Billy,
Jenna and I heard that Bill Little passed tonight. Jenna’s going to send you something she wrote about Bill in 2017.

God bless Bill Little a true Legend!

Randy McEachern

Billy,

Bill passed away this evening. He and I enjoyed a 50-year friendship, and I am heartbroken.

I’ve attached a piece I wrote about Bill…please pass it on to your website supporters.

Love,
Jenna McEachern

Jenna’s oral podcast history, photos, and text are captured at : https://www.texaslsn.org/jenna-mceachern

Below is Jenna’s article about her friend for over 50 years.

Bill Little has been the face—and the voice—of Longhorn athletics for more than 50 years.  Long before sports reporting turned digital, Little, as sports editor of the Daily Texan, was hammering out copy on a manual Royal typewriter.  

After his 1964 graduation from UT, Bill spent two years writing for the Austin American-Statesman, then moved to Oklahoma City to write for The Associated Press.  After two-years with the AP, Little returned home to Austin and to The University of Texas for good.

“I saw there was this really good job in public relations at The University of Texas,” Little said. “I called Coach Royal, and I said, ‘Coach, I want to come back.’ And he said, ‘I’d like to have you back.’ And that was the extent of it. I started that spring.”

It seems incredible that Darrell Royal hired 26-year-old Little as Texas’ assistant SID based only on a two-sentence interview.  Yet Royal knew Little’s work, knew his character, knew he’d be loyal and always professional. Royal’s assessment was on the money.   

Inducted into the Longhorn Hall of Honor in 1993, Little served UT in many capacities:  as assistant SID under the legendary Jones Ramsey, as Sports Information Director, then Special Assistant to the Athletic Director, Assistant AD for External Communications, then head of communications for Mack Brown. The job titles changed, but the office address stayed the same.  

Little worked with five football coaches, five basketball coaches, and four athletic directors while at The University. Decades of Longhorn football, basketball, and baseball fans recognized that familiar voice over the public address system in stadiums and on radio broadcasts. 

Little has worked 37 bowl games, and accompanied an NCAA record 25 teams to the College World Series in Omaha, and as of 2014, he holds the record for consecutive games worked by a Division I SID: 521. The string was almost broken when, just before the 1995 Sugar Bowl, he suffered a heart attack, but the ever-professional Little convinced doctors that he’d be under more stress in the hospital than he would if he attended the game.  Streak intact. 

My recollection of Bill Little started 50 years ago this month when I was a skinny freshman tennis player from Phoenix, Arizona. I learned very quickly where I was in the pecking order of UT athletes, very low. It did not matter to Bill. He respected everybody the same and went out of his way to remember your name. Always had a smile on his face and supported the tennis team as if we were the 69 football team! The last time I talked with him for a while was when the new tennis courts were dedicated. He was there with his wife. Bill did not have to do that, but his love for the University showed through that day every time I saw him. What an absolute treasure he was to the University of Texas and anyone who he crossed paths with. God bless his family. Stewart Keller.

Stewarts shares his story on the TLSN website at https://www.texaslsn.org/stewart-kellers-longhorn-roots-start-in-1899-orns-sitennis-football-diving

Jenna continues- Little’s legacy to The University is remarkable. He served as mentor and father figure to countless student-athletes through the years. CoSIDA’s Academic All-America Committee acknowledged Little’s influence on UT’s athletes by awarding him the Lester Jordan Award, “for exemplary service…and the promotion of the ideals of being a student-athlete.” 

He’s been a good-will ambassador and host to hundreds of sportswriters and broadcasters who grew to love Austin and Tex-Mex while covering Longhorn athletic events. Young writers found encouragement, counsel, and occasionally, employment from the veteran journalist. 

Little is the authority on UT Athletics history, and his award-winning columns and commentaries have left the Longhorn Athletic Department a written history–a vast archive–of its athletics programs and those who made it great.  Little has authored or co-authored nine books on UT and college athletics. 

“I always found that, if you can write something that can make a difference to somebody, it can change a life,” Little said. “I was a bad golfer and a worse tennis player. I wasn’t big enough to play football, and I was too short to play basketball, so my only gifts were to write and talk. If I was going to do what God put me on this planet to do, then I needed to do those things.” 

Little attended his first CoSIDA workshop at the 1969 Chicago meeting, then entered the officer rotation in 1985. As president in 1989, he presided over the first 1,000-person workshop in CoSIDA history.  Named to the CoSIDA Hall of Fame in 1992, Little received the Arch Ward Award in 1998, for “inspiring excellence in and bringing dignity to our profession.”   

He is one of the most decorated writers in the profession: The FWAA honored him with their Lifetime Achievement award, and the National Collegiate Baseball Writers awarded him the Wilbur Snypp award “for outstanding contributions to college baseball.”    

Award-winning sports journalist Kirk Bohls called Little “the epitome of a knowledgeable, professional SID who had a rich background in journalism and who understood the balance of truth-telling and serving a university’s athletic program. …the personification of UT athletics, there’s not a sportswriter or sportscaster in the country who didn’t work with and appreciate the contributions of Bill Little.” 

Legendary broadcaster Verne Lundquist, an Austin native, said, “I’ve known Bill Little since the early 1960’s which, having to put up with me for more than five decades, should alone qualify him for the COSIDA [Lifetime Achievement Award]. Bill has been a consummate professional and a great friend over the years and this honor is richly deserved.  Enjoy, Bill.  Congratulations.” 

He brought great honor to The University, to the profession he loves, and to himself.  His influence is so great that the football and baseball press boxes at Texas are now named the “Bill Little Media Center,” a gift from longtime friend and UT athletics supporter Marian Dozier.

Bill’s wife, Kim Scofield, is also his advisor, editor, and travel companion and has been a true partner in his work. They have three children and ten grandchildren, all Longhorn fans.  

Upon retirement in 2014 Little said, “Texas Athletics has pretty much been my life for close to 60 years. But now, I think I’ve earned the right to set my bucket down.”  Still, Little continues as an advisor to the Athletics Department, and broadcasts Longhorn baseball games.

Little’s longtime friend Dan Jenkins has the last word: 

“If you want a guy to dive into a vat of burnt orange fluid and drown himself to achieve good print for the Longhorns, Bill Little is your man. He collected good journalism friends from all around the old Southwest Conference and now the Big 12. Why? Because he was always honest and enjoyed the success of other people and even, at times, of a Longhorn opponent. Bill comes from a long-forgotten time when a conference was like a family. Like Bill, those of us who knew such times still miss them.”

End of Jenna McEachern’s tribute to Bill Little

Loved what Jenna McEachern wrote about Bill Little. It was beautiful and so heartfelt. 

When I think of Bill Little, the word “gentleman” comes to my mind. He was polite, kind, honest and so sincere. He was always so positive and treated everyone with respect.  

He was a brilliant wordsmith and was truly the UT Historian regarding UT football . His attention to detail and memory was unrivaled. 

My husband, Bobby Mitchell, and I had the pleasure of spending time with him and his wife, Kim, during the filming of Bud Brigham’s movie, “My All American”, Mike Looney’s documentary, “The Big Shootout”,as well as  reunion football events for 1969 and 1970 National Football Championship teammates . 

Bill was always there smiling and graciously chatting with everyone. 

Following the documentary “1969” where Bill, my husband and other teammates were interviewed, he emailed Bobby after the airing telling him what a good job he did which meant the world to Bobby as I’m sure he did with the other players who were interviewed. 

For him to take the time to do this act of kindness speaks volumes about the man Bill Little was. We were fortunate to have known him. 

RIP, sweet Bill Little.

Dr Honor Franklin 

Bob Lenz – He was a genuinely good guy!???? Far left in photo.

Bert Engel– Very sad news about a legendary longhorn.  Thanks for posting, Billy. (no photo)

Larry Bob Moore Another huge loss and a painful blow (no photo)

Mike Hamer (no photo)

So saddened to hear about the passing of this Longhorn Legend and my friend Bill Little. One of the first people I met and who interviewed me in the athletic department when I came here in 1979. Terrific play by play announcer of Texas Baseball and one of the great Longhorn historians. Rest in peace Bill. A life well lived.

Terry Salazar- Truly loved his job and UT. Had the privilege meeting Bill . You will be truly missed by all your Longhorn fans. Thanks for all the memories. RIP Bill (no photo)

He brought great honor to The University, to the profession he loves, and to himself.  His influence is so great that the football and baseball press boxes at Texas are now named the “Bill Little Media Center,” a gift from longtime friend and UT athletics supporter Marian Dozier.

Such sad news with the passing of Bill Little on Friday. He was  a Longhorn Legend, the best ever in our business, and just an amazing man. It’s heartbreaking to lose him, he was a mentor, a great friend, and a huge part of me and my family’s life. He and his wife Kim were always among the first people we reached out to with great news, to seek advise during though times, or just to visit about the latest news, chatter and our kids & grandkids. He will be so missed, but I have so many memories and pearls of wisdom to lean on from our time together. We love you Bill, Rest in Peace. Sending my thoughts, prayers and love Kim, his family, friends and the many he impacted during an incredible life. His legacy will live on and he will never be forgotten???????? John Bianco

Bill was as genuine and sincere as any sports journalist  I’ve ever read.   He was a resolute and master craftsman in telling a story. His humility and memory of facts enabled him to be respected by all.  He will be missed. Jeff Zapalac (no photo)

5 years ago, TLSN wrote a Bio on Bill Little, and it is saved in the history of Longhorn sports. Here is the link :

https://www.texaslsn.org/bill-little

If you would like to write a “celebration of life” tribute, TLSN will post it. Please send it to Billydale1@gmail.com .

Here are a Few Who have shared their memories of Bill.

Two are journalists who knew Bill from the very beginning of his professional career until he passed away.

The text in blue font shares memories of Longhorn fans and football players.

Carlton Stowers shares his memories of Bill.

We were two UT students from Runnels County, him from Winters, me from Ballinger, who met and became friends as members of the Daily Texan sports staff. Even at that early age, Bill knew exactly what he wanted to do with his life  I hadn’t a clue where I was headed.

Untimately, however, we both became journalists.

Over the years, I watched his career closely and with pride in his remarkable achievements. His writing was touched by the soft wings of angels, his personality warmed one and all, and his deep and lasting love for the University of Texas was never in doubt.

Together, we attended too many Longhorn games to recall, sat side-by-side applauding country singer Tom T. Hall at the old Armadillo, shared a podium or two, and had long conversations over steaming plates of Mexican food.

