michael Cooper. 

70 of the 76 college sports do not generate enough revenue to pay for TV exposure, so many of these sports depend on the television money generated from Division I basketball of college basketball to gain national exposure. Golf is one of them. 

Golf could pay their way, but the NCAA did not want golfers looking like walking logos for sponsors. Therefore, the NCAA has decided to limit the amount of commercialism that can be displayed tightly. 

Justin Leonard failed to sign his scorecard at the NCAA tournament, and his score was disqualified. 

Leonard’s coach says that Justin “has the work ethic of Kite, but he also has a feel for the game of Crenshaw.” Justin says his significant strengths are consistency and mental toughness. 

Justin Leonard is the first Freshman since Lance Ten Broeck was the SWC medalist in 1975. Jean-Paul Hebert was second. 

Justin Leonard

Justin Leonard Is the Medalist 8 Different Times During His Longhorn Career. Second Only To Ben Crenshaw.   Three-time All America – 1992, 1993, 1994

Collegiate Player of the Year in 1994, HOH – 2004

Medalist at the NCAA 1994 and SWC conference medalist in 1991, 1992, 1993, and 1994, and

10-25-91- Leonard and Sosa lead the Horns. Leonard is known as the “J”ker” “or his smile and Sosa is known as a Johnny Divot for his massive divots.

1991-1992- Content- Jim Clayton’s team won the SWC tournament and finished 6th in the NCAA tournament.

The Longhorns captured their 4th straight SWC tournament title. Justin Leonard became the first Longhorn to take back-to-back SWC individual medalist honors since Ben Crenshaw.

Horns won their 3rd tournament at the Morris Williams, beating 4 teams that were ranked higher in the process.

Jean-Paul Hebert was a medalist at the Don Shula/University of Miami Collegiate Invitation. It was Hebert’s first win at Texas. Freshman Harrison Frazar also finished in the top 5 at the Don Shula tournament.

Clayton says about Leonard, “For his age, he’s the best I ‘ve ever had.”

Justin Leonard was a four-time professional tournament winner when he entered the Texas Open in 2000, winning the tournament by five strokes. He said after the victory, “Don’t read a lot of golf magazines,” and “I don’t watch a lot of golf on television, but I know that I haven’t hit in 2 1/2 years. It’s like a little burden lifted.” In 2001 and 2007, he repeated as the winner of the Texas Open.

The Team wins five tournaments (a record)

Justin Leonard, Michael Cooper, and Jean-Paul Hebert all contributed to a great season.

Justin LeLeonard’s roommate was Stuart Wallace, and was part of the Team that placed 5th in the nation. The Horns finished 11 strokes behind Florida. Justin Leonard missed five college tournaments to play in the Masters, Colonial, Byron Nelson Classic, Houston Open, and Bay Hill Classic. In the eight college tournaments he participated in, Justin won three individual titles. The Team only won one tournament without his participation. Justin won the 3rd straight SWC title. Jean-Paul Hebert was runner-up.

1992-1993 – Jim Clayton team with the 5th straight SWC Championship and places 5th at the NCAA tournament.

1993- 1994 Coach Jim Clayton 6- peat SWC champions – Team finishes runner-up at the NCAA tournament

Jim Clayton is the Conference Coach of the Year.

Leonard is the Male Athlete of the Year in the SWC, joining past winners Brooks Kieschnick, Scott Bryant, and Greg Swindell. He won 4 consecutive SWC medalist awards.

Justin is the men’s CAA individual golf champion.

Leonard leads the Team with Jean-Paul Hebert. Depth was the key to success this year. Harrison Frazar tied for 7th at the NCAA championship tournament, helping the Team to a runner-up position.

Justin Leonard, Jean-Paul Hebert, Harrison Frazar, and Stuart Wallace all return from the 1993 5 place finish at the NCAA championship.

Hebert was an honorable mention All-America and posted the second-best average on the Team in 1993 with a 73.55 through 16 tournaments, finishing second at the SWC championship and a third-place tie at the NCAA championship in 1993. Frazer entered the 1994 season with a 74.08 average per tournament. Wallace averaged 75.16 per tournament played.

In 1995, Jim Clayton finished first in the Southwest Conference (SWC) and placed third in the NCAA tournament. The Longhorns returned with three All-Americans, with Justin Leonard and Brad Elder leading the team. The SWC championship was decided by a 5-foot putt, resulting in a victory by just one stroke over the Aggies, with Brad Elder paving the way. The team earned the title of SWC Champions.

Tom Kite dropped by to see if Harvey Penick was well enough to join him in the dedication of the life-size bronzes of him and Harvey. Harvey passed away shortly after this meeting. Some of Harvey’s pupils included Tom Kite, Ben Crenshaw, Davis Love III, Kathy Whitworth, Mickey Wright, and Betsy Rawls.

-1996 Jim Clayton – The great Longhorn winning streak is over. Texas is 5th in the SWC and 13th at the NCAA tournament.

Inconsistencies plagued this Team, finishing last among 15 teams at a tournament in Lake Forest, Ill, followed by a lackluster performance at the Red River Classic, finishing 10th of 17 teams.

1997 Jim Clayton – second in the Big 12 but did not make the cut to 15 teams at the NCAA tournament.

.

Longhorn Hall of Honor inductee Brad Elder is one of only four Longhorns to win the nation’s most prestigious collegiate golfer of the year honor, the Fred Haskins Award. His most successful season as a Longhorn came as a junior in 1997, when he earned the Haskins Award. That year,  He finished his collegiate career as the nation’s. 1 amateur according to the Golfweek/Titleist amateur rankings.

Reflection Point

July 1, 1997 – Jimmy Clayton announced his retirement. Jim led the Horns to six top-five finishes in the NCAA tournaments, with three teams finishing as runner-ups to the national champion. Jim had 8 SWC championships, including 7 in a row from 1989 to 1995. Clayton was voted 6 time winner of SWC Coach of the year by his peers. Coach Clayton had 16 All-Americans and three Players of the Year: Elder, Leonard, and Estes.

ALL AMERICANS Longhorn Golfers up to 2008

1976 is the first year of NCAA sanctioned tennis at Texas

• Tennis record thru 2015 is 717 victories and 264 defeats

• 31 NCAA appearances

• 2 National Championships (1993 and 1995) Under Coach Moore

• 1 runner up for National Championship team (1992)

• 3 semi-final appearances in 1990, 1994, 1997

• 18 conference championships

• 21 Longhorns have received ITA All American status

For information on Longhorn Women’s tennis prior to 1973  Please click on  the  search Engine and type in “1896”

1971- 1976 Betty Hagerman coached the Racquetball club

JO ANN KURZ 5/03/2022 – 1973-1976

Jo Ann Kurz says about her tennis coach, “Betty Sue was an excellent coach. She helped me learn doubles and that helped my singles game. She was very patient as I developed more in my junior and senior years….”

“Significantly, I saw the change in women’s tennis with Title IX. I got a tuition waiver my first two years, then more assistance my 3rd and 4th perhaps a partial scholarship.”

We went from riding in Betty Sue’s Volkswagen bus to Arizona to flying to the Braniff Mixed Championships in Michigan, all because of more funding. We taught lessons for the Austin Tennis Foundation to bring money in for our team before we had enough funding to fly to team events.

Thank you for hearing pieces of my past at UT. It was a lot of work for us and it is nice to know that the women following us have had a smoother path.”

Jo Ann Kurz says “Betty Sue was an excellent coach. She helped me learn doubles and that helped my singles game. She was very patient as I developed more in my junior and senior years, after playing juniors in Texas, moving to Ohio during my high school years, and then returning to Texas for college.”

“Significantly, I saw the change in women’s tennis with Title IX. I got a tuition waiver my first two years, then more assistance my 3rd and 4th perhaps a partial scholarship.”

We went from riding in Betty Sue’s Volkswagen bus to Arizona to flying to the Braniff Mixed Championships in Michigan, all because of more funding. We taught lessons for the Austin Tennis Foundation to bring money in for our team before we had enough funding to fly to team events.

Thank you for hearing pieces of my past at UT. It was a lot of work for us and it is nice to know that the women following us have had a smoother path.”

Betty Sue Hagerman Welch was ranked No. 1 in Texas in women’s and mixed doubles in both the open and 35 and over divisions. She was also ranked No. 1 in Women’s 35 singles. Welch’s coaching accolades include starting the Division 1-A women’s tennis team at the University of Texas. Her many awards as educator and coach include being named 1993 USPTA National High School Tennis Coach of the Year.

1974 Betty Hagerman

National Texas Team finished 38th out of 50 teams

On November 21, 1973, a letter in support of developing women’s tennis made the rounds with the UT Athletic Department.  The author says “Some 100 or more men are provided with various athletic scholarships ……. special meals and a special dormitory….. Men’s sports are provided with a coaching staff, sports equipment, and travel allowances.  Most women do not seek a point by point comparison with the men’s sports programs; they simply want a first-class program for women’s tennis……”

Texas sent two women to the TAIAW tennis tournament.

1973-1974- Coach Hagerman 13-4 record

In 1974, the team finished 5th in the Nation
This year, Texas sent five women to the TAIAW tournament. It was the most to qualify of any Texas University.  Wilkins is the Horn’s #1 player.
Horn’s record was 13-4 in dual match play. Susie Smith asked for a scholarship to play at Texas, but the women’s athletic program was not yet large enough to offer aid to women. Nerissa Riley transferred to Texas.

1974-1975 –  Coach Hagerman was authorized to offer 4 partial scholarships.  Blackwood and Wilkins received two of the partial scholarships.

1975-1976 – Coach Betty Hagerman

This year the Horns finished 7th out of 43 Teams in tennis

Amy Wilkins is the #1 player at Texas this year.

1976-1977   Record 2-2  Coach Cathy Beene 6th ranked

The team has an excellent record of 13-3 in match play and they finished 2nd in state.

1977- 1978   Record 16-9 Coach Cathy Beene

In March of 1978, the Horns were ranked 6th in the nation.

Susie Smith is an All-American.   Riley and Smith won the 21-year-old and under doubles championship for the state.   The team also has a 2nd place finish in the Arizona Invitational Tennis tournament and the Lamar University Invitational.

In November 1978, Coach Beene resigned, Beene said, “I made a mistake. I appreciate the support of the department in believing that what occurred was a first-time occasion and their effort to preserve my professional reputation. “ A.D. Lopiano placed her on probation, but the media carnival around the incident forced UT to ask Beene to resign.

1978- 1979   Record 14-8 Interim coach dick King pending

Five freshmen are among the seven best tennis players at Texas. Freshman Merrilee Keller is the top seed.

1979-1980   Record 19-8 Coach Dave Woods- Horns finish 20th in the nation

Coach Woods is a prodigy of Dave Snyder.

Shelley Hudson is the team captain and leads the team to 2nd place in the TAIAW state tournament. Losing only to Trinity but beating all SWC opponents.

1981    Record 19-8 Coach Dave Woods

1980-1981- The team won the SWC and went undefeated in 10 dual matches. This team was comprised two first-year students, two sophomores, and two juniors. In the Spring, Coach Woods said, “We played well…just not well enough.”

Beth Ruman suffered a stress fracture the day before the national tennis meet, forcing all the players to move up one position.

1981  – Jane Johnson was a two-time All-American for Texas. She and Kristen McKeen finished 3rd in doubles at the AIAW national tournament.

In the Fall season, she was #1 in singles and #1 on the doubles team on the Texas team. .  Kirsten McKeen AIAW won the consolation title in the AIAW.

The team finished 4th in the AIAW postseason competition.

After the women’s team won the prestigious LSU Invitational, there was no mention in the Austin American Statesman. Many fans were incensed and started a campaign for better local newspaper coverage of Longhorn tennis.

Final Team rankings in the 1981 Spring season had Texas at #8.

1982 – 22-10 ranked 9th Coach Dave Woods

Qualified for AIAW National Championship tournament and beat Alabama and Arkansas but lost to Indiana and Rollins.

TOP SONG 1981

Horns finished 7th in the national tournament,

Dave Wood resigns, stating he is burned out on coaching. The players said the team had a lot of friction and internal differences.

1983 – 22-10 ranked 9th, Coach Jeff Moore – SWC Champions

Tennis team wins the state title and places second in regionals.  The team is led by Vicki Ellis Gen Greiwe, and Jane Johansen

Jane Johnson ITA singles All American.

1982-1983 national finish 16th. Gen Greiwe won the #2 flight for Texas. Ellis was the team MVP.   This year represents the most wins ever by a Texas tennis team. Texas was undefeated in SWC tournament play. Moore was Coach of the Year in the SWC. At 4th nationally this was Texa’s best ranking.

How the NCAA women’s
Final Four was born

A decade after Title IX, a battle for control of women’s
Basketball split loyalties and produced two national champions

Copy editing by Mark Selig. Design and development by Chloe Meister. Additional development by Jake Crump.

Rutgers defeated Texas, 83-77, in the 1982 AIAW women’s basketball championship. Forward Ann Pendergrass helped Louisiana Tech defeat Cheyney State, 76-62, in the first NCAA women’s championship in Norfolk in 1982. (Bryant/AP)

By Liz Clarke

March 31, 2022

It took more than the stroke of a pen to grant women’s basketball players the chance to compete on equal footing with men. ………

The NCAA didn’t stage its first women’s basketball championship until 1982, and only then, after trying for nearly a decade to scuttle Title IX, the federal law signed by President Richard M. Nixon in 1972, barring discrimination based on sex at institutions receiving federal funds. (The NCAA has staged its men’s basketball tournament since 1939.)

After exhausting all legal avenues to invalidate Title IX, the NCAA changed course and announced in 1981 that it would stage national championships for women in a handful of Division I sports.

The move was a direct challenge to the female-led Association for Intercollegiate Athletics for Women, which governed women’s college sports at the time. And it forced schools to choose sides in a battle over the future of women’s sports.

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Until then, the fault lines were philosophical. Schools had to decide what was the best path forward for women’s basketball: either a quasi-commercial model similar to the men’s setup or something else entirely, rooted in the AIAW ideal of strict amateurism, with rules developed by and for women.

The final showdown was the 1982 women’s basketball postseason, when both the NCAA and AIAW staged national championship games on the same day, 300 miles apart.

As Louisville, South Carolina, Connecticut and Stanford head to Minneapolis for the 2022 Final Four, it’s worth remembering those dueling title games and how the decisions made then set the stage for what exists today in women’s basketball.

And it’s best remembered, on the 40th anniversary of those 1982 women’s basketball championships, through the words of coaches and players who defined those largely forgotten moments.

Jody Conradt coached the 1982 AIAW runner-up Texas Longhorns.

Louisiana Tech won the inaugural NCAA women’s basketball tournament a year after winning the AIAW championship.

C. Vivian Stringer coached Cheyney State to the first NCAA tournament championship game.

Sonja Hogg coached Louisiana Tech in the first NCAA championship game: “We had been outscoring teams by 20, 30 points, but Cheyney State had all-Americans, and we told our team, ‘Now look: If we get down, just settle in. They’re good. Stay calm. Stay patient.’ Thank goodness we did.” (Andy Jacobsohn For The Washington Post)

CHAPTER 1

‘I guess this means you’ll want rings?’

The lure of NCAA TV exposure and travel subsidies left just three ranked teams sticking with the AIAW and winnowed its 1982 tournament field to 16. As a result, NBC canceled plans to air the championship game between Rutgers and fifth-ranked Texas at the Palestra in Philadelphia. A crowd of 1,789 attended, and Rutgers’ student radio station WRSU-FM provided the only live account.

Although Texas was favored, Rutgers’ Lady Knights had the edge in size and experience, led by senior forward June Olkowski and twins Mary and Patty Coyle, who manned the backcourt. All three starred in Philadelphia’s girls’ Catholic League and were childhood fans of Rutgers Coach Theresa Grentz when she led Immaculata’s Mighty Macs to three AIAW championships from 1972 to 1974.

“The Palestra is a very, very special place in Philadelphia because the Big Five — St. Joe’s, Villanova, Temple, La Salle and Penn — played there, and the girls’ Catholic League championship was played there. It was like a gladiator pit.”

“… We were at the shoot-around the day before when Jody [Conradt] and her team came in, and they had the most magnificent burnt orange warmups. I thought: ‘My God! I’ve got to get my kids out of here!’ I didn’t want them to see the Texas players. They were the full package!”

“Texas comes walking in in their beautiful warmups and matching shoes, and they all looked very intimidating. But [my twin] Patty and I were kind of laughing about it because we just had on our pinnies and shirts and red shorts. When we played, I was just glad to have a pair of sneakers that didn’t have any holes in ‘em.”

“I didn’t know a great deal about Rutgers, but I did know about June Olkowski and the twins. They had a reputation in the Philadelphia area for being super competitive, super talented, and there was no back-down in either of them. Trust me: I saw double trouble in those twins through the whole game.

“… We had to rely on quickness and defense. We wanted to extend the court — playing the whole 94 feet in defensive pressure — and score in transition. We were good at that, but I don’t think our experience matched that of Rutgers.”

“It was said that the Texas backcourt was going to dominate my twin and I. I didn’t understand that. Growing up in the city and the people that we had to compete against day in and day out, I thought, they’re not going to dominate us.

“… Us being from Philly, our whole family was at the game except my father. He was too nervous and couldn’t go. It was funny because he had given us so much of our confidence. His big thing was, ‘Dazzle them with footwork, and everything will take care of itself.’ But it’s the biggest game of our careers, and he’s not there. So one of my sisters, every couple minutes, she’d run out to the pay phone and call and give him an update.”

Sherryl Hauglum

Texas forward (1980-1983)

“Rutgers made two no-look, behind-the-head passes during that game. The timing on their offensive plays was impeccable. They had obviously played together for a very long time to be able to read each other so well. You could tell they had great chemistry.”

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Theresa Grentz

Rutgers coach (1976-1995)

“The reason we were so successful is that Mary Coyle and Patty Coyle handled the ball. Texas put as much pressure on their ballhandling skill as Texas could. Had they been able to strip the ball, it would have been a fast-break free-for-all. But it became a matter of possession and shot-selection.”

Texas, which led 37-34 at halftime, got in foul trouble in the second half, and Rutgers pulled off an 83-77 upset that ended the Longhorns’ 32-game winning streak. The AIAW, which unsuccessfully sued the NCAA for using its wealth to drive it out of business, folded three months later.

Sherryl Hauglum

Texas forward (1980-1983)

“We were used to winning; we never went into a game thinking that we weren’t going to win. So, there was a sadness, a disappointment and kind of a shock. I was disappointed in my play. It was okay, but it wasn’t great, and I felt that I let my teammates down and let Coach Conradt down.”

Theresa Grentz

Rutgers coach (1976-1995)

“We win the trophy, and we’re on the floor, and the [Rutgers athletic director] comes down on the floor and congratulates me. He says to me, ‘I guess this means you’ll want rings?’ ‘That would be correct,’ I said.

“But Rutgers didn’t take us out to celebrate or anything. So, Karl and I, we were just married, took them to a restaurant. They were tired, but I told them, ‘You can have whatever you want.’ It took Karl and I two credit cards to pay the bill, but we paid it.

“And we had rings made and a ring ceremony. We got to ring the bell at Old Queens [an honor Rutgers accords undefeated or champion teams]. And Rutgers did give us sweaters. I still have the sweater that says ‘Champions’ on it.”