With each encounter, I was enriched.

To know Bill was to love him. And I did.

— Carlton Stowers

“MUCH ABOUT LITTLE” by Roy Jones

(Roy was a journalist for over 50 Years and he shares his memories of Bill

Bill Little and I started our journalism careers on
the same day in the fall of 1960, pounding out sports stories for The
Daily Texan on manual Royal typewriters.
The brand of the now-vintage typewriters in the University of Texas
student newspaper newsroom was prophetic. Both of us would wind up
working for legendary UT football coach Darrell Royal.
Bill became sports editor and wrote circles around me about UT football
in the glory days. Because I was a student manager of the football team
I had to agree not to write anything about the team that other reporters
didn’t have access to.
Some secrets I’ve kept for 63 years.
Bill and I sat two seats apart (alphabetically) when President Johnson
spoke at our graduation in May 1964. The next week I started my 37-year
career with the Abilene Reporter-News. Meanwhile, Bill covered the
Longhorns for the Austin American-Statesman and for the Associated Press
for four years, then Coach Royal hired him to be assistant sports
information director in 1968.

Bower Yousse

What a loss. Enjoyed my time with him, which unfortunately was limited. Delightful gentleman.

George Machock

Thank you Billy. A sad loss but, he’s where the sky gets painted orange and know he’s with the Lord admiring it.

God bless

Condolences to family and friends.

Roy continued: Thus began a legendary 46-year career writing exclusively about the
Longhorns — all sports. Before he retired in 2014, he had covered 521
consecutive UT football games and provided all the statistics and
colorful quotes to award-winning sportswriters such as Dan Jenkins
(“Semi-Tough”) and our own Bill Hart.
Oh, yeah, Bill Little was also the voice of UT baseball for decades and
authored or co-authored nine books about Longhorn sports history.
Just two weeks before the 60th reunion of UT’s first national
championship football team (1963) on Sept. 2, Bill died at his Austin
home of natural causes. He was 81.
Jenna McEachern, wife of former Longhorn quarterback Randy McEachern and
an athletic department staffer for much of Bill’s tenure as SID,
ressurrrected a quote from Jenkins when she announced Bill’s death
earlier today. When Bill retired, Jenkins wrote, “If you want a guy to
dive into a vat of burnt orange fluid and drown himself to achieve good
print for the Longhorns, Bill Little is your man. He collected good
journalism friends from all around the old Southwest Conference and now
the Big 12. Why? Because he was always honest and enjoyed the success of
other people and even, at times, of a Longhorn opponent. Bill comes from
a long-forgotten time when a conference was like a family. Like Bill,
those of us who knew such times still miss them.”
Jenkins died in 2019. I bet he and Bill are swapping a lot of Longhorn
stories in heaven now.
Until Coach Royal retired in 1976 with three national titles under his
belt, I was welcome on the Longhorn sideline. At Texas Tech in 1965, my
national championship ring came off my finger when I was doing a “Hook
’em”sign after a UT touchdown. It was raining and my ring was lost in
the mud. I knew it couldn’t have gone far, so I was pawing at the turf
while trying not to get stepped on by players.
“I bet you’re looking for this,” quarterback “Super Bill” Bradley said,
handing me my muddy ring. It never looked so good!
After Coach Royal retired, all I had to do was write a color sidebar to
go with Bill Hart’s game story and Bill Little had us seats in the press
box.
It was Bill Little who got me the pass to be on the Memorial Stadium
field during the 1976 state track meet, where I was able to get photos
of future world champion Billy Olsen setting the state pole vault record
at 15-9; Abilene High winning the 4-A team title with the nation’s
fastest time in the 4×110 “sprint relay,” and Johnny “Lam” Jones winning
three gold medals and overtaking six runners in the last lap of the mile
relay to win the 2A team title for Lampasas.
Bill made it possible for me to see some of the best games in UT
history. We had nicknames for each other. He was “Little-by” because his
Daily Texan column was headlined “Little by Little” and I was “The Duke
of Paducah.” Since he was from Winters we spoke the same country boy
language.
Bill and I both came to UT with big shoes to fill. Bill’s older brother
Harvey, who went on to a distinguished career as a naval officer, had
writtten for The Daily Texan. Dr. Dewitt C. Reddick, legendary dean of
the School of Journalism (who welcomed us to UT) had been my mother’s
professor 30 years before. He also wrote the textbook we used in her
high school journalism class.
Jones Ramsey, who called himself “the world’s tallest fat man” had just
come to UT as SID in 1960 after Wilbur Evans retired. He came from A&M
where he had been SID under “Bear” Bryant. In the words of my late
mentor Bob Bruce, Jones Ramsey “didn’t suffer fools gladly.” He was all
business and student sportswriters were at the bottom of his list.
Thankfully, Bill and I had a friend in court. The assistant SID was
Orland Sims. My mother had taught him and his brother, Bill, later a
Texas senator, in high school in tiny Paint Rock. Orland considered
Winters and Ballinger “part of the Paint Rock Metroplex,” so he was very
helpful to Bill and me.

Cindy Gustafson Schott

So very sad. I know he had been in bad health but seems so strange that he will not be here for the start of football. He was a true legend and proud to call him a friend. 

Don Hays(no photo)

Bill Little was a great ambassador for the Texas Longhorns, but beyond that he was a true gentleman and a great conversationalist. Godspeed Bill

Roy continued -“It seems incredible that Darrell Royal hired the then-26-year-old Little as assistant SID based only on a two-sentence interview,” Jenna wrote. “Yet Royal knew Little’s work, knew his character, and knew hed’ be loyal and always professional Royal’s assessment was on the money.” Bill was inducted into the Longhorn Hall of Honor in 1993. In addiition to SID, Bill served in many other capacities: special assistant to the athletic director, assistant AD for external communications, then head
of communications for Mack Brown. “The job titles changed, but the
office address, infectiious smile, and endless Texas hosspsssitality
stayed trhe same,” Jenna added.
Bill’s knack for storytelling is legendary. He was passionate about Longhorn athletes and he saw the mass media as the “window to the world” to share their stories and welcome everyone in. Bill once explained, “If if you can write something that makes a difference to somebody, it can change a life.” He said he was a bad golfer and worse tennnis player, too little to play football and too short to play basketball. “So my only gifts were to write and talk,” he said. “And if I was going to do what God put me on this planet to do, then I needed to do those things.” My friend did “those things” at a world class level. In his half-century at UT, he worked with five football coaches, five basketball coaches and four athletic directors..
He was president of CoSIDA in 1989 and named to its Hall of Fame in 1992. His workshop for fellow SIDs in 1989 drew more than 1,000 writers, a record attendance. His string of attending 521 Longhorn football games in a row was nearly broken when he suffered a heart attack just before the 1995 Sugar Bowl.

Carol McCoy (no photo)

This is heartbreaking news! What a big loss to Longhorn country! Greatest ambassador for the University of Texas!! Goodbye, dear fan friend!! Enjoyed visiting with you at all the great Longhorn games near & faraway!! Hook ‘em forever!

LJ Cohen

I emailed him a few days ago. Very sad to hear. I believe he knew more about Longhorn Sports than anyone.

Roy says “Bill convinced doctors that he’d be under more stress in the
hospital than we would if he attended the game.”
The Collegiate Baseball Writers Assn. awarded him the Wilbur Snypp Award
“for outstanding contributions to college baseball” in 1991.
So respected was he on the UT campus that the presses boxes at both
football and baseball stadiums are named the “Bill Little Media Center.”
Although he was officially retired, he continued as an advisor to the
Athletic Department for many more years and celebrated 50 years of
broadcasting Longhorn baseball games in 2017.
Upon retirement in 2014, Bill said, “Texas athletics has pretty much
been my life for close to 60 years. But now, I think I’ve earned the
right to set my bucket down.”
That’s an old Darrell Royal quote. After my wife notified Coach Royal
that I was going to retire from my second career (with the Texas Health
and Human Services Commission) and asked if he would write a letter to put in a scrapbook for me, he went her one better.

I’ll never forget it. I was driving my big HHSC truck between Quanah and Chillicothe when my cell phone rang. I expected it to be Trish, but the caller said, “Lightning, this is Darrell Royal.”
“Coach Royal? To what do I owe this pleasure?” I stammered.
“I heard you were going to set your bucket down, and I just wanted to
thank you for all the work you did for me and the team when you were
student manager,” he said. The boring miles suddenly flew by as we
reminisced, mainly about the 1963 season when I was his senior manager on full scholarship. That surprise call brought our personal relationship a full circle.

What can one say that has not already been said. Bill Little was a dear friend and the ultimate storyteller regarding UT athletics. Sage that he was, he also possessed a kindness that was profound for a man of his stature. I will miss him but am heartened to know that he is now with Coach Royal. Hook Em in heaven ! Mark Belisle

Roy continues- In 1957, when he was named UT football coach, I was a freshman in high school. To get my finger in the pie early, I wrote him a letter and asked if I could be a Longhorn manager when I came to UT in 1960. I got a handwritten note back from him, saying to come see him when I got to Austin. I did, and he put me on the track to my dream job.

That meeting was in August 1960, the beginning of two-a-day practices.
About three weeks later, I met Bill Little in Journalism 101.
Rest in peace, Little-by. You dang right you earned it.

Roy Jones

06.28.2011 | Football

Bill Little commentary: Manny Diaz – Re-inventing Yourself

June 28, 2011

Editor’s note: This is the second in a series of articles on the new coaches for the Texas Longhorns football team.

Bill Little, Texas Media Relations

In the on-line English Grammar Secrets by Caroline and Pearson Brown, we find the following: “We can also use ‘have to’ to express a strong obligation. When we use ‘have to’ this usually means that some external circumstance makes the obligation necessary.”

Manny Diaz would tell you that sometimes, “have to” comes from within.

“I think it was coach (Bobby) Bowden who said that you won’t make it as a coach unless you HAVE to coach,” he said.

And there begins our story.

“Sports was a big part of my life growing up,” the Longhorns’ new defensive coordinator and linebackers coach recalls. “I was one of those guys who learned how to read by reading the sports page in the morning.”

His early education came from Miami Country Day School, an elite college preparatory private school that begins at age three and continues through high school. Fewer than 1,000 students are enrolled in the historic institution that was founded in 1938.

“The classes were so small, so if you were in athletics you had to play on multiple teams. When the football season ended, we would all move to playing basketball. Then, from the basketball court to the baseball diamond. So it gives you a chance to be involved in a lot of different things–probably more than most people would think.”