Theresa Grentz and her Rutgers team overcame a halftime deficit to beat Texas in the AIAW championship game. (Tom Costello/Courtesy of Whoo-Rah Productions)

CHAPTER 2

‘We could finally breathe’

Powerhouses Louisiana Tech and Old Dominion led the AIAW defections to compete in the first NCAA tournament, which had a 32-team field and a nationally televised final. Top-ranked all season, La. Tech was heavily favored, having returned nearly every starter from its unbeaten, AIAW championship season the previous year. In 1981-82, Tech’s roster was awash in talent, led by all-Americans Angela Turner and Pam Kelly, point guard Kim Mulkey, and backup center Debra Rodman, Dennis Rodman’s sister.

Its opponent at Norfolk’s Scope Arena was less anticipated: Cheyney State, a small HBCU 30 miles west of Philadelphia. C. Vivian Stringer was a 22-year-old assistant professor when she volunteered to coach the Lady Wolves in 1971, in addition to her teaching duties. She built Cheyney into a basketball power on a meager budget by instilling belief, toughness and pride while honing her coaching skills under mentor John Chaney, who coached Cheyney’s men.

A capacity crowd of 9,531 attended, and the final was aired on CBS. Tickets cost $5 to $7, and both teams had vocal cheering contingents at the Scope. Cheyney couldn’t afford to bus down a pep band, so Norfolk State’s band volunteered its services.

CHAPTER 3

‘We will never accept crumbs’

South Carolina Coach Dawn Staley sits at the dais the day before the 2022 NCAA regional in Greensboro, N.C., emblematic in many ways of the strides women’s basketball has made since that inaugural NCAA tournament in 1982.

Her top-ranked Gamecocks lead the nation in attendance, averaging 12,268 for home games, and she is among the nation’s highest-paid women’s coaches, signing a seven-year, $22.4 million deal last fall that she hopes serves as a benchmark for greater investment in the game.

There are other metrics for the sport’s growth under the NCAA.

The women’s tournament has expanded from 32 teams in 1982 to 68 this year.

Seating capacity for the Final Four has doubled, from the 9,500-seat Scope to the 18,067-seat Target Center in Minneapolis

Media coverage has grown exponentially — from 37 credentialed journalists that first year to 716 in 2019, the last pre-pandemic year. And every game of this year’s tournament is televised.

Another metric is the NCAA banner draped behind Staley at each tournament news conference, adorned with a dizzying array of #MARCHMADNESS logos.

The NCAA’s decision to let women promote their tournament with the men’s trademarked “March Madness” slogan — a first, this year — is one example of the low-hanging fruit among several meatier steps urged by the outside law firm that reviewed the organization’s policies after last year’s uproar over the subpar way women were treated in the 2021 tournament. The firm’s scathing report found the NCAA has historically undervalued women’s basketball in myriad ways, from marketing and promotion to broadcast contracts and revenue-distribution formulas.

It is a narrative now four decades old.

After her Lady Techsters won the 1981 AIAW championship, Hogg had championship rings made for the players. After they won the 1982 NCAA title, it took 35 years for the squad to get NCAA rings.

“Maybe they forgot?” mused Turner Johnson. “But better late than never. I was so proud of it.”

Largely lost, too, is Rutgers’ AIAW triumph. That’s why Geoff Sadow, who covered the team’s 1982 season as an undergraduate, has co-produced a documentary, “Forgotten Champions,” weaving an audio recording of the student-radio broadcast with the only known footage of the untelevised game, found in a tin canister in Grentz’s attic decades later and digitized for the purpose.

“This team deserved more accolades than it has gotten,” Sadow said.

The same could be said of each team that reached the 1982 women’s championships.

Laney wonders whether Cheyney State’s 1982 Lady Wolves will ever get their due for reaching the inaugural NCAA title game.

“You can’t forget the history that we made, and we made history,” Laney said. “That team should be inducted into the Naismith Hall of Fame. How do you not recognize the history that was made by this small historically Black college that no one expected to be there except for us and our fans and our families?”

It’s impossible to gauge how the trajectory might have differed — for better or worse — had women’s basketball continued to be run by a separate organization with the interests of female athletes at the forefront rather than by the NCAA, dominated by football and men’s basketball interests.

“I really think we lost 10 years in promoting women’s sports,” said Texas women’s athletic director Donna Lopiano, who also served as the AIAW’s final president. “As soon as women joined the men’s athletic establishment, everybody forgot about promotion and publicity, which is everything in terms of developing a brand and assigning value to the female athlete and value to her product. That’s exactly what schools didn’t do. They put all their money into football and basketball.”

That’s why, under Lopiano’s watch, Texas was among the AIAW holdouts in 1982, even though Conradt wanted to play in the NCAA tournament.

“From a coaching standpoint, I wanted to be there with the big schools and the bright lights and the potential for growth,” Conradt said. “As I look back on it now, I have totally different feelings. I am so proud of the fact that, to Donna’s credit and the University of Texas, we stayed with AIAW that last year, because it became a statement. It was a statement that, ‘Yes, women can control their own destiny. We are not dependent on the NCAA, a male-dominated organization, to create this opportunity for women’s basketball.”

And on it goes, with each generation of women’s players and coaches pushing for tougher competition, a place in bigger arenas, and a national audience despite the NCAA’s track record of selling them short.

“I’ve told my teams many a time,” Stringer said, “We will never accept crumbs.”

AIAW Athlete photos are below

                                                                                          Coach Patterson’s history as the men’s swim coach is available at the link. 

https://texas-lsn.squarespace.com/patterson

Pat Patterson’s podcast link is below:

https://na01.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Ftraffic.libsyn.com%2Fforcedn%2Fcdogg%2FS06E01.mp3&data=05%7C02%7C%7Cfbc14772508b4c00ae7b08de02c58744%7C84df9e7fe9f640afb435aaaaaaaaaaaa%7C1%7C0%7C638951244563193267%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJFbXB0eU1hcGkiOnRydWUsIlYiOiIwLjAuMDAwMCIsIlAiOiJXaW4zMiIsIkFOIjoiTWFpbCIsIldUIjoyfQ%3D%3D%7C0%7C%7C%7C&sdata=t3oGGuk0SXXoj%2FazYPhfhv2AKRIO2DjbQHaBub2IfuU%3D&reserved=0

Texas women’s Swimming team coach

1971 – 1979 Coach Melvin “Pat” Patterson, Women’s Swim Coach

Pat Patterson was U.T.’s first official women’s sports coach. Several coed swimmers approached U.T. President Lorene Rogers, requesting a team under Title IX. Women’s P.E. Director Betty Thompson asked Pat if he would coach them at Gregory Gym, starting in the fall semester of 1973.

Coach Patterson recalls, “I’m not sure if the women’s swimming organization before the NCAA kept records, but we did take teams to the Nationals. I felt like I was being pulled in two directions.”

The Longhorn swimming team began in the small 25-yard Gregory Gym pool. At first, there was no recruiting or scholarships for women swimmers. Athletes made the team by participating in open tryouts each September.

In the early 1970s, the passion for coaching women’s sports often outweighed the desire for money. Coach Patterson says, “Few were paid, and most were volunteers.” Tommy Tate volunteered as a coach, and Mike Brown, a diving coach, initially volunteered as well. Coach Royal once mentioned that the swimming payroll was costly, covering a head coach, assistant coaches for men and women, diving coaches, and staff to run the swim center.

Top songs 1971

Below is the link to Coach Patterson’s induction into the Swimming Hall of Fame.

http://www.tsdhof.org/melvin-pat-patterson

Mike Sorrells served as an assistant coach under Pat Patterson at the University of Texas from 1971-1972. Coach Sorrells was the driving force to separate the state meet into 5A and 4A-and-under divisions, giving more athletes the chance to compete at the highest level. He was voted TISCA Coach of the year in 2001. Over the course of his career he coached more than 40 individual and relay state champions and sent five of his swimmers to the Olympics.

1973 Coach Patterson pending info

1973-1974 Coach Patterson pending info

1974-1975 – Coach Patterson and Bell – pending info

The First Woman to Receive an Athletics Scholarship at the University of Texas
Cathy Carlson (Swimming & Diving, 1974–75)
The first official women’s athletic scholarships at UT were awarded in 1974, the same year UT formally launched women’s intercollegiate athletics under Donna Lopiano.
Among that inaugural group, Cathy Carlson is consistently identified in UT archival material and early‑era reporting as the first woman to receive an athletics scholarship at Texas.
She was part of the very first cohort of women whose scholarships were funded through the newly created Women’s Athletics Department — a watershed moment that marked UT’s transition from club/intramural women’s sports into true varsity competition.

Why this matters in UT history
That 1974 class — with Carlson at the front — represents the moment UT finally put institutional resources behind women athletes. It’s the same pivot point that later produced:
• Retha Swindell’s rise in basketball
• Terry Crawford’s track dynasty
• Jody Conradt’s national prominence
• The full integration of women’s sports into the Longhorn identity
Carlson’s scholarship wasn’t just symbolic; it was the first brick in the structure that became one of the most powerful women’s athletics programs in the country.

1975-1976 – Coach Patterson pending Info

All but one member of the 1974-1975 team returned the following year.

1976 – 1977 Coach Patterson pending info

1977-1978 Coach Ray Woods

Swimmers quickly adjusted to Ray Woods’s coaching style.

Ruthie S. Premack sent TLSN the following comments about women’s swimming in 1977. I can’t confirm her comments, but they sound legit so here are her comments about the 1977 swim team .

Just as a reminder, Title IX was signed in 1972, and in 1975, regulations for Title IX were implemented. However, The 1977 Texas women’s swimming team did not yet have a varsity head coach, because there was no official varsity women’s swimming program at UT in 1977. The women’s team was still operating in a pre‑varsity, club‑style structure, coached within the broader Texas swimming ecosystem rather than under a dedicated NCAA‑level women’s head coach.