But where some kids grow up imagining themselves playing sports at the highest level, Manny Diaz dreamed of telling about it.

“A lot of people grow up who don’t really know what they want to be. It dawned on me midway through high school that I just wanted to be in journalism in some way, shape or form. I had already talked to people that had worked at TV stations. I was writing for the school paper. Everything was on that line. That’s part of why I chose a large university.

That is why he chose to travel northwest from Miami, to Tallahassee and Florida State University.

“I wanted to be in a big place where I was able to cover big time events,” he said. Once there, it seemed the beginning of a charmed life. “It was one of those many, many breaks that I had–it’s funny how things happen in your life.”

In the fall of his freshman year, the school newspaper at Florida State lost its credibility with the administration. After a series of articles, readers and supervisors had had enough, and the school decided to start another newspaper on campus. So a call went out for volunteer writers, and at the front of the line was Manny Diaz.

“It was an amazing opportunity…one of those things that just kind of falls from the sky. I got a job as a sports writer and was covering the NCAA Baseball Regionals in the spring of my freshman year in college. The next year I was covering the football team. My third year I was sports editor of the paper, [and] I had a TV show on the campus TV station. Everything was going exactly according to plan. It was why I had come to Florida State. My third year we won the National Championship in football. I was on the field at the end of the game. The whole thing was like a dream.”

Then, another turn came. Florida State’s communications degree accepted journalism courses from cross-town Florida A&M, and in a speakers’ series there he met Pam Oliver of ESPN.

“We wrote mock articles and did other work,” Diaz recalls, “and at the end of the seminar she encouraged me to apply for an internship at ESPN. That was the second thing that fell from the sky.”

The selection process for the internship began with a phone interview, and then, Manny was one of a dozen hopefuls chosen to go for in-person interviews at ESPN’s headquarters in Bristol, Conn. The test there was about sports knowledge. Diaz handled the questions about the NFL and the major league baseball teams, but was stumped when they asked him who was going to win the National Hockey League’s Vezina Trophy. Then, the straightforwardness that would eventually endear him to prospective employers such as the Longhorns’ Mack Brown took over.

“I have to be honest,” he said. “We don’t get much hockey coverage down in Florida, and I have no idea what the Vezina Trophy is for.”

But told that it went to the NHL’s top goalie, he proceeded to rattle off the names of outstanding goalies in the league. Still, when he walked out, he figured his chances were slim.

“I figured one of the other 11 would know what the Vezina Trophy was, so I figured I was done,” he remembered. When he got back to Miami, however, he got a call from ESPN. He had won the internship.

He returned for his senior year at Florida State, and when graduation came, he called ESPN and they hired him without an interview. Manny Diaz, the youngster from Miami who had dreamed of covering “big time” sports, had made sports television’s “big show.”

Immediately, the rising star was grabbed up by ESPN’s NFL show, which at the time was the lynchpin of the network’s coverage. He worked the 1996 season breaking down films and putting together production features. It was then that announcer Sterling Sharpe, a former college and NFL star, told Diaz that if he ever went into coaching, he was taking Diaz with him.

That began to stoke an emotion for Diaz. Finally, at the Super Bowl, the flame burst out.

“We were interviewing Bill Parcells,” he says. “And I remember thinking this was my big moment. On the one hand, you are working for ESPN, and you have made it. You are at the top of your profession. But then, if you are getting interviewed by ESPN AND coaching the Super Bowl, you have made it to the top of the coaching profession.”

So the question became, “which one would you rather be? And it was obvious. From that moment on, anything I was doing working toward the ESPN chair was denying what I really wanted to do.”

At the time, he had sent out prospective interview tapes to television stations. Had one responded, his career as a coach would likely not have happened.

“I had been at ESPN for two years, and I think if I had been there two more months I might have gotten a promotion to the next level. And once I had that, I don’t know if I would have ever left,” he says.

His wife, Stephanie was using her degree in hospitality management from Florida State. She was running a restaurant in Bristol, and was six months pregnant.

“It’s funny how, looking back, how youthful naivete can get you a lot of places, because you have no idea what all it takes to get into this deal. It wasn’t the most well thought out plan in the world. I had no idea how [being a] graduate assistant worked…had no idea how staffing worked. I just showed up at Florida State. I knew of the coaches from interviewing them, so I just went back and wanted to throw myself on their doorstep and see what I could do,” he remembers.

The first answer was “nothing.” NCAA rules govern the size of football staffs, and volunteer coaches are not allowed.

“So I said `that was a great plan.'”

Still he pursued the dream. He started taking courses in coaching while Stephanie enrolled on a path that would eventually earn her a master’s and PhD in sports administration. Diaz was working with a high school basketball coach at one of the main high schools in Tallahassee, and came close to getting the JV job there. Again, it was the turn in the road that he didn’t take that made all the difference.

Florida State found that he could do clerical work in their football offices. For the entire 1997 season, he worked as a data entry employee in the Child Support division for the state of Florida in the morning, grabbed lunch and then headed to the football offices. But when he proved to the football staff that he was willing to do anything from picking up recruits at the airport to stuffing envelopes, he finally got a job as a graduate assistant. Just as he had done with the NFL films in his “other life”, he was breaking down video tapes and doing the duties now handled at colleges under the job description of “graduate assistant” or “quality control.”

The biggest break came when Florida State needed an on-the-field grad assistant, and the obvious candidate was right there on their staff–Manny Diaz.

A lot of his strength comes from his roots. His parents had divorced when both they and Manny were very young. He was reared by his mom, a cardiac cath lab nurse, and his stepfather. His father, Manny, Sr., was the son of Cuban refugees who had fled their native land in the late 1950s.

The admiration for his parents is obvious, as is his respect for those who dared to cross the water from Cuba.

“Those people came over with nothing. They were teachers, doctors and lawyers who were at the top of their profession. Then they had to get to the back of the line. They had to fight to get their way back up,” he said. People will say `but your dad was the mayor of Miami.’ That was in the last ten years. When I was growing up, he was re-inventing himself.”

Reared in the home with his mom and step-dad, and attending Miami Country Day, he found the environment that would drive him. And when he got to Florida State, he got the motto that would become his benchmark.

You get what you demand.

When he left Florida State to become a full-time assistant coach for the first time, he had a new revelation.

“I had been at ESPN, and they were the industry standard. I went to Florida State, and they were the industry standard. We lost three games in three years. We had lost one national championship game and won another. It was an amazing time to be there…an amazing time to learn. So when I got to NC State with Chuck Amato, it was valuable because it was the first time I saw why people lose. I got to see how a program got built from day one, and it was really fascinating. That’s where you start to see that everybody says the same things. You go to everybody’s football practice and nobody’s teaching the guy to go the wrong way. Everybody does an off-season program. Everybody lifts weights. Everybody does the same more or less drills in practice. Everybody runs one style of offense or the other. There is nothing that guarantees success. It is how you do it. The thing that jumped out at me is the attention to detail. That’s what I saw at ESPN. We would do a four minute feature and show it to the boss and there would be a half second of video that’s he didn’t like, and we would have to redo it. Nobody watching television would ever notice a half second of video.

“At Florida State it was the same thing. A drill was all the way right, or it was all the way wrong. And if anything was not exactly the way it was supposed to be done, it was done again. And when we got to NC State, that was a surprise to those players. They had not had that level of accountability…to do everything exactly right. In the six years I was there we got the program to a different level.”

In the years since he became a Graduate Assistant at Florida State, Diaz has coached teams that have appeared ten bowl games. He followed his tenure at NC State with stints as defensive coordinator at Middle Tennessee and Mississippi State.

Stephanie and Manny have three sons, Colin, Gavin, and Manny.

They have taken the values of their upbringing into their family today.

“What I learned from my mom and stepdad and my dad was to be loving, and that’s the most important thing in parenting. It is to have your children be inspired and follow their dream and keep the lights on at your house.

“Leaving ESPN, almost becoming a JV coach…it doesn’t seem to add up. The string of variables that have to go your way to make it to a place like Texas…you have to sit back and you have to believe one of two things: it is an extraordinary amount of luck, or it is the hand of God, and I am more willing to believe the latter. These things don’t just happen.”

What he has learned in the process of “re-inventing himself,” is that the road Manny and Stephanie Diaz traveled has truly been a journey spotted by those who have touched their lives.

“Both at ESPN and at the places I have coached, I have been fortunate to work with great people. It is not about buildings or logos, which history had proven.

“If you love your profession, you will never work a day in your life,” he said. “Coaching is an outstanding occupation. It is a hard profession. It’s funny when you think back about the way I got into coaching football, because I was a fan first, and when I was a fan I didn’t know what I didn’t know about this game. You think you know, and you find out and realize how little you knew. There are certainly things that affect my philosophy that I remember from being a fan. When you start a restaurant, you are going to revert back to the type of food that you like and there are certainly some things about the aggressiveness of our defense that if I were sitting in the stands I would want them to do. I have been blessed to work with great people who had similar philosophies. And the coaches I have worked for have just let us go. There are things that we do that are exotic and unusual, and we turned those into our strengths. It almost became fun to stay ahead of the curve and do weird things.”

It is what happens when you re-invent yourself, and when you have to coach.

05.30.2011 | Football

Bill Little commentary: Memorial Day

May 30, 2011

Editor’s note: The following article is a reprint of a classic Bill Little commentary that originally appeared on May 25, 2008.

Bill Little, Texas Media Relations

“In Flanders Fields the poppies blow


Between the crosses row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.


We are the Dead. Short days ago


We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie


In Flanders fields.


Take up our quarrel with the foe:


To you from failing hands we throw


The torch; be yours to hold it high.

If ye break faith with us who die


We shall not sleep, though poppies grow In Flanders fields.”

Sitting in the back of an ambulance near a battlefield in France, a Canadian doctor, Lt. Col. John McCrae looked out on a cemetery where a gentle breeze stirred the wildflowers that provided the imagery for this classic poem of World War I. A friend lay buried in the field, one of thousands who died in what was called “The Great War — the war to end all wars.”

Sadly, that lofty goal has never been realized.

“The torch” has been passed from generation to generation. Brave men and women stand today in harm’s way, fighting to preserve the life we know.

Memorial Day is, and should be, a day of honor. Since the days of the War Between the States, this has been a day of remembrance for those who have died in our nation’s service. And in that space, history both mourns, and applauds, who they were, and what they did.

And as the massive remodeling of Darrell K Royal-Texas Memorial Stadium nears its completion during this summer, what started in 1924 as a concrete edifice dedicated to those Texans who died in World War I re-emerges as a majestic monument to them, and to all those men and women who have served our country in any foreign conflict.

Juxtaposed with the Louis Jordan Flagpole in the southeast corner of the stadium (a monument honoring the first former Longhorn killed in World War I) are a plethora of significant factors that recognize the value of leadership, as well as the importance of history. The stadium veterans committee is already working on a re-dedication of the stadium this fall, as well as a plaza outside the north end that will serve as a special place to remember the veterans and memorialize those who died.

Mack Brown‘s office contains a healthy supply of pictures and flags sent by Longhorns serving in the Middle East, and the stirring memory of Marine Ahmard Hall carrying the American flag onto the field started a tradition that is repeated each year.

About a month ago, Coach Brown sat in his coaches’ conference room talking to more than a dozen touring cadets from the United States Military Academy at West Point. The subject had to do with teamwork and leadership.

A little over ten days ago, Penn State coach Joe Paterno and Hall of Fame wide receiver and Pennsylvania gubernatorial candidate Lynn Swann came to Austin to help celebrate the launching of a Distinguished Chair in Leadership in Global Affairs in Mack Brown‘s name.

The Chair will be connected to the LBJ School of Public Affairs, and it is not without irony that one notices that the LBJ Library and the stadium — two of the three most recognized structures on the UT campus (the Tower being the other) — sit across the street from each other.

The students who helped raise the money for the construction of the original Texas Memorial Stadium did not have the benefit of today’s technology to understand about “global affairs.” All they knew was that school mates had died in faraway fields whose names they couldn’t pronounce.

It was a big, big world, then.

Today, instant communication and travel have made the world a lot smaller, and yet larger with the challenges. And as Mack accepted the honor of the Chair named for him, he acknowledged that leadership cannot come without teamwork, and teamwork is about relationships. All of which goes back to the benchmark principles of his football program — communication, trust and respect. All applied with a common purpose.

Global affairs have to be about all of that. That is the power of education, the reason for reasoning. But as we dream of a world where we can all work together, it is important to remember that reality says there will be a time where, despite the best of efforts, men and women will have to stand and fight against the demons of greed and jealousy.

That is why, on the lake or at the barbecue or at some distant outpost where death bids hard to take the valiant, it is important to understand what Memorial Day is all about.

The men and women of the United States Armed Forces fight, not to make war, but to achieve great peace. Death is, and always will be, a part of the reality of war. That is why, on Memorial Day, America pauses to honor those who have lost their lives in battle.

Because the men and women we honor, whether it is amid the white crosses at Arlington Cemetery or a family plot in a little town in West Texas, died fighting for our freedom.

And there is no thanks great enough, or memorial big enough, to repay them and their families for that.

Or, as another poet wrote as a reprise to McCrae’s poem, “We cherish too, the Poppy red that grows on fields where valor led, it seems to signal to the skies that blood of heroes never dies.”

05.17.2011 | Football

Bill Little commentary: One heckuva man

May 17, 2011

Bill Little, Texas Media Relations

In a land of giants, Doug English always came up big.

Tuesday, the former Longhorn all-American and four time NFL Pro Bowl tackle, reached the pinnacle of the collegiate sport when he was named to the 2011 class of the College Football Hall of Fame of the National Football Foundation.

English will become the 16th Longhorn player and 18th Texas inductee, including coaches Dana X. Bible and Darrell Royal, to be enshrined in the College Hall of Fame, which recently moved from South Bend to Atlanta. The 14 new members and two coaches joining the Hall will be welcomed at a banquet at The Waldorf=Astoria Hotel in New York City on December 6.

A team captain and the Most Valuable Player of the 1974 Longhorns, Doug earned consensus all-American honors his senior year, and was a two-time all-Southwest Conference selection at Texas in 1973 and 1974. The 6-5, 260 pound tackle was a second round draft choice of the Detroit Lions in 1975, and for ten seasons he was one of the best, and most popular, members of the Lions’ team.

He was named to the NFL Pro Bowl as an all-star following the seasons of 1978, 1981, 1982 and 1983, but was forced to give up the game following a neck injury he suffered in a game on November 10, 1985.

His induction puts a final stamp on the faith held in him of his college position coach–and the man who recruited him to Texas–the late R. M. Patterson, who died in December of 2009.

Patterson found English after he had finally gotten on the field his senior year at Bryan Adams High School in Dallas.

“He was a lanky, tall fellow that ran hard and worked hard to get to the football,” Patterson remembered during English’s senior year at Texas. “I thought someday he might be a 6-5, 260 pound lineman with tremendous potential.”

And that is exactly who he became.

“I liked what I saw in every way,” Patterson said then. “He just came from an all-American family. You know any person who has great ability will be a natural leader. But when you get a real exceptional person with a great attitude as well, you’ll almost always find good results, whether it’s in football, or in any aspect of life.”

Jerry Green, the long-time respected columnist for the Detroit News, saw the same gifts in English. When English was forced to retire from pro football in May of 1986 because of a ruptured vertebra, Green wrote a column entitled, “Lions lose a class act in English.”

“You are not allowed to make too many friends among the athletes in this journalism business,” wrote Green. “The athletes have to be choosy and so do you. Doug English was a rare friend.”

Twenty-five years later, Green and fellow sports writer Mike O’Hara of the Detroit News still agreed.

“Doug English made such an impression on Detroit that 25 years later he is still remembered,” says O’Hara. “I will use the words of his former coach, Monte Clark, to describe him: `Doug English is a cut above the guys who usually came through as professional football players. ` He was a great player, and a great guy. When they named an all-time Detroit Lions team for their 75th anniversary, Doug was on it.”

He was on it, both sports writers would add, for all the right reasons.

When he returned to Austin after his playing days were over, English got involved in business activities, but still found time to support numerous charities, including one that is involved in research of spinal cord and traumatic brain injuries. In 1998, he served as a member of the search committee which recommended the hiring of Longhorn football coach Mack Brown. He is active in the NFL Alumni Association in Austin, and now spends most of his time with his ranch and his family.

“First of all, he was a human being,” says Green today. “He was a great person as well as a great football player. We would go to dinner together once a year, and would talk about everything and anything except football. He had manifold interests. I really appreciated him. He was a wonderful pro.”

Jay Arnold, who played with English at Texas during the 1972 and 1973 seasons, remembers a teammate whose work ethic would be his lasting impression. It came naturally: when English was in junior high, his coaches cut him from the eighth grade squad. But English just kept coming back, and finally, the coaches agreed he could be on the team.

“He practiced as hard as he played,” remembers Arnold. “And he led by example. He expected all of us to give as much as he did. I remember watching the film of an Arkansas game his sophomore year. He had been sick and hadn’t practiced all week. Arkansas was at our goal line, and it was fourth down. They decided to run right up the middle. On the film, it looks like a bomb exploded. Doug crashed through everything and made the tackle behind the line of scrimmage. Plays like that were pretty commonplace for him in his later years, but I remember all of us looking at that video and thinking he was going to be a really special football player.”

For English himself, joining the elite of college football is more of opportunity than an accomplishment.

“One thing that being able to split a two-gap and bring down a guy with one hand provides is a chance to help young people,” said English, who was one of the most consistent tacklers at Texas and in the NFL, ripping down ball carriers with hands that were as big as baseball gloves. “You get a chance to pat a young player on his back and say `good job’ and `are you doing your homework?’, and they will listen to you more than they will 900 counselors and advisers because you enjoyed success as an athlete. In that, you may be able to do some good.”

It is not without irony that English once played the lead in a movie called “Big, Bad John.” It co-starred country singer Jimmy Dean, and was based loosely on Dean’s song about a miner who became a hero when he used his mighty strength to rescue some co-workers trapped in a mine disaster.

“The only important thing sport can leave you is a chance to make a difference for people,” English said Tuesday. “This is a chance to represent your school, but it is also a chance to represent those teammates who worked so hard with you. It is good for people whom you care about.”

Through his example as a player, his character and reputation as a person, and his commitment to charities which make a difference to others, English personifies the big man who lifted those timbers in the song.

The day English retired from the Lions, he said this to Jerry Green:

“Life is an experiencing of emotion. Technically, you can take a computer and hook it up to a corpse and make it talk, make it breathe – do things that people do. But it wouldn’t have emotions.”

That is why Doug English’s cell phone was full of messages Tuesday. It is why he called his old coach, Darrell Royal, to thank him. And it is why there will be smiles, and there will be tears, each time he is honored as the newest Longhorn member of the National Football Foundation’s College Football Hall of Fame.

05.06.2011 | Football

Bill Little commentary: The cornerstone — A story of Bennie Wylie

May 6, 2011

Editor’s note: This is the first in a series of articles on the new coaches for the Texas Longhorns football team.

Bill Little, Texas Media Relations

It is not without irony that any discussion of the phrase “it takes a village to raise a child” seems to place its origins either as an African proverb, or a historical root of Native American tribes. Either way, Bennie Wylie is good with it.

That is the way life was for Wylie when he was growing up in Mexia, Texas–a town of 6,500 in an area of farms and folks located at the base of the Great Plains, 45 miles east of Waco and 85 miles south of Dallas. Settled in the 1800s, it was once the home of settlers, buffalo herds, and Plains Indians.

And in his eyes–and those of hundreds of kids who grew up in the local elementary school–the most important man they ever met was not measured by stature in the community or great wealth. He was measured by his wisdom, and his heart. He was the elementary school janitor, Bennie Wylie Sr.

“I guess my life started by just watching my father, who passed away five years now,” says Bennie Wylie, the new Strength and Conditioning Head Coach for Football for the Texas Longhorns. “Just to watch how hard he worked and didn’t complain. He grew up watching whole generations as they went through school. He helped every kid in my town. He taught them how to tie their shoes and wiped their eyes when they cried. Every little kid knew Mr. Wylie.”

Bennie Wylie may have grown up with a dad who worked extra jobs after the school closed just to make ends meet, but he grew rich in spirit. And he learned a work ethic that burns deeply within him today.

“Dad would spend all day at the school, and then after work he would go mow yards. He’d do all this stuff to help us. Then we would throw hay, and we had a friend who would let us prune their trees. Dad worked to get us to where we could, not have nice things, but just so we could eat,” Bennie says.

At the same time, his mom worked just as hard, rearing Bennie and his brother and sister and taking odd jobs in home health care after Bennie, the youngest child, was in school.