The key figure overseeing women’s swimmers in that era was Coach Pat Patterson,

Ruthie says,

I would like to forward you the below photo I took of the women’s swim team. We think it is from 1977. Tommy Tate was the Coach. The only people I remember from the women’s swim team are Audrey Supple, Lisa Kelsey, Ann Girardeau, Leslie Gardell and Diane Hurd. (If you are interested, Maybe someone in your world can recognize and name the other swimmers?)

Maybe you would want to add the Tommy Tate team photo to your website?

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Also, You probably already know this bit of Longhorn history:

But just in case…. The men’s swim team had the cheerleader group called the “Bevo’s Babes”. As a 3 year letterman/ manager of the team, I had the idea for a mirror group for the women’s swim team.

I had forgotten that part of my life. Then, the “Steer Studs” came up at the family Thanksgiving last year.

I did not keep any of the marketing / invitation posters we put up around campus referring to the “Steer Studs” when we organized and ran it. The materials and ads (maybe we put one in the Daily Texan?) said things along the line of “Interview to be a Women’s Athletic Supporter” or “You too can be a Steer Stud” and then included the interview day/date/times, and location — which was of course at the then new Swim Center.

The names of the “Steer Studs” I was friends with (and can remember the names of) were: Shad Jefferies, David Pederson, John Stavinoha and Kim ???…. We chose around 20 UT male students. The Steer Studs decorated lockers, provided baked goods, and attended & cheered home swim meets for the women’s swim team- much like what the “Bevo’s Babes” did for the men’s swim team.

Too bad I didn’t think to take a group photo of the “Steer Studs”. However, I did an AI search and found the below materials.

About the “Steer Studs”: AI did not get everything right…. Surprise, right? It was actually the swimmer named xxx Londrigan who thought of the name. It was not a use of my last name – although the synonym was noted and another source of humor. “Steer” was parallel to the Bevo in the “Bevo’s Babes” name. The AI search was a fun search down a memory lane I had not thought about in years.

If this interests you, Maybe you want to make a mention of the “Steer Studs” on your website?

Thank you for your efforts.

Ruthie S. Premack

CALLING ALL “STEER STUDS” OF 1977 TO COME FORWARD AND SHARE YOUR STORIES.

The 1977-1978 team competed internationally in Mexico.  Individual school and conference records were set by Julie Gray,  Lisa Kelsey, Ann Giardeau, Marilyn Fulbright, and Diane Walker.

Coach Paul Bergen has a short tenure at Texas but it is long on success.

At the AIAW national championship, the Horns placed 4th.

Paul is the first swimming coach to apply the training methods used on racehorses to the sport of swimming. He serves on the USA coaching staff for the World Championships in 1975, 1978, and 1982, and with Canada in 1986. He is an Olympic coach in 1980, 1984, 1988, and 2000.

Coach Bergen’s Olympians, who represented the USA

Kim Linehan won the National Championship in the 500 in 1981 and 1982 – 1650 free in 1981 and 1982 – the 200 fly in 1981 and 1982. She was a member of the Olympic team in 1980 and 1984—all American 20 times (looking for a higher-quality photo).

1979-1980- Coach Paul Bergen’s team FINISHES 2nd in the Nation

In 1980, Texas finished 2nd to Stanford by 6 points. It was a bitter pill for Bergen to swallow.

Longhorns set five American and eight AIAW national records. Sterkel was the high-point swimmer, with four first places and four new records. Ten All-Americans returned. In the 1980-1981 season, the team will face strong dual meets against Stanford, Arizona State, Florida, South Carolina, Houston, SMU, and Texas Tech.

The Lady Horns defeat Perennial national power Arizona State, win the TAIAW, and finish within 6 points of the National Championship.

1980-1981- Coach Paul Bergen’s Team wins the  National Championship

Coach Bergen is recognized as the National Coach Of The Year in 1981

1981 – Team wins the National Championship.  The top swimmer in the nation was Kim Linehan, who set the world record in the 800 freestyle.  Pennington burned out this year and announced her retirement.  Texas handed Florida its first home dual loss ever, then defeated Stanford and Arizona State.  Sterkel set two American records and won all five individual events she entered.

Carol Borgmann wins the National Championship in the 100 IM in 1981 and the 100 IM and 200IM in 1982. All American 18 times

Kim Black is National Champion in the 1650 free. All American 4 times

1981-1982- Coach Paul Bergen’s Team wins the  National Championship

1982 – Texas wins its 2nd consecutive national title .  Unfortunately, 8 of the top 10 teams chose to participate in the first NCAA championship .   In fact, Texas won the AIAW Championship and Florida won the NCAA national championships. The AIAW exited the stage and folded after the 1982 season

Raising a great cloud of caliche dust, Darrell Royal zoomed away from the lake house in his van. He explained his haste as a measure of consideration for another driver behind him; by putting more distance between them, he was trying to spare the other car’s finish a cloak of biscuit-colored grit. He did not, however, slow down appreciably when he reached the blacktop, which curved through cedar brakes into a bait camp on the Pedernales River, thirty miles west of Austin. Making his midday rounds, Darrell paused on the front porch of a beer joint the regulars call Mona’s Yacht Club, where he engaged the dull, cross-eyed stare of a young possum that Mona had offered him earlier, by phone, as a pet baby raccoon.  Inside, Mona and her boyfriend, Sonny, made their customary small fuss over Darrell and rushed to prepare his usual with meat and double cheese. They’re proud of their clientele. Willie Nelson even brought Barbara Walters here for the taping of that strange celebrity interview. Greeted by a neighbor who had come to Mona’s to cash his Social Security check, the coach dabbed his French fries in catsup and discussed how they might bring their dusty road to the attention of Burnet County paving crews.

Like other retirees, Darrell Royal, at 58, lives a life that is a mixture of old hurry and new leisure: attention to homey details long neglected, vague itches, snapshots of grandkids, melancholy suspicions, rounds of golf, time on his hands. He was one of the top college football coaches of all time, but today, he entertains conversation about the game with an air of polite sufferance, not nostalgia. Among Texans he was a towering figure, an establishment icon, a symbol of toughness, command, and pride. Now he cherishes most those days when he goes unrecognized except by a few bearded, grizzled, disreputable friends. The autumn years of this amiable but saddened man are a season of underlying discontent.

Down the road from Mona’s is Willie Nelson’s private country club, the salvaged asset of a failed subdivision. With a posh clubhouse, terraced swimming pools, a nine-hole golf course, and a fine view of the blue cedared hills, it’s a dream toy if you can afford the real estate. Darrell, who has played some of the best golf courses in the world, likes this one because he doesn’t have to make appointments and observe tee-off times. He just wanders over when he feels like it and scares up a game with singer Steve Fromholz, screenwriter Bud Shrake, or—when the band’s off the road—the head man himself. “Willie shoots about bogey gold,” said Darrell, “though it’s hard to tell because we don’t look for balls. We circle through the area, but if it doesn’t show up, we just drop another one. Last time, we played sixty or seventy holes. Started at ten and quit at dark.”

Sighting none of his regular companions, he detoured through the clubhouse to check in with his secretary at the university, who reported a call from Tennessee coach Johnny Majors. As special assistant to UT president Peter Flawn, Darrell advises the university—occasionally—on matters like athletic department contracts and the proper status of club sports. He travels extensively, playing in pro-am and charity golf tournaments, and still maintains his Onion Creek home and a Mercedes given to him by the Longhorn Club. He has always had the poor boy’s taste for the blandishments of the country club—the Onion Creek kind and, lately, the Willie Nelson kind, too. Willie’s main clubhouse has been converted into a plush and formidably equipped recording studio. “I watched every pick of the album he cut with Roger Miller,” said Darrell, with a reverence that those of us who are football fans might have felt had we stood at the coach’s shoulder and on an extra headset during the Arkansas Shoot-out in 1969. Hanging out at the lake. Playing second fiddle to Willie and Waylon Jennings and Billy Joe Shaver.

“There were people who didn’t like it,” he acknowledged, “people who didn’t like it at all. They just couldn’t understand why the head coach at the University of Texas would want to associate with those guys. Same ones now that ask me to get Willie’s autographed picture for their grandkids. Now they want a personal introduction.” He laughed without much humor. “I’m friends with Don Williams too, and he’s straight as six o’clock. Somebody wrote in that rock magazine Crawdaddy that, on occasion, I’d been known to ‘widen my nose.’ I didn’t know what the hell they were talking about. I know now. But I’ve never taken one puff off a joint, never taken pills, never done any of that. Drink too much beer sometimes. I’m not around when all that’s taking place. They don’t do it when I’m there. They manage to like me in spite of my faults. And I’ve sure as shit got some chinks in my hide.”

Eighteen years ago, as the University of Texas chartered plane descended on the Austin airport, its passengers were the top-ranked college football team in the country. The Longhorns had just leveled Oklahoma 28-7 for their fifteenth consecutive win. Suddenly, Darrell Royal rose from his seat and ran toward the cockpit. Moments later, at the coach’s request, the engines revived, and the plane broke its descent. The Texas players peered out, spellbound, while the plane banked and circled back over the city for an elaborate second look at the stark spire of the university tower, with its triumphant crown of orange light.

To understand the quiet magic inside that propeller-driven plane and to appreciate Darrell Royal, now in early retirement, you must recall the lavish success of his working prime. During Royal’s glory years, in 1959-70, Texas’ record of wins, losses, and ties was 99-19-2. And only four of those losses were decided by more than a touchdown. Four times during that twelve-year span, Royal’s teams finished the regular season undefeated; four more times they lost just once. Seven times during those dozen years, the Longhorns were ranked number one in the polls as late as midseason. On three occasions, Texas lined up in a pairing of the country’s first- and second-ranked; Royal won every time. He won 12 of his first 13 games against Oklahoma. His career tally with the aggies was 17 wins out of 20 games. Even more remarkable since Frank Broyles’ teams still hold up on – on paper – as the Longhorns’ equal, Royal closed out his career 15-5 against Arkansas.

You have to go back thirty years to his mentor, Bud Wilkinson, to find another coach who so thoroughly dominated the profession. In the sixties, Royal’s competitive edge and captivating style effectively symbolized that profession. If the bedeviled genius of Vince Lombardi epitomized NFL coaching in those years, Darrell was taking care of the undergrads down home. Few college teams have ever been such a reflection of the head coach. Royal acted more like a small-town banker than a football coach, and his boys acted more like future small-town bankers than future pro stars. He could be comfortable at the country club or the rodeo, and his football team was the same way. It was tough and earthy and physical, but it was also beautifully polished. The Longhorns never came out for games jumping up and down on the sidelines. They didn’t spike the ball or high-five or dance around like cheerleaders after sacking the quarterback. Royal would have dropped dead before he put little decals on players’ helmets as rewards for their effort. His players acted as though they expected to win, and they usually did. For twenty years, his aphorisms and boyish grin pervaded the region’s consciousness. His TV show, cohosted by humorist Cactus Pryor, went beyond the usual humdrum of highlight films and the next week’s predictions with its Johnny Carson-Ed McMahon type of banter. Among Texans, only Lyndon Johnson had more nationwide visibility —and Royal certainly had the higher popularity rating. In Austin, sycophants of a conservative bent were particularly fond of citing his attributes as a potential gubernatorial candidate, but Royal was never tempted. Bud Wilkinson’s post-retirement campaign for the US Senate in Oklahoma demonstrated the illusions of politics, and his prodigy was secure in his own realm. In those days, country musicians like Willie Nelson clamored for a crumb of Royal’s public attention. Royal hammed it up on camera with Bob Hope, and his lifelong hero, General Douglas MacArthur, hosted a banquet in New York in the coach’s honor. Richard Nixon squeezed in for a share of the sweat and celebration in the Texas dressing room. Within the considerable boundaries of his profession’s domain, Royal was king.

He was there when the modern beast dragged its pads out of the swamp. When Darrell Royal played for Bud Wilkinson at Oklahoma in the late forties, Bobby Layne and Tom Landry lined up in the backfield for Texas. Curt Gowdy was a sportscaster for Koma in Oklahoma City. Texas Schramm was a sportswriter for the Austin American-Statesman. Royal was the kind of player he later loved to recruit: a fast, undersized halfback converted to a quarterback because of his feel for the fake, read, and pitch of the option, a sprint-out passer equally at home in the defensive secondary. During his two years at quarterback, he completed 54 percent of his passes and threw 76 times in one stretch without an interception. On defense he set an Oklahoma record for career interceptions and once ran down a 9.5 sprinter from behind. He set other OU records with an 81-yard punt and a 95-yard punt return. In a 1947 upset of Missouri, he punted out of bounds on the one-, three-, and four-yard lines.

As a coach, Royal’s approach to football was thoroughly consistent with those origins. Field position, the kicking game. Control the line of scrimmage and make the other guy pass. His one major tactical innovation, the wishbone triple option, was simply a refinement of Wilkinson’s split T. His typical quarterbacks at Texas – Duke Carlisle, Jim Hudson, Bill Bradley, James Street, Eddie Phillips, Alan Lowry, Marty Akins – were mirror images of himself.

The charming Okie with a  dimple in his chin was college coaching’s golden boy. Eight jobs in eight years, 1950 to 1957, family in tow. Brilliant lectures on the split T at major coaching clinics. At 28, the first job as head coach, with Edmonton, in the Canadian pro league. But Royal always thought the pro game was superfluous, a bit tawdry. At Mississippi State, the next stop, he further refined his views on football’s hierarchy and decided that a major state university was what he wanted.

The Texas job was a dream come true, and he was quick to make sure that it would be a dream with some longevity. His teams flirted with the national championship in 1961 and 1962, then won it in 1963 with an undefeated season and a Cotton Bowl rout of Roger Staubach’s Navy. In the early part of 1964, the athletic council of Oklahoma announced that it would like to replace the departing Wilkinson with Darrell Royal, but Royal, to the relief of orangebloods reveling in the national championship, eventually excluded himself from consideration. Two weeks later, after the athletic council and the faculty council requested that Royal be given faculty status, the regents went one better and made him a full professor with tenure, in addition to giving him a $4000 raise—a move that, to Royal’s anguish, raised howls from tenured professors all over campus. Trying in turn to keep everybody happy with him, the coach wasn’t immune to errors of judgment. He supported Ben Barnes for governor a bit too publicly and permitted the photography of his Chrysler endorsements on the floor of Memorial Stadium, forgetting that “we have a whole lot of Texas supporters who sell Chevrolets and Fords.” But in the Byzantine world of the UT System, he was a master politician. At parties under all the right chandeliers, he and his wife, Edith, would part company at the door, sip cocktails, and expertly work the room. But he never let his social access to chancellor and regent lure him outside the chain of command. He accepted nothing but phone calls from the wily and solicitous Frank Erwin, who lobbied covertly for his dismissal on occasion. “We fouled up,” Royal explains now, with a droll wink. “After about ten years, we let A&M beat us one time. Frank could be a fierce enemy on one issue and turn cartwheels for you on the next. I enjoyed watching him work.” As athletic director, Royal delegated routine administration of the other sports to two of his assistants, Bill Ellington and Jack Patterson. His game was football, the money-maker. He lodged all departmental requests with the athletic council—budgetary overseers appointed by the president from the faculty, the student body, the Longhorn Club, and the Ex-Students Association, but with a faculty majority. Royal manipulated that bunch like a smart district attorney in the grand jury room. A former member of the athletic council recalls those sessions: “I always thought I’d hate to meet him in a dark alley when I had something he wanted. One way or another, he was going to carry it off, probably with a  smile on his face and with me thinking he’d just done me a huge favor.”

He always had a gift for the colorful gesture, the quotable turn of phrase. Riding the team bus toward Royal’s first win over Oklahoma, student reporters from the Daily Texan gaped: he was actually kneading an orange rabbit’s foot with his thumb. Running the wing T in the early sixties, he caught the sportswriters’ fancy with something called the flip-flop line, which was just a simplification of blocking assignments neatly lifted from the obsolete single wing. “The flip-flop gained national prominence not because of its explosive results,” said Royal, “but because its name is a form of advertising. And who says it doesn’t pay to advertise? In Colorado there are thirty mountains taller than Pike’s Peak. Name one.”

But he didn’t win thirty straight in a hall of mirrors. “The only way anybody’s ever going to beat Oklahoma,” he declared at the outset, “is to go out there and whip ‘em jaw to jaw.” The essence of football, he contended, is the wreckage of the guy directly in front of you. Royal’s antipathy to the passing game was famous: “When you pass, three things can happen, and two of them are bad.” He also observed that even the best pro passing attacks take four or five years to develop; the rapid turnover of college personnel prevented the necessary fine-tuning. But he also seems to have scorned passing because it was art, not muscle. It introduced randomness to the game. The rushing game, on the other hand, forced one-on-one confrontations, strength versus strength. By running the football, you not only defeated people but also established your physical dominance. The victims remembered. And word got around.

Before the 1963 game against Baylor, a major air-minded obstacle to his undefeated season, Royal told Sports Illustrated, “The guy with the blue serge suit with his green socks rolled down didn’t go to Texas.” He wasn’t just psyching that week’s opponent and catering to the snooty pretense of UT alums. He buried the opposition with his concept of the major state university. He surrounded himself with the best assistants he could hire, and his policy of recruiting as many good players as he could explains the NCAA’s adoption of today’s thirty-scholarship limit. In 1965 James Street, then a senior at Longview High, he was inclined to attend Arkansas because Texas already had a freshman quarterback sensation, Bill Bradley. In the Memorial Stadium press box during one of those frosh games – while “Super Bill” ran, passed, punted, and intercepted on the field—Royal casually convinced Street that competing against UT’s surplus of talent was the most important challenge he would ever meet.

Street says now that when Royal passed through his team’s locker room, a hush descended, even on the players who despised him. Direct confrontation with the head man, outside the context of athletic endeavor, was avoided at all costs. “Coach says, ‘Now James, you know it wasn’t that way. My door was always open to you guys.’ Yes, sir. Except we didn’t know what we’d get into if we went in there. One time Bradley and I went up to Dallas, riding motorcycles, and got into a little trouble. Coach Royal called us into his office, and we denied everything. ‘Now, boys, if I was going fishing, I’d just as soon do it with a coupla fellas like you. But I know for a fact you weren’t up there reading your Gideon Bible.’ I came out of there with my knees shaking. We sure never went to him for fatherly advice. If something like that came up, our man was Coach Bellard.”

In the spring of 1968, following a third consecutive 6-4 season, Royal redelegated the responsibilities of his staff in a general shake-up. The previous offense coordinator, Fred Akers, was shuffled to the defensive secondary. Moving from coaching linebackers to coaching offensive backs, Emory Bellard inherited an assignment over the summer that would change the form of college football. Royal had more great running backs—Chris Gilbert, Ted Koy, Steve Worster—than starting positions in the I formation the Longhorns would be using. Royal told Bellard he wanted a fullback-oriented option offense in which all three runners could participate. Bellard’s solution was the wishbone triple option.