“I didn’t really know it then, but as you look back, you realize all the things they had to give up just to make sure we were okay,” he says.

The one family vacation he remembers taking was the 85 mile trek to Dallas when he was seven years old to see his grandfather.

But while all of that may seem dire, it would be the village who would raise the child.

His third grade teacher, Sheila Phillips, told him, “Bennie, be well rounded. Be good at a lot of things.” And so he was.

The first time he left the state of Texas was when he was 15. He was a member of a Texas all-state church choir that traveled to Disneyworld in Florida. The third grade teacher’s advice was taking: he excelled in education and music as well as sports. Playing both the trumpet and the tuba, he was the band captain in high school, as well as the football team captain. He was an Eagle Scout and was on the student council in high school.

The modern day example of a Renaissance Man, he did everything well, and had a wide circle of friends.

“I was never just a jock, and I was never just a nerd. I was just ‘Bennie’. To everybody,” he says.

The commitment he carries into the Longhorn football strength and conditioning program came from a variety of disciplines.

“I guess I learned discipline from a lot of people. It was kind of like a village that raised our kids in our town. My parents helped raise our friends. I was raised by my friends parents, by my pastor, by my youth minister, by my scout master, by my head coach. Everybody had a part of the discipline. Everywhere I went, everybody expected a certain thing, and you had to live up to all of these different people. My scout master expected me to make Eagle, and I was the first African-American that made Eagle Scout in my whole area. He made sure I did that. I had a pretty decent voice then, and my youth minister made sure that I wasn’t just going through the motions and riding through…he wanted me to be the best. My band director wanted to make sure I wasn’t just second chair because he knew I could be first chair. I got pushed by everybody in our life.”

And the ripples of the message carried far beyond the small town.

“I have two best friends that I call brothers who were Navy SEALS. Their discipline, their work, and that of all of our men and women in the military inspire me. They do what they do so that we can do what we do here,” he said.

It is that kind of commitment, that kind of discipline, that leads Wylie to the task he now faces: helping the Longhorn football team rebound from a disappointing season.

“People often ask, ‘Are kids different today?'” says Wylie, who at 34 is part of the new young staff for Mack Brown‘s University of Texas football team. “There are different stimuli than when I was growing up, but kids are kids. They are a product of their environment. If we let them watch all the TV in the world, then they are influenced by that. If we don’t discipline them, then they get away with that. Our student-athletes here are incredible, because we expect a lot. We demand that they go to class, we demand that they are good citizens outside of here, and so they do it. In a way, it’s weird that we are a great program and have very few issues, but that’s what we demand of our team. Kids will give you what you ask of them. If you don’t ask very much, then they won’t give you very much.”

In his years with the Dallas Cowboys, at Texas Tech and at Tennessee, Wylie gained a national reputation for his own conditioning. But he says it isn’t the body that makes the difference–it’s all in your head.

“I am intrigued by the mind,” he says. “The body is just a machine. It will do some amazing things, but the brain–the soul, the spirit–drives the machine. And that is my edge. That’s my strength. I have a strong mind, and I will make my body do things it probably should not do any more…that it can’t do. And hopefully, that’s what I can pass on to the team–that your body will do what your mind tells it to do.”

Having worked with superior professional athletes such as Troy Aikman, Emmitt Smith and Darren Woodson, Wylie understands the drive it takes to excel.

“We’ve all seen great athletes with great talent that do nothing with it. So to me, that mental edge is the difference. There is a little man in your head and he can talk you into, and out of, a lot of things. So are you going to listen to that little guy when he tells you to stay in bed? It’s early, and you don’t have to get up. Or the little guy tells you this is too heavy. Don’t lift this…you have a little ache here…don’t finish through the line, just pull up. We all hear that little voice, and to me, that’s what makes the human being incredible, because that little guy in your head runs the whole thing. You have to conquer him.”

Wylie, a former tailback at Sam Houston State is married to a great wife, with twin sons. He says the strength and conditioning room is like a microcosm of life –“truth and reality and production.”

“You can tell me that you are going to bench press 400 pounds, but you have to show me. This room is humbling. It’s about working, and it’s about getting better.”

While NCAA rules prohibit Mack Brown and his football coaching assistants from working with the players in the summer, they do allow the strength and conditioning coach and the trainers to be present for volunteer workouts. But Wylie would be the first to say that while the summer workouts are “Bennie’s time,” that’s a long way from it becoming “Bennie’s team.”

“If we are a coach-driven team, we are not going to be very good. This is a player-driven team, and it needs to be that way. Coach Brown gives me the honor of giving me his team to train and take care of. It’s like your Dad gives you the keys to the Porsche. You can drive it, but you better not scratch it or wreck it. It’s great that you get to drive a Porsche, but you are really excited when you get to hand him the Porsche back and there’s not a scratch on it. It’s in perfect condition, just like he gave it to you. It’s a huge responsibility for him to trust this football team with not just me, but our entire strength and conditioning staff. There are a lot of guys and girls that work down here that push this team. They are here at five in the morning, and they stay late just like I do.”

So what does the summer look like for the Longhorns of 2011?

“I hope they don’t like me most of the summer, because I am going to challenge them, I am going to push them to the edge, trying to get them outside their comfort zone. We are going to put them in situations where we feel we are going to get into at some point in the season, so we can learn how to work through those things and learn how to react to them and respond the right way. It will be tough. We are going to work hard, because when you have pain and a little bit of suffering and you do that together, it forms this football team.”

In a conversation during the spring with new co-offensive coordinator Bryan Harsin, a brainstorming session turned into a philosophy and a season’s theme of “brick by brick.”

“When you build up a building, you have to have that foundation, and I think this program will always have that solid foundation. Our building got shaken a little last year. So instead of Coach Brown saying this is panic mode, he’s saying ‘let’s build this thing up, one brick at a time.’ And that’s what we have been doing since we’ve started. You have to know that it is going to be a process. You can’t just jump to the roof. We have to lay each brick, train hard, take care of our bodies, be smart with all of our school work. We have got to put all of these things together or we are not going to have that end product that we wanted,” Wylie said.

As a dad, his goals for his children are simple.

“I want them to have a better life than I did, but I want them to go through life and have some hard times, because that’s what made me who I am. I don’t want them to go through life and have a fluffy, carefree ride. I want them to have the things they need to deal with and work through just to make sure they are tough. I will try to provide more for them than I had. I want them to be good citizens. I don’t care if they are good in sports. We don’t push them into anything. If they are good, we’ll support them, as my parents supported me. They taught me to never quit anything. If I was in it, I was in it,” he says.

While the players marvel at his determination and endurance to run and work out with them as if he were 15 years younger, Wylie still sees himself as the teacher and friend who guides them on their way.

“I am just a blue collar kid from the country,” he says. “I am just going to do my part and push our team from the back, and let our players drive the team. When you bring energy and excitement and you are willing to work hard, only good things are in store for us.”

It is his role, and his legacy. Part of the village, grown from the roots of a humble man who never considered what he did; but lived and thrived, on who he was.

02.11.2011 | Football

Bill Little commentary: Pipe dreams — Remembering Emory and the Wishbone

Feb. 11, 2011

Bill Little, Texas Media Relations

It was the baseball season of 1968, and I had just joined the Texas Longhorn athletics staff as Assistant Sports Information Director. Texas was playing Rice in Houston, and I had agreed to meet my favorite uncle for breakfast at the legendary Shamrock Hilton Hotel. I was there with our baseball team; Uncle Clarence was there because my cousin’s husband was in the hospital at the fledgling medical complex which would later become world renown.

“How’s Gale?” I asked.

The usually cheerful face darkened as he said somberly, “Gale is a very sick man.”

It was then that I learned that my cousin-in-law was battling a disease with a very long name that for practical purposes had been shortened to its initials: amyotrophic lateral sclerosis was becoming known as ALS. I would learn in time that one of my heroes, Lou Gehrig, had died of it. And within three years, so would my cousin’s husband.

That was 40 years ago. Modern medicine has solved a lot of things in those years, but sadly, curing amyotrophic lateral sclerosis is not one of them. That is why we were all devastated to learn that Emory Bellard, an icon of the coaching profession, was fighting the uphill battle that matches modern medicine and the disease. Thursday, the disease won.

Just two years ago, Emory had attended a Sportsman’s Club dinner previewing the Longhorns’ upcoming season and honoring the 1969 Texas National Championship team. His hair was snowy white, and the ever-present smoking pipe which had been his trademark was gone. Otherwise, he was the usual, ultimate gentleman. A master of the game and a citizen of the people. And in this space, I remember another place, and another time, when the faces of Texas Longhorn football, and the mindset of the college and the high school game, were about to change.

It was the summer of 1968, and Emory Bellard sat in his office, down the narrow, eggshell-white corridor that was part of an annex linking old Gregory Gymnasium with a recreational facility for students. There were two exit doors, one at the glassed-in front of the two-story building, and the other at the end of the hall.

Summer, in those days, was a time for football coaches to relax and to prepare for the upcoming season. Summer camps for young players were years away, and few of the players were even on campus. Most were home, or working to earn extra spending money to last the school year. Most of Bellard’s cohorts on Darrell Royal’s staff were either on vacation or had finished their work in the morning and were spending the afternoon at the golf course at old Austin Country Club.

Texas football had taken a sabbatical from the elite of the college ranks in the three years before. From the time Tommy Nobis and Royal’s 1964 team had beaten Joe Namath and Alabama in the first night bowl game, the Orange Bowl on January 1 of 1965, Longhorn football had leveled to average. Three seasons of 6-4, 7-4 and 6-4 had followed the exceptional run in the early 1960s.

Despite an outstanding running back in future College Football Hall of Famer Chris Gilbert, the popular “I” formation with a single running back hadn’t produced as Royal and his staff had hoped. So with the coming of the 1968 season, and the influx of a highly touted freshman class who would be sophomores (this was before freshmen were eligible to play on the varsity), Royal had made a switch in coaching duties.

Bellard, who had joined the staff only a season before, after a successful career in Texas high school coaching at San Angelo and Breckenridge, was the new offensive backfield coach.

He had gone to Royal with the idea of switching to the Veer, an option offense which had been made popular in the southwest at the University of Houston. As the Longhorns had gone through spring training, they had returned to the Winged-T formation which Royal had used so successfully during the early part of the decade.

So, as the summer began, the on-going question was, who was going to play fullback, the veteran Ted Koy, or the sensational sophomore newcomer Steve Worster? With Gilbert a fixture at running back, even in the two-back set of the Veer formation, only one of the other two could play.

And that is how, on that summer afternoon, the conversation began.

“So, who are you going to play, Koy or Worster?” I asked. Bellard took a draw on his ever-present pipe, cocked his chair a little behind the desk that faced the door, and said, “What if we play them both?” He took out a yellow pad and drew four circles in a shape resembling the letter “Y.”

“Bradley,” he said, referring to heralded quarterback Bill Bradley, as he pointed to the bottom of the picture. “Worster,” he said, indicating a position at the juncture behind the quarterback. “Koy”, he said as he dotted the right side, “and Gilbert,” indicating the left halfback.

Royal had told Bellard he wanted a formation that would be balanced, and that, unlike the Veer which was a two-back set, would employee a “triple” option with a lead blocker. On summer mornings, Bellard would set up the alignments inside the old gymnasium next to the offices, using volunteers from the athletics staff as players. When the team members came back at the end of the summer break, Bellard took Bradley, James Street, Eddie Phillips and a fourth quarterback named Joe Norwood to the Varsity Cafeteria next to the gymnasium. There, as they sat at a table in the back of the room, Bellard arranged some salt and pepper shakers and the sugar jar in the shape of a Y. Then he explained the concept.

When the players tried it on the field for the first time, Street remembers saying with Bradley, “this ain’t gonna work….”

Still, Bellard persevered. As fall drills began, the formation was kept under wraps. Ironically, Texas opened the season that year against Houston. It was only the second meeting of the two. The Longhorns had won easily in 1953, but the Cougars had established themselves as an independent power that was demanding respect from the old guard Southwest Conference.

A packed house of more than 66,000 overflowed Texas Memorial Stadium for the game, which ended in a 20-20 tie. The debut of the new formation didn’t exactly shock the football world. A week later, Texas headed to Texas Tech for its first conference game, and found itself trailing 21-0 in the first half. It was at that point that Royal made the first of a series of moves that would change the face of his offense and the face of college football, for that matter.

Bill Bradley was the most celebrated athlete in Texas in the mid-1960s. He was a football quarterback, a baseball player, could throw with either hand and could punt with either foot. He was a senior, and when Royal unveiled the new formation, he thought that Bradley’s running ability would make him perfect as the quarterback who would pull the trigger.

But trailing in Lubbock, Royal made one of the hardest decisions of his coaching career. He pulled Bradley and inserted a little-known junior named James Street.

A signal caller from Longview, Street had been an all-Southwest Conference pitcher in baseball the spring before, but no one could have expected what was about to happen.

Street brought Texas back to within striking distance of the Raiders, closing the gap to 28-22 before Tech eventually won, 31-22. Bradley would eventually move to defensive back, where he became a star in the NFL.

Back home in Austin, the staff met to adjust where the players lined up in the new formation. In a debate that was won by offensive line coach Willie Zapalac, the fullback position alignment was adjusted. Worster, who had been lined up only a yard behind the quarterback in the original formation, was moved back two full steps so he could better see the holes the line had created as the play developed.

Against Oklahoma State the next week, Texas won, 31-3. Nobody realized it at the time, but that would be the start of something very big. With Street as the signal caller, that win was the first of 30 straight victories, the most in the NCAA since Oklahoma had set a national record in the 1950s, and a string that held as the nation’s best for more than thirty years.

Today, James Street is one of the nation’s most successful structured settlement money managers, and in countless public speeches, he uses things Bellard taught him–not only about the game, but about life.

“Emory,” Royal recalled Thursday, “understood the game of football, and was a great coach. But beyond the X’s and O’s, he was a great teacher.”

A teacher, Street says, of more than just the game.

“Before every game he would tell me `stay steady in the boat,'” Street recalled. “‘Play every play like it’s a big play. Don’t worry about the outcome of the game. Just play every play like it’s a big play.'”

The offense Bellard designed became a staple for colleges and high schools in the 1970s and on into the 1980s. Bear Bryant at Alabama and Chuck Fairbanks and Barry Switzer at Oklahoma would use variations of it to compete for national championships. Bellard would run it successfully as a head coach at Texas A&M and Mississippi State. The service academies–most notably Air Force–would use the concept with good results for years.

Bellard, whose highly successful high school career included a record of 136-37-4 and three state championships, left Texas after the 1971 season for his head coaching stints at Texas A&M and Mississippi State. He eventually came out of retirement to return to his roots as a high school coach before retiring for good as he neared his 80s.

Mack Brown remembers him from his time as a coach at Mississippi State, when Mack was coaching at Tulane. Most of all, he remembers his contribution to the history of the game, and to his dedication to help young coaches whenever they asked.

They will hold a memorial service on Saturday, February 19, at the First Baptist Church in Georgetown. There’ll likely be a gathering of Longhorns, from his five years as an assistant here, as well as Aggies, for his years as a head coach there. There will be those who remember the Wishbone, and the legacy it left.

More than that, however, they will recall the patience of a pipe smoker, who in his own way was an artist of the game, as well as a teacher. There is a touch of sad irony as well. With Bellard’s passing, seven of the eight assistant coaches on that staff which changed the face of Texas football are gone. Tom Ellis, Bill Ellington, Mike Campbell, Leon Manley, Willie Zapalac, and R. M. Patterson preceded Emory in death. Only Fred Akers remains.

And through his legacy – like all of them – Emory, with his pipe and his yellow pad, his schemes and his dreams, will stand the test of time, not only for what he did, but for who he was–and the lives that he touched.

01.22.2011 | Football

Bill Little commentary: Arranging the deck chairs

Jan. 22, 2011

Bill Little, Texas Media Relations

The preacher lady turned to the philosophy of the “Peanuts” comic strip Sunday morning, and I couldn’t help but think of how it related to the month Mack Brown has spent in his quest to rebuild his Texas Longhorn coaching staff.

It seems Charlie Brown’s adversary, Lucy, has asked the following question: “Charlie Brown, life is like a deck chair on a cruise ship. Passengers open up these canvas deck chairs so they can sit in the sun. Some people place their chairs facing the rear of the ship so they can see where they’ve been. Other people face their chairs forward—they want to see where they are going. On the cruise ship of life, which way is your deck chair facing?” she asks.

Replies Charlie Brown, “I am working on getting one to unfold.”

Starting before the season ever ended, Mack Brown was working on the chair issue. To say that he was not satisfied with the way things turned out for the Longhorns of 2010 would be a gross understatement. He wasn’t happy with his team, he wasn’t happy with his staff, but most of all, he wasn’t happy with himself. No coach in college football—or any level of football for that matter—adheres more to the philosophy that “the buck stops here” than does Brown. After 27 years as a head coach and 36 in the coaching profession, he understands the deal.

And so, with a huge dose of humility and a strong prescription of self-evaluation, he began the process of looking off the back of the ship—to try and figure out what happened.

In the days immediately following the Thanksgiving Night game with Texas A&M, he went back and looked at videos of every game. He re-watched practice tapes. He had called in highly respected friends to do the same thing and report to him what they saw. He asked for and received input from his team, and from his staff. He looked at all areas of the program. And he didn’t base it on one year—the evaluation included undetected trends that had slowly led to the erosion of the excellence.

It wasn’t as if anybody was blindsided by the actions that followed. All season, Brown warned repeatedly that things had to change. And at the end, they did. Texas was heading in a new direction. Now, it was time to turn the deck chairs toward the front of the boat. In his years as a head coach, Mack has always kept a list of coaches at every position whom he would seek out when the inevitable vacancies occurred within his staff. That would be the starting point. Then, he talked to his best friends in the business about candidates. Legendary college coaches and highly successful NFL coaches spoke with him.

As coaches resigned and chose to retire, Brown sailed through with a new look to the future of Texas football. He knew that he had a solid base in the four returning staff members—but even that was subject late in the process to what Brown refers to as “sudden change. Popular running backs coach Major Applewhite would have an expanded role in the offense. Recruiting coordinator and tight ends coach Bruce Chambers (the only original member of Brown’s staff at Texas) would be an anchor as well. Duane Akina‘s work with defensive backs and some phases of the special teams would be valuable, as would former Longhorn star and defensive ends coach Oscar Giles.

In searching for new coaches, there were some ground rules which he would absolutely observe. First, he, and only he, would know the people he was choosing as candidates. Second, he would not disrupt the staff of a team in a bowl game by wooing one of their coaches until after the game was finished. Internet and radio talk show rumors of what he was doing would abound—but none of them were true.

Immediately, he found that there are a lot of great coaches out there who would be capable and would love to work at Texas. He also learned that today’s college football is an industry where coaches are represented by agents (particularly when it comes to pro coaches), and many of the conversations with perspective candidates happened first with them.

Building a staff is like creating a mosaic. In the specialized world of college coaching, to recruit and to succeed you have to make sure you are teachers first and cover the critical positions. So you typically find the best possible coach to replace the position coach you lost. If your defensive coordinator coached linebackers, you go out and find the best possible coordinator who also coached linebackers.

For most of a month, he spent long days talking, texting, and reading resumes of coaches who might fit. A coaching staff is a critical combination of expertise, the ability to recruit, and the chemistry to blend with each other. By his own assessment, Mack never worked harder in his coaching career. And as December dwindled and the bowl games began, he had zeroed in on his top candidates.

The dominoes began to fall just as 2010 was ending. First announced was receivers coach Darrell Wyatt, who brought a wealth of experience in recruiting and a sterling background which included ten players who went on to play in the NFL.

Bo Davis came next, interviewed and announced after his Alabama team had played and won its bowl game. Chosen to mentor defensive tackles, he also brought strong recruiting ties within Texas, as well as high school coaching experience in the state.

Then came a tandem of exciting hires that continued a pattern of thirty-something men who infused both youth and enthusiasm into the new staff.

Manny Diaz had become a hot commodity on the defensive side of the ball as he had constructed innovative schemes both in his year as defensive coordinator at Mississippi State, as well as his time before that at Middle Tennessee. He had joined the coaching profession in the late 1990s, when he gave up a budding career with ESPN to work as a graduate assistant under the tutelage of the highly respected Mickey Andrews at his alma mater Florida State.

In his evaluation process, Brown had discovered that the structure of the strength and conditioning program needed to be tweaked. Jeff “Mad Dog” Madden had supervised the football program as well as maintaining duties as assistant athletics director overseeing the strength and conditioning program for all men’s and women’s sports except basketball. Nationally recognized by his peers and well-liked by the Texas players, Madden’s expanded duties had become too demanding to maintain a total focus on football. In the years since Madden had joined Brown at North Carolina and followed him to Texas, other schools had named a football strength and conditioning coach, just as Texas already had, for instance, in basketball with the talented Todd Wright.