In secret workouts that fall, Bradley and Street didn’t think they could run the offense. Sure enough, the fullback had to line up a couple of steps deeper to give them the time and the angle. And when Bradley still couldn’t get the hang of it, Royal grabbed Street in a losing cause at Tech: hell, you can’t do any worse; get in there.” In the tension and embarrassment surrounding Super Bill’s demotion, Bradley worked out the next week at wide receiver. Running a deep route one day, Bradley loosened the drawstring of his sweat pants. As he sprinted, the sweats slipped down over his buttocks, his thighs, and clumped around his ankles. The squad broke up in laughter, and the tension dissolved. Super Bill went on to all-pro stardom in the defensive secondary of the Philadelphia Eagles. And at Texas the thirty-game streak was underway.

The wishbone was the apotheosis of Royal’s coaching philosophy. Texas had days when all four backs ran for more than a hundred yards, when the total offense surpassed six hundred – almost all of it on the ground. But all great coaches are prepared for the day when the game plan doesn’t work out. Riding the bus to the stadium for the 1969 Arkansas Shoot-out, the game for the national title, Royal sat down beside street and told him to run a quarterback option to the left if the time came for a 2-point conversion. “Aw, Coach,” drawled Street, discounting the possibility. “I’m just telling you,” said Royal. A lesson learned from the first 15-14 win over Oklahoma in 1958 and the 14-13 loss to Arkansas in 1964: if you have to score twice to win, go for 2 after the first touchdown.

But before the 1969 Longhorns could claim their 15-14 triumph, they had to get past fourth and three at the Arkansas 43 with 4:47 remaining – and they did it with Royal’s famous riverboat gamble, 53 Veer Pass. “WE were on the sideline on the phone to Coach Bellard, talking about overshifts,” says Street. “Coach Royal just snatched that call out of the air. I questioned the formation more than the play. The tight end, Randy Peschel, was the only receiver on that side of the field. In the huddle I couldn’t even look at him. I acted like I was talking to the split end, Cotton Speyrer, hoping Arkansas would think I was throwing it to him. I said, ‘Peschel, I don’t care what you do. Run down there, turn around, and come back at me; just get open.’ And then when I let it go long, I thought, ‘Oh me, what if he actually does that? What am I gonna tell Coach Royal?’

“No coach in his right mind would have made that call!” laughs Street, who clearly loves the man. “But it worked.”

The lake house is remarkable for its lack of athletic memorabilia. A few sports titles on the bookshelf, a snapshot of Earl Campbell in a cowboy hat, his arms around the Royal’s grandchildren, but scarcely another clue. We sat talking about the Jackie Sherrill debacle in College Station. Darrell watched a pair of cardinals raid a birdfeeder on the deck. “You may not have seen yesterday’s paper,” Edith was saying. “Jackie said if he had to do it over again, he’d still be in Pittsburgh.”

Darrell set his coffee aside with an only-the-Aggies stretch of the mouth. “They didn’t have to go public with that. You keep the coach’s salary in line with the deans at the university. Then if you want to do a little something extra on the side, that’s fine, that’s private business. But to come right out and publish the figure, that just puts Jackie in a bad spot with the faculty. Jackie Sherrill’s a nice guy. He’s not overpaid.” Darrel chuckled. “They’ll make him earn every penny.”

The phone rang, and he spoke briefly with Pat Culpepper, his onetime linebacker, team captain, and staff assistant, now a high school coach in Midland. Culpepper was from Cleburne, which contributed a disproportionate number of top players during Royal’s early years – Timmy Doerr, David McWilliams, Howard Goad, and Fred Sarchet. They were the kind of players Darrell favored: small-town kids who believed in the program and toed the coaches’ line. As a UT assistant, Culpepper also played a prominent role in Gary Shaw’s Meat on the Hoof, the 1972 book that kicked the first large dent in Darrell’s expertly chiseled public image. Shaw, a reserve guard in the mid-sixties, portrayed Culpepper as a screaming fanatic in charge of the brutal “shit drills” designed to discipline uncooperative players and chase off others whose scholarships were needed for the next class of recruits. Culpepper has since compiled his own version of the Royal years, and that was the purpose of his call. Darrell told him he’d be glad to read the manuscript.

Shaw portrayed “Daddy D” as a man who could stand over a talent like George Sauer when he was writhing on the ground with a knee injury and, completely detached, finish eating a hamburger. And Sauer was a gate attraction and the son of an old friend. “Coach Royal met my parents once when I was being recruited as a freshman,” Shaw wrote. “Four years later he ran into them after a football game and immediately called them by their first names. Three years after I was gone and a full seven years after meeting them, Royal met them again at the Denton Country Club. Again, without hesitation, he addressed them by their first names. Maybe, you say, he just has a memory for names and faces. Yet two years after I’d played for him for your years I ran into him on campus and he couldn’t recall mine. A player that has come and gone and has no PR value is a different case.” Meat on the Hoof drew blood, and the coach didn’t respond kindly. “Shaw says he took psychiatric treatment when he was here,” Royal said at the time. “That’s kind of common these days – but I have never felt the need to go take treatment.” He has since mellowed on the subject. And give him credit: he at least read the book. Tom Landry is never going to turn a page of North Dallas Forty.

“I don’t deny at all that we ran a tough program, especially back then,” said Darrell. “I don’t think we ran it without feelings. But for Gary it was a real powerful experience, and I think he was entirely truthful in ninety-five percent of that book, as he saw it.  I still object to the five percent lies. I didn’t even recognize some of those drills he described. We never had them – ever, at any time. But there’s not much in that book that wasn’t true.”

There was some hurt in his voice. “Gary said I ran into him on campus and didn’t even know him. Well, the guy grew a beard and long hair and lost down to a hundred and seventy pounds. Quite possibly I’m guilty of that. But I’d have recognized him if he still had a crew cut and weight two hundred. I remember the way his legs were built, the way he moved…”

Edith laughed. “Darrell’s the only person I know who recognizes people by their legs instead of their faces.”

He wagged his head and smiled, momentarily nonplussed. “They never did need numbers,” he said. “I know that.”

Darrell Royal’s first fifteen years at Texas produces twelve bowl games, two undisputed national titles, and unquestioned mastery of a strong Southwest Conference. Not bad for an old boy who never wanted to do anything but coach football. But it all began to go sour for him in 1972. Meat on the Hoof hit the stores in the middle of the season, and the weak before the TCU game the Associated Press ran a five-part series on lingering racism in the UT athletic program. By then Royal had six black players, and he authorized their interviews with a fair amount of confidence. One of the AP reporters, Jack Keeer, says now that Royal, who gave much of his own time to the project, seemed almost relieved to have the issue aired. Still, he was hardly prepared for what his players had to say. Even Royal’s All-American fullback, Roosevelt Leaks, believed he felt the sullen pressure of bigotry – from the white players, from the coaching staff, from the university at large. (Now with the Buffalo Bills, Leaks still wonders if the knee injury he suffered in the spring of 1964—which converted his dreams of big-money NFL stardom into the marginality of being a fifth-round draft choice, followed by a journeyman career as a blocking back and short-yardage plugger—was not an ill-timed accident, as it was popularly supposed.)

Royal’s attitude was a complex and contradictory blend of generous instinct and redneck, fundamentalist, Dust Bowl origins. As a child in California, he was branded and humiliated by the Okie epithet, and the experience was reflected in his racial outlook. But his sympathy for the outcast never undercut his esteem for the country club. In 1953, as coach of the Edmonton Eskimos, Royal tongue-lashed his white players for their racist invective. He and Edith befriended the black pros, helping to ease their Canadian isolation. While at Texas, he quietly served as trustee of Stillman University, a school for blacks in Tuscaloosa. Yet he hardly championed their cause on campus in Austin. Even after the program was officially integrated in 1965, he didn’t wear out many shoes in active recruitment of blacks. One past delegate on the athletic council contends that the policy was stated, not tacit. But the same delegate acknowledges that on one on the council raised a word of protest. Certain elements of the university power structure – people who had a good deal of say in the hiring and firing of football coaches—made no bones about their racist intent. Royal wasn’t about to walk that plank.

As a coach, he was no fool; he could see what blacks had brought to the game. At the same time, he seemed to question the discipline and preparation of black players—particularly those from inner-city school districts. He wanted solid citizens in his program, not freelancers. Suffice it to say that in his position, with his own power base, he could have done more for blacks than he chose to. But in the context of the AP series, it mattered little how much he had or hadn’t grown in personal outlook. The damage to his professional reputation was done. His career crowning achievement, the great wishbone machine of 1969, was remembered—and denigrated—as the last lily-white national championship team. To hear rival recruiters tell it, he was George Wallace in the schoolhouse door.

To the parents of potential recruits, Royal also had to explain the prevalence in Austin of certain alternative lifestyle—an especially sensitive subject for him. His own children sampled the exotic fruit available to Austin’s upper middle class. Marian, divorced from Chic Kazen, a lawyer and son of the Laredo congressman, liked to hand out at the hippie rock emporium Armadillo World Headquarters. She was a painter of strange abstracts, psychedelic butterflies; one of her major works was the mural in the ladies’ room at the Armadillo. The middle child, Mack, tried to place his photographs in local art galleries, but to friends he was withdrawn, prone to spending long hours in front of the TV with stereo headphones clamped over his ears, shutting the world out. The youngest, David, studied guitar in 1972-73 at the Berklee School of Music in Boston. They were bright kids, adored by their friends, totally without direction. The focus of their rebellion—if that’s what it was—seems to have been a rejection of their parents’ all-consuming, single-minded purpose. They weren’t particularly bothered by thoughts of a career.

At home, few family snapshots included a likeness of dad. He was always tied up at the office and on the practice field, busy being the coach. Then, in March 1973—the first recruiting season after the AP series and Meat on the Hoof—a university shuttle bus demolished a car occupied by Marian and her two children. The children survived their injuries, but Marian lay in a coma, and royal had twenty long days to think about what he had missed in his pursuit of professional fulfillment. After she died, he went one night by the Armadillo—to make a little peace, to try and understand. As a fixture of the establishment, he wasn’t received too kindly. Vandals took his spark plug wires, and later, in the parking lot, somebody tried to hand him a joint. Sportswriters on the Longhorn beat say the coach was never quite the same after Marian died.