That led to the next step—the hiring of Bennie Wylie. Wylie, a native of Mexia, Texas, who was at Tennessee for a year after helping the Texas Tech football program achieve national recognition, was the perfect fit. He perfectly fit the image—young, enthusiastic, respected by his peers and revered by his players.

Over the past several years, the biggest story in college football has been the rise to power and prominence of the football program at Boise State. In his years in the coaching profession, Brown has formed life-long relationships with other coaches. He counts retired coaches such as Darrell Royal, Paul Dietzel, Lloyd Carr, Urban Meyer, LaVell Edwards and Bobby Bowden among his close friends. But if you asked him to name one young coach whose work he greatly admires, one of the first names he will mention is Chris Petersen at Boise State.

And that brought Brown to the next major hire of the reconstruction project. Bryan Harsin had been Petersen’s offensive coordinator for five years with the Broncos. He is 34 years old, and was ready to stretch the envelope for him and his family. In a career that seems laden with destiny, he had been intrigued by Texas and Brown for some time. So when the call came to come and look at Texas, he and his wife, Kes, took the trip. There, they quickly formed a bond with Mack and Sally Brown, as well as with Major Applewhite and his wife, Julie. Together, with Harsin calling the plays and Applewhite serving with him as co-offensive coordinator, they determined they could write the next chapter in the long history of offensive football at Texas.

The sudden change factor entered when veteran secondary coach Duane Akina began considering an offer to return to the University of Arizona, where he spent 13 seasons as part of Dick Tomey’s famed “Desert Swarm” defense. When Akina finally made his decision to leave on Friday night, Brown immediately opened conversations with Longhorn legend Jerry Gray, who had college coaching experience and had spent 23 years as an all-star player and coach in the NFL. Gray had just finished coaching former Longhorn Earl Thomas while serving as the defensive backs coach for the Seattle Seahawks. The NFL had been good to him, but he was ready to come home. So on Monday the announcements of Akina’s leaving and Gray’s return to his alma mater came back-to-back, in time for Brown to tell the team as they gathered on Monday night for the first time since the break.

The final piece of the staff puzzle was put in place Thursday, when Stacy Searels was announced as the offensive line coach. Searels, who was offensive line coach and running game coordinator at Georgia, has an extensive background that included being an all-American player at Auburn, as well as experience in the NFL. His coaching stops include time at LSU when the Tigers won the national championship.

As Brown and members of his new staff hit the road visiting recruits this week, the players began early morning workouts with Wylie on Tuesday morning—the first day of spring classes. Clearly, there is much work to be done as new terminology and schemes will be installed this spring on both sides of the ball. Rarely has an in-place program undergone such an extreme makeover, with six new coaches out of the nine assistants, plus a change in the strength and conditioning area.

Last week, Brown sent his players a long note telling them his thoughts as their first meeting approached. In it, he acknowledged the fact that he is re-energized and invigorated with tremendous excitement as the spring semester begins. It is, he said, as he felt on his first day at Texas that December of 1997, prior to the 1998 season.

He has paid proper respect to the coaches who have left—all men who were a part just a year ago of what had been back-to-back runs at the national championship. He celebrates the history of Texas football on a daily basis. But he also realizes that history is a collage of both the past, the present and future.

At the team meeting, players met the new and the old staff members. As each introduced himself, he would say his name and his position, and then add in a show of solidarity: “This is my first day at Texas.” The theme—as Bennie Wylie articulated it—was “rebuilding, brick by brick.”

“I am a brick,” Wylie said, “and you are a brick.”

And that is why, with a group of young coaches who are ready to accept the challenge of the spirit and tradition of Texas football, Mack Brown has turned his deck chair so that it sails forward, into a new beginning.

12.03.2010 | Football

Bill Little commentary: The short, happy life of the Big 12 Conference

Dec. 3, 2010

(Editor’s note: As we prepare to enter a new era of college football with the final football event of the Big 12 Conference coming Saturday in the championship game, we take a look back at the beginning of the league just 15 seasons ago. The following is reprinted (with figures updated to reflect current status) from the book “Stadium Stories – Texas Longhorns” published by Globe Piquot Books and written by Bill Little)

Bill Little, Texas Media Relations

Fourth and inches, & the beginning of the Big 12

As he came to the line of scrimmage and surveyed the Nebraska defense in the first-ever Big 12 Championship game, James Brown stood at the edge of history.

Or maybe, better said, he was right smack in the middle of it.

To understand the moment, it helps to understand the situation.

Our story begins long before that December afternoon 1996 in the TransWorld Dome in St. Louis. Less than three years before, there was no league championship game, because there was no league. Texas was the linchpin of the Southwest Conference, and Nebraska had become the dominant team in the Big Eight. But the college football world had been undergoing a metamorphosis that had actually been evolving since the summer of 1984.

That was when a lawsuit concerning television rights and who owned them was settled. For years, the NCAA had controlled broadcast television rights for its schools, and had distributed appearances and money as it chose. As new networks emerged with interests in covering sports, the parent organization held fast to its right to control the medium. But its member institutions, particularly the leading football powers, saw a new opportunity for both money and exposure. The universities of Georgia and Oklahoma led the way in a lawsuit, and when the court’s landmark decision sided with them, it became open season in the television market.

ESPN was a new player in the arena, but it had been limited to showing games on a delayed basis while the NCAA apportioned games to its over-the-air network partners. When the Georgia-Oklahoma decision came down, ESPN quickly began seizing properties that brought nationwide exposure to programs such as Florida State and Miami, which heretofore had limited reach.

The College Football Association emerged as the steward of the television rights for the large conferences and independent universities, and that system worked until the University of Notre Dame saw an opportunity and seized it. The Irish signed an exclusive contract with NBC, thus breaking the CFA’s control of college football weekend air time. Still, the CFA continued with a good coalition of conferences, so the issue was manageable.

But the restlessness and the positioning was a flowing stream that was not going to be denied. The dominoes began to fall in the late 1980s, and shortly after Penn State elected to join the Big Ten Conference, the musical chairs were activated.

In Austin, DeLoss Dodds was in his first decade as Texas’ athletics director, and he was recognized as one of the cutting-edge ADs in the business.

Since coming to Texas in 1981, he had watched the defection of high school recruits from Texas to other high profile schools around the country. Attendance at league games at Houston, Rice, SMU, TCU and Baylor had diminished tremendously, despite relative success on the field. When Andre Ware won the Heisman Trophy at Houston in 1989, the Cougars averaged only 28,000 fans at their home games in the Astrodome. Part of all of that, Dodds had seen, came from the turmoil caused by recruiting scandals in the Southwest Conference. But he also knew the most important figure of all: As television began to become such a powerful force financially and exposure-wise, the area covered by teams in the Southwest Conference had only seven percent of America’s TV sets. The Big Ten had thirty percent, even without Penn State. The Southeastern Conference had twenty-three percent. And the Big Eight, which had even lost its regional TV package, had seven percent.

As the dollars and the exposure opportunities began to be distributed, it was clear that the SWC and the Big Eight were in trouble.

“It usually takes a crisis to cause change,” Dodds would say later, and the crisis came in the summer of 1990 when Arkansas announced it was leaving the SWC for the SEC.

Rumors flew that Texas and Texas A&M were right behind the Razorbacks. But when folks go shopping they often visit more than one store, and suddenly, the schools of the Southwest Conference were shopping, or in a couple of specific cases, being shopped.

While the old guard of the SWC entertained the notion of raiding its neighbor to the north – the Big Eight – the progressives were imagining what it would be like for Texas and A&M to play Alabama and Tennessee. There was even a small but powerful group that wanted to see the Longhorns as part of the Pac 10. Conversations were held between Texas and Texas Tech (which was the closest geographically) with the Pac 10. Some even considered the possibility of Texas and Texas A&M going their separate ways in different leagues, but that idea quickly was dispatched as nonproductive.

Before the flame could burn in either direction – west toward the Pac 10 or east toward the SEC – politics entered the picture. The state legislature and offices even as high as the Governor’s and Lt. Governor’s squashed the idea, out of deference to the Texas schools in the SWC which would be left behind.

Discussions of expanding the SWC included in-state schools such as North Texas, and schools as far away as Louisville and as close as Tulane to the east. To the west, informal discussions included Brigham Young, which was part of the Western Athletic Conference.

The people in the Southwest Conference office made overtures to the Big Eight to form a television alliance, where the two leagues would remain intact but would negotiate a television package together. There was talk of a merger combining all of the schools, with a playoff game between the two league champs.

Dodds, however, looked beyond the money. His goal had always been to keep Texas in a position to compete for national honors in every sport. The Southwest Conference, an institution in college athletics for over seventy-five years, was dying a slow death. Attendance was down just about everywhere except Texas and Texas A&M, and in the major sports of football and basketball, recruiting was getting harder and harder. Other schools regularly raided the football-rich arena of Texas high school football, and convincing an outstanding basketball recruit to even visit was harder and harder work.

In the Big Eight, things were not a lot better. Despite the fact that both Oklahoma and Kansas had Final Four caliber basketball programs and Missouri had a nationally respected hoops program, football was still the main attraction for television and fact was, not many folks were being attracted.

In Texas, three cities ranked among the nation’s top ten in population – Houston, Dallas and San Antonio – and the television markets in Houston and Dallas-Fort Worth were in the top ten television markets in the country. Denver, Kansas City and St. Louis were the only cities in the Big Eight with any significant media markets at all. While the Southwest Conference had what was called a “regional” TV package that aired its league games over stations in the area, the Big Eight had not been able to generate one at all.

So when Dodds and Oklahoma athletics director Donnie Duncan got together to survey the landscape, they saw a far different future than those who wanted to hang on to what was.

In early 1994, the house of cards fell. The Southeastern Conference, which had added South Carolina along with Arkansas when Texas and Texas A&M chose not to leave the SWC, signed a five-year, $85 million contract with CBS. The network also signed one with the Big East for $50 million, effectively ending the CFA. The final crisis was at hand.

In the space of less than two months, the league which had begun as the Southwest Athletic Conference in 1915 was dismantled. Television negotiations pairing the Big Eight and SWC were virtually an afterthought for the networks, who were after new material. They found it when the Big Eight voted to invite Texas and Texas A&M, and with significant encouragement from Governor Ann Richards and Lt. Governor Bob Bullock, their respective alma maters of Baylor and Texas Tech.