Even under the best circumstances, Royal felt demeaned by the circus of recruiting. He was too proud and intelligent a man to grovel gladly at the feet of seventeen-year-olds. In 1974 he told the story of a sought-after lad who informed the head coach at the University of Texas that he, the coach, was sitting in the recruit’s favorite chair. “Well, unfortunately, I was so taken off guard—I should have more poise than that—I just moved over like a little poodle dog.” Royal’s model All-American was a guy like James Saxton, who hung up his pads after graduating and blended into the Austin community as a bank executive. But by the seventies the top recruits looked on college as a farm system for the pros. And the recruiting grind meant countless explanations of Austin’s hippies, Meat on the Hoof, and the coach’s alleged racism. In recruiting blacks, Royal wasn’t just paying lip service to the cause of social progress. The college game was evolving toward the pro variety—toward size, specialty, and most of all, speed. He had to have blacks in order to win.

Royal could vacation in Jamaica with country singer Charley Pride and swap yarns with Earl Campbell’s mom. They had everything in common except the color of their skin. But he never felt at home in the ghetto. His noteworthy black recruits, like his white stars, were from small towns: Leaks from Brenham, Campbell from Tyler, Johnny “Lam” Jones from Lampasas. Campbell, a rarity who narrowed his original list to Texas, OU, Houston, and Baylor, and then told other recruiters not to bother, was the vindication of Royal’s approach. Yet Woodie Shepard may have left the stronger taste in his mouth. Informed by an assistant coach that Shepard desired the presence of the head man when he signed the letter of intent, Royal finished a speaking engagement in Harlingen and flew to Odessa by private plane for the ceremony. “And then we can’t even find him,” Royal remembers, still fuming. “Can’t even talk to him on the phone! We stayed up all night long trying to find that guy.” Where was the elusive prospect? “Hiding out—from us—with Oklahoma,” says Royal, through clenched teeth.

Barry Switzer of Oklahoma didn’t curry Royal’s favor by beating him five straight times with the wishbone, aid in 1975 he suggested that the careers of some coaches faltered because they spent too much time listening to guitar players. “I know exactly why we had so much recruiting success, “crowed Switzer. “We outwork ‘em. I’m young. My staff is young. Our hair is still growing. We can jive with the kids, dance with them.” Toward the end, the cavalier recruiting ethics within his profession, particularly among Switzer’s crowd in Norman, became an obsession with Royal. He even talked about working as an investigator for the NCAA after he retired.

Switzer was the only opponent who ever baited him successfully. In more ways than one, OU had his number. The week before the 1976 Oklahoma game, Royal claimed that his staff had apprehended an OU spy in Memorial Stadium during a closed Longhorn workout. In the ensuing black comedy, Royal challenged Switzer, an OU assistant, and the alleged spy to take polygraph tests, offered them each $10,000 in cash if they could pass, and let slip to an AP reported his assessment of the Norman crowd as a lot of “sorry bastards.” Switzer just baited him more. “This is Secret Agent Aught-aught-six,” he told Blackie Sherrod of the Dallas Times Herald. “Six, because we’re fixing to strap it on them for the sixth straight year.” But Switzer didn’t appreciate the name-calling. “Listen, I don’t care what Darrell Royal thinks of me,” he told Sherrod. “Let him think Oklahoma all the time. Let him look for ghosts.” OU fans outside Royal’s Dallas motel room kept him awake with a chant of “Sorry bastard, sorry bastard.” They booed their onetime All-American quarterback and taunted him with the same chant in the Cotton Bowl the next day. Thanks to a brilliant game plan drawn up by defensive coordinator Mike Campbell, Royal’s team played the more talented Sooners off their feet. They had a shutout in their grasp, but then a Texas back fumbled; Oklahoma capitalized, then botched the extra point. Nobody went home happy with the 6-6 tie. Least of all Royal, whom a photographer caught stooped over with the dry heaves.

That may have been the breaking point, but Royal didn’t make up his mind until two weeks later. Recovering from a hamstring pull, Campbell got off quick against Tech on national TV—65 yards for the first seven carries—then pulled the other hamstring. Tech won the game, Campbell was out for most of the season, and on the way back to Austin that night, Royal told UT chancellor Charles LeMaistre that he was through. Despite the drudgery of that crippled, break-even season, most friends assumed his spirits would recover: “Mike Campbell begged me not to quit,” says Royal. “He said, ‘Gosh, Darrell, let’s stay through this crowd. Because they’re really going to be something.’ We know those guys could play.” But Royal announced his retirement before the season finale against Arkansas and Frank Broyles, who had said all along that ’76 would be his last year. The old friends and golfing partners played out the last installment of their great rivalry without regaining the nearly five minutes lost to a clock malfunction. Let it run. All Darrell Royal wanted from football was out.

He soon discovered that his zeal for athletic department affairs waned as soon as the games had been played. He would never be happy sitting behind a desk. As athletic director, he tried to steer the head coaching job to his friend and chief lieutenant, Mike Campbell. He lost that contest of will to regent Allan Shivers, who brought a past Royal assistant, Fred Akers, back from the head job at Wyoming. The feud between Royal and Akers was real but exaggerated. Royal rigorously stayed out of Akers’ way, and he couldn’t see that Fred had much of a bitch coming; he only inherited the potential for a Heisman trophy winner, an undefeated regular season, and a national championship if they could have won the third Notre Dame Cotton Bowl. Akers thought in turn that Royal had lobbied too vigorously against his candidacy. And when Akers represented the football program at the post cocktail parties, he found the guest lists were still drawn from Royal’s friend and loyalists.

After Royal resigned in 1980 as athletic director, he and Akers aired their differences over huevos rancheros at one of Darrel’s favorite haunts, Cisco’s Bakery. Afterward, could blithely go his way, but it hasn’t been that simple for his successor. At the beginning of this season, Akers had a better record than Royal did at the same point, but every day he feels the pressure to continue winning. He’s competing against a legend who isn’t ever going to lose another game. Akers stiffens at the mention of his former boss. “Yeah, Darrell’s a lot more relaxed now,” he says, as he clears his throat, not the least relaxed himself.

As for Darrell, although he has an office in the tower and a position as assistant to the president, he’s seldom seen on campus these days except at tapings of Austin City Limits.And often those public performances have been just an encore for Royal. For years, some of the state’s most spellbinding private concerts have taken place in his home and his hotel rooms. “Sssssst!” he would reprimand the mutterers at such events. “Listen or leave, listen or leave.” Amused, David Royal used to drift down the hall to another hotel room and away a toke of weed with Uncle Willie—before Nelson’s lung collapsed and he publicly swore off the stuff. “Hey, you guys,” David would greet his friends. “Want to meet Kristofferson tonight?”

As an athlete, David Royal never rose beyond second-string quarterback for his junior team. Which is not to say the youngest son didn’t appreciate the way his dad made a living. David loved to ride the team bus into the stadium grounds; on the sideline with the Longhorn players, he had the best seat in the house. But David’s talent lay in other fields. Though he never got around to composing tunes for his song lyrics, he had a fine ear for the acoustic guitar. After Marian died, his parents didn’t want him to return to Boston, so he enrolled off and on at UT, where he demonstrated a gift for mechanical engineering. But his interests were so scattered that he never pursued anything for long. Living in the house the Royals had bought for Marian, he accumulated junk cars in the yard and dismantled transmissions in the garage. He ceased to notice the blaring radio in the garage when he went to bed, provoking complaints from the neighbors. Exasperated, his parents told him they were going to sell the place if he didn’t clean it up.

David didn’t hold his parents’ fame against them. He accepted the surplus it sent his way. Denied access to a backstage area at one of Willie Nelson’s picnics, he convinced the security guard of his identity by presenting a Cotton Bowl watch inscribed to his dad. Nor was he tremendously impressed with his parents’ success. He groaned when his friends pestered him at the last moment for tickets to a music concert, then tried to honor their requests. In need of money to live on, he cashed in the stocks his parents had given him. He bought a motorcycle. He salvaged the restroom wall bearing his sister’s mural when the Armadillo World Headquarters was torn down. David widened his nose too often, to use Crawdaddy’s phrase. But he pulled out of that binge and told one friend that he might go to Oklahoma for a while, work the oil fields, get his head back together. Just another young man adrift in Austin.

At two-thirty one morning last March, nine years to the month after Marian had her wreck, david rode his bike around a curve just a few hundred yards from the site of his sister’s accident. There were no witnesses. He may have skidded on gravel or imprudently shifted his weight. But the motorcycle leaped the curb and crashed into a traffic sign. He died in surgery. When the devastated parents drove to his house later, they found the garage door open, radio blaring.

Larry Gatlin and performed it at David’s funeral. The grieving dad spent a long time with Gerald Mann, a Baptists preacher and chaplain of the state Senate during the last session. Several coaches, old colleagues, and competitors, came from out of town. Royal stood out in the yard with them and said he still had Mack, he still had the grandkids, he still had Edith. He still had his health. I didn’t expect you to come,” he told them. “But I’m not surprised you did.”

The deck of the lake house overlooks a cliff that divides two deep, spring-fed inlets of the Pedernales. Farther away, the river widens as it empties into Lake Travis. “We really got this place for the grandkids,” Darrell was saying. “They’re into water sports, Jet-skiing, that sort of thing. And you know how kids are. They’ll get by and see the old folks now and then, but unless you offer something in line with their interests, they get pretty busy and scarce.”

He rested his arms on the railing and said he hadn’t decided whether to remodel and expand the lake house or build another place elsewhere on the property. We’ve always managed to live moderately,” he said, “without a whole lot of money. Fortunately, we had some nice things happen for us in a business way, so I don’t guess I’ll have to go to work again. Sometimes I think about selling all that other back in town and just staying out here. This is all I need.”

I asked him why he quit coaching when he did.

“That last year, out in Lubbck,” he said, “we finally have Earl back in shape. He’s ready to go, the team’s ready to go, I feel like we’re well prepared. WE have a sell-out crowd, a national television audience. All the ingredients that should excite a coach. And I’m sitting in my hotel room thinking, “Why am I continuing to do this?”

“When I first came here, one of my friends told me, ‘if you play your politics right, you’ll have a long career.’ I told him right quick that I wasn’t a politician and didn’t intend to be a politician; I was going to coach the best I could and hope that would be acceptable. That turned out to be a naïve, immature approach. You’re just ignorant and dumb if you don’t know who the regents are and the chain of command. I also said I never wanted to be a teacher. Why, a football coach is nothing but a teacher. I had a blackboard and I was teaching the same subject over and over and over. Trying to sell an attitude that defensive players should have on the goal line or covering the kick, or how important it was to protect the kicker. Year after year after year. It was the repetition, as much as anything. I got tired of hearing my own voice. Go to a press conference after a ball game. Date back ten years and find a game of similar circumstance. Hell, it’s the same press conference. Just different names.”

He sounded angry when the subject turned to recruiting. “I don’t care if a coach is on vacation in Greece, sometimes every day, he’s thinking about some sophomore back home. I’ve gone on vacation and spent two or three hours a day talking to recruits on the phone. Sure, we ruin ‘em. Every year, I read where the top prospects say, ‘I’ll be glad when this is all over. This is some pressure. I can’t even turn around.’ Well, Earl Campbell didn’t suffer all that pressure. He didn’t feel the need to yank all those old men around. They make appointments with you and not show up. So you think maybe he forgot, maybe he misunderstood. They keep you jangling at the end of their string. And then when it’s all over, they say, ‘I never was interested in Texas in the first place.’ I just decided I didn’t need that anymore.”

After a moment, his mood lightened. “I guess it sounds like I’m bitter about the game. I’m not. I think it can be properly administered so that the people in charge of the program can understand that it’s not just a part of the university and not the most important part. It’s still part of education, and there’s a place for it. I had a very happy career at the University of Texas. I never felt like I was going to work till there at the end. Edith and I were talking the other day: time for another season, and we’re ready to go out and see what the old ‘Horns can do. But I don’t miss those days much at all. I didn’t realize how much pressure I was under or how tight I was wound until after I quit. People talk about how hard it is to climb that ladder. Let me tell you, it ain’t no easy task to stay up there when everybody’s shootin’ at your ass. My coattails were flapping all the time. I was fidgeting and moving and I didn’t even realize it. I used to say I wished they had a pill that contained all the necessary vitamins and nutrients so I wouldn’t have to slow down and eat. I was serious at the time. I used to think everybody gagged when they brushed their teeth. And that’s in July! It’s sure hard to get by in October and November.”

He laughed and watched the wake of a boat on the otherwise placid lake. “Listen here. I don’t gag no more.”

Flying back from a football road game is not fun. Cramped quarters for large bodies – bodies that are sore from the game. It really isn’t fun when you were the #1 team in the nation, and you lost 42-11 to Arkansas.

That was the case on Oct. 17th, 1981. I was the field producer/host of Coach Fred Akers TV show. My good friend cameraman Gary Johnson and I were near the back of the plane with Robert Brewer, who had thrown for the only Horn TD of the day. Robert was a legacy walk-on (Dad Charlie was a QB at Texas in the early ‘50’s) and was contemplating giving up the game to concentrate on his studies. Visit the “walk-on” section of this website to read Robert Brewer’s story.

Still not starting, Brewer spent the week considering his options and with encouragement from teammates – especially WR Herkie Walls – he decided he loved the game and his teammates too much to quit.

Three weeks later, Texas trailed Houston 14-0 at halftime in the Astrodome. Starting QB Rick McIvor was banged up late in the first half. Akers went up to Brewer in the locker room and told him he would start the 2nd half. Herkie Walls was standing next to Robert and said, “You’re QB 1 now, so play like it.” He did. Robert rallied Texas to a 14-14 tie. Two months later he led the Horns to a Cotton Bowl victory over Bear Bryant and #3 Alabama. Best of all he would be back for the next season

I CHOSE TO WRITE ABOUT THE 1982 TEAM BECAUSE, IN MY OPINION, IT IS ONE OF THE UNDER-VALUED TEXAS TEAMS BY FANS. IT WAS ALSO A PURE JOY TO BE AROUND.

I have had the good fortune to be around UT football for over 50 years – as a young fan, student-reporter, broadcaster and associate SID. The memories flow and I want to thank Billy Dale for giving me a chance to write about a few of them.

By 1982 Coach Akers had established an elite program. In five years, Akers teams were 46-13-1. Two Top Ten finishes. Four top 20 rankings. His coaching staff was an outstanding blend of veteran teachers and young assistants who loved to recruit. There was also a culture of accountability – to your teammates and yourself.

1982 was seen as a “hammock” year. That Cotton Bowl win over Alabama boosted Texas to #2 in the final AP poll, just behind Clemson. There were graduation losses, but the underclass talent was obvious to everyone, even if they hadn’t had a chance to show it on the field. The feeling was 1983 would be the season the underclassmen would take over.

For me, what made that team click was the core of seniors who were determined to get the most out of their last season on the 40 Akers. They also understood their job as role models for the rest of the team. Robert Brewer, Herkie Walls, Kiki DeAyala, Darryl Clark, Brian Millard. They set the tone for the team on and off the field.

CROSSROADS

The season started with convincing wins over Utah, Missouri and Rice. Then came a dramatic 28-22 loss to OU in the Cotton Bowl. The next week #4 SMU was in Austin for the SWC game of the year. Texas trailed 10-0 early in the 4th when a Brewer TD pass and a Raul Allegre field goal tied it up with 9 minutes to play. The Texas defense, with the crowd in a frenzy, forced a 3rd and long deep in SMU territory. SMU quarterback Lance McIlhenny rolled out and fired a pass that Horn DB Jitter Fields had in his sights. The ball ricocheted off his shoulder pads into the waiting arms of Bobby Leach. The last 6 minutes of that game saw Texas fight desperately to make up for lost ground, but the Ponies prevailed 30-17.

That left Texas 3-2 and trying to cope with back-to-back heartbreaking losses. But in the locker room what you saw were the seniors stepping up showing how to handle adversity. When we interviewed them, they were calm. Disappointed, but upbeat. This is a good team, they said. We will not let this stop us from what we can do the rest of the way.

Recently Brewer went a little deeper into what the seniors did during the next week of practice. Robert said that before practice the following Tuesday the seniors gathered in the north end zone.

“I’m gonna give Kiki (DeAyala) some credit on that,” Brewer said. “He straightened all of us out. He said, ‘hey they’re watching us. This is what’s gonna make this season, the next two days, so we have to have the best practices of the year the next two days.’

Brewer added, “That really did kind of set the table for the rest of the season.”

The next week Texas traveled to Lubbock to face Texas Tech. The Red Raiders were coming off a 10-3 loss at #1 Washington, and they thought they were catching the Horns at a perfect time. Texas won 27-0.

That contest started a season-ending winning streak where Texas outscored its opponents by an average of 39-11. Brewer threw 12 touchdown passes, then a single-season school record. Darryl Clark rushed for over 1,000 yards. The defense shut down opponents, attacking them when they had to play from behind. It was a helluva 6-game run.

THE LOOK

Trust was a big word in 1982. Coaches trusting the players to perform under pressure. Teammates trusting each other. Offensively that trust was first established between Akers and Brewer. Coach trusted Robert to handle in-game situation at the line of scrimmage. He trusted him to change plays to get the ball into his play makers.

That offense had fun. Have halfback Darryl Clark throw a pass on the run inside his own 15-yard line? Sure. Run a Statue of Liberty? Why not?

Coach Akers coaching style was demanding, but positive as well. He believed in having his players to expect success and work towards that expectation. While Coach wasn’t much of a screamer, he has his ways to get his players attention. First and foremost was “the look.” Do something wrong more than once, you might feel those cobalt blue eyes of coach Akers burning a hole through you while deciding just exactly how he would explain the error of your ways.

That look wasn’t just saved for players.

Every Sunday morning after coach would arrive at the studio, we would sit down and watch the edited highlights. This weekend Texas had obliterated Texas A&M 53-16. As I said earlier trick plays were part of the fun. That game Darryl Clark hit Herkie Walls for an 87-yard score. As we are watching I casually mention to coach that the offense had done all sorts of tricks, except to have Herkie throw on the end around.

I got the look.

I’m sure it was only seconds, but it felt like minutes. Finally, coach broke the silence with, “well Steve, we do have one more game on the schedule.”

Next week against Arkansas, Herkie takes a reverse hand-off and hits Brent Duhon for a 37-yard game.

Speaking of Herkie. He is one of the most positive persons I have ever been around. He may also be the most under-appreciated player on that under-appreciated team. Herkie, a slight speedster from Garland, TX, lit up opponents in 1982. Walls had 25 receptions for 702 yards. That’s 28 yards a catch. Ten of his 25 catches went for touchdowns.

Like I said that was a fun team to watch.

I wish there was a happier ending to this team’s story. Unfortunately, Brewer broke his thumb during the morning practice just before they were to leave for El Paso and the Sun Bowl. Texas lost to North Carolina 26-10 in a snow storm to finish 9-3. That team set the table for the 1983 season and demonstrated time and again that football is a game that will knock you down, but if you trust in each other you can bounce back to fight another day.