Left behind were TCU, SMU, Rice and Houston.

Texas agreed to join the merger on February 25, 1994, and on March 10 the league negotiated a television package worth $97.5 million, the most lucrative in college football history at the time, surpassing the one the SEC had cut just a month before.

The conference began play two years later, electing to split into two divisions. The North Division was exclusively former Big Eight schools, with Nebraska, Kansas, Kansas State, Iowa State, Missouri and Colorado. In the South Division were the four former Southwest Conference schools as well as Oklahoma and Oklahoma State. And despite opposition from the coaches at all Big 12 schools, their presidents voted to have a championship game matching the division winners and sold the package to ABC-TV.

That is how James Brown came to stand with his team on the field of the TWA Dome, with less than three minutes remaining and Texas nursing an improbable lead of 30-27.

Since the league’s formation, the South Division had been viewed as simply cannon fodder for the powerful North Division. There was open resentment among some media, fans and officials in the old Big Eight toward the interlopers from the four Texas schools. So it was with a degree of irony that Texas and Nebraska, two of the winningest programs in college football, would be the first representatives of the divisions to decide the first-ever championship.

Nebraska, which, along with Florida State, would be the most dominant team in college football in the 1990s, was 10-1 and within striking distance of playing for a national championship. All the No. 3 ranked Cornhuskers had to do was eliminate the Longhorns, who were twenty-one point underdogs after winning the South Division with a 7-4 overall record.

James Brown had been a significant figure in Longhorn football. He had emerged as a hero when he got his first start and beat Oklahoma, 17-10, as a redshirt freshman in 1994. He went on to lead the Longhorns to a Sun Bowl victory that season, becoming the first African-American quarterback at Texas to start and win a bowl game.

In that 1994 season, a year that was tenuous at best for the Longhorns’ head coach John Mackovic, it was Brown who effectively turned the year – and Mackovic’s tenure at Texas – around, as he led Texas to a 48-13 win over Houston and a 63-35 victory over Baylor.

In 1995, he had piloted Texas to the final Southwest Conference Championship, including a gutsy performance despite a severe ankle sprain in a 16-6 victory over Texas A&M in the league’s last game ever. In leading Texas to a 10-1-1 record, he helped the Longhorns earn an appearance in the Bowl Alliance at the Sugar Bowl.

The Monday before the Nebraska game, Brown had walked into a press conference in Austin and stunned the media. Badgered by a reporter about the fact that Texas was a 21-point underdog and, “How do you feel about that?” – Brown finally responded, “I don’t know…we might win by twenty-one points.”

In less than five minutes, it was on the national wire.

“Brown predicts Texas victory.”

John Mackovic, who was in his fifth season at Texas, told his quarterback in a meeting that afternoon, “Now that you’ve said it, you better be ready to back it up.”

The TWA Dome was packed, with a decided Nebraska flavor for that game which would decide the first Big 12 Championship. James Brown had led his team on the field in warm-ups, and was out-cheering the cheerleaders in the pre-game drills.

Mackovic, who was known for creatively scripting his offense at the beginning of games, put the Cornhuskers on their heels immediately with an eleven play, 80-yard drive for a touchdown to open the game. Texas had led 20-17 at half, but when Nebraska took its first lead of the game at 24-23 in the third quarter and then made it 27-23 with ten minutes remaining in the fourth quarter, things looked bleak for Texas.

The representatives from the Holiday Bowl in San Diego, who had come poised to invite Texas after the `Horns were dispatched by Nebraska, had marveled at the Longhorn Band at halftime and had delivered to the Texas representatives material advertising the attractiveness of San Diego as a bowl destination site.

But four plays later, Brown hit receiver Wane McGarity for a 66-yard touchdown pass, and Texas was back in front, 30-27.

Nebraska’s ensuing drive stalled at the Longhorn 43-yard line, and with 4:41 remaining in the game, Texas got the ball at its own six. A penalty on the first play pushed the ball back to the three. Five plays later, Texas had moved the ball to their own 28-yard line.

It was fourth down, with inches to go.

Mackovic called time-out and summoned Brown to the sidelines.

“Steelers roll left,” he said. “Look to run.”

Mackovic had used his weapons well in the game. He had taken Ricky Williams, who would win the Heisman Trophy two years later, and used him primarily as a decoy. Priest Holmes, who had been the third back after coming off of a knee surgery earlier in his career, had been the workhorse.

Both players, of course, would go on to fame in the NFL, with Holmes becoming the league’s top rusher at Kansas City in 2001. Holmes finished the game with 120 yards on 11 carries, and Williams carried only eight times for seven yards. Everybody had seen the pictures of Holmes as he perfected a leap over the middle of the line for short yardage. He had scored four touchdowns that way against North Carolina in the Sun Bowl alone.

Nebraska geared to stop Holmes.

And now, there was James Brown, right where you left him at the start of this story.

“Look to run,” Mackovic had said. But as the team broke the huddle, Brown looked at his tight end, Derek Lewis, and said, “Be ready.”

“For what?” Lewis responded, as he turned to look at his quarterback as he walked out to his position.


“I just might throw it,” Brown replied.


Brown took the snap, headed to his left, and saw a Nebraska linebacker coming to fill the gap. He also saw something else. There all alone, seven yards behind the closest defender, stood Derek Lewis.

Seventy-thousand fans and a national television audience collectively gasped as Brown suddenly stopped, squared and flipped the ball to Lewis, who caught it at the Texas 35, turned and headed toward the goal. Sixty-one yards later, he was caught from behind at the Cornhusker 11-yard line. Holmes scored his third touchdown of the game to ice it at 37-27 with 1:53 left.

The next morning, Mackovic was on a plane to New York to attend the National Football Hall of Fame dinner, and to accept on national TV the Fiesta Bowl bid to play Penn State. The reaction and reception he received was amazing. In choosing not to punt from his own 28-yard line, thus leaving the game in the hands of his defense with three minutes left, Mackovic had swashbuckled his way into a significant amount of fame. Had it failed, he would have been second-guessed forever, because the Cornhuskers would have had the ball only 28 yards from the goal, where a very makeable field goal attempt would have tied the game, and a touchdown would have won it.

There is an old Texas proverb that says it is only a short distance from the parlor to the outhouse, and there was John Mackovic, sitting on a stuffed sofa in a studio at CBS-TV, accepting a bid as the Big 12 representative to the Fiesta Bowl, as Nebraska dropped from national title contention and went to the Orange Bowl.

“The call” seemingly had been seen by everybody in America. Ushers at the David Letterman show were high-fiving the Texas coach, and managers of leading restaurants were sending him complimentary bottles of wine.

James Brown had made good on his promise, even if he didn’t quite get the 21-point margin of victory. He passed for 353 yards, hitting 19 of 28 passes, including the touchdown pass to McGarity. He had led Texas to a stunning victory. The mystique of the North Division of the Big 12 had been shattered, and the guys from the South had proved they belonged.

In the years that have followed, Big 12 schools have played in the BCS National Championship Game seven times, as the young league quickly solidified itself as a true power in college football. Now, of course, it is in its swan song, with Nebraska departing for the Big Ten and Colorado for the Pac 10 after this season.

The victory marked the high water mark for Mackovic, who was able to enjoy the popularity of “the call” for a short spring and summer. When Brown sprained his ankle in the season opener of 1997 and couldn’t play the next week against UCLA, disaster struck. Texas came apart as the Bruins beat the `Horns, 66-3. Brown never really got well, and neither did his coach. When the Texas season ended at 4-7, Mackovic was removed from the head coaching position and reassigned within the athletics department.

James Brown made a run at arena football and spent some time playing in Europe. In his time at Texas, he had earned a special place.

First, he destroyed the myth that an African-American couldn’t play quarterback at Texas, and second, he had taken “fourth-and-inches,” and made it into a euphoria that will forever rank as one of the greatest moments in the storied history of Longhorn football.

11.21.2010 | Football

Bill Little commentary: Remembering how to win

Nov. 21, 2010

Bill Little, Texas Media Relations

It can lead to a deep philosophical and psychological discussion, but the metamorphosis that took place Saturday in the Texas-Florida Atlantic game probably deserves that.

Here was one of the premier college football programs in history, a group that had lost only two games in the previous two years and won at least 10 games for nine straight, seeking to break out of a slump.

And as the game unfolded, in its sublime and sometimes ragged moments, one thing was obvious: Texas was remembering how to win. It was as if the Longhorns were recovering from their own amnesia. In the pressure and frustration of a losing skid, the pressure to win had overcome the joy of winning. In today’s world of negativity, it is easy to do that. When you reach the point that you are more afraid of losing than you are confident about winning, then you have to dig deep inside yourself to find a way to change it. Doubt is easy; faith is hard.

And that is how an exceedingly young Texas football team which has seen more than its share of adversity with injuries and on-the-field missteps, broke through with a 51-17 victory over the Owls. What was at stake here was pride, and a chance for rewriting history as to how this 2010 team will be remembered. It didn’t matter that it was a non-conference game. As Mack Brown would say in the postgame press conference, “We’ve lost non-conference games, too.”

After the loss to Oklahoma State, Brown had challenged his team to focus on 12 days–the duration of the remainder of the regular season. The Florida Atlantic win pulled Texas’ season record to 5-6, and it set the stage for the annual regular season ending game with Texas A&M on Thanksgiving night. A victory in that one would send the Longhorns to a post season bowl game for the 13th straight year.

In this one, the phases of the game fed on each other. And in this one, when things seemed to turn back to mediocrity, the team shucked that and played well. Truth is, when some folks doubted and others sought to cause rifts, this crowd hung closer together. When the offense left the ball at the Owl one-yard line, Blake Gideon intercepted a pass to give them another chance for what turned out to be an eleven-yard touchdown drive.

When Florida Atlantic tied the score at seven and then drove to a 45-yard field goal attempt to take the lead, the special teams rose up as Kheeston Randall blocked the kick and Emmanuel Acho recovered it. And then on the next play, Garrett Gilbert hit James Kirkendoll on a 63-yard post pattern for a touchdown that put Texas ahead, 14-7.

Slowly, Texas’ long slumber seemed to be ending. Cody Johnson began running, Justin Tucker kicked three field goals to move to within one of the NCAA lead this season, Gilbert played his best game and Sam Acho inspired not only the defense, but the whole team with his grit and determination.

They say when you believe, good things happen, and Texas was beginning to believe again. There was no better example of that than the final play of the first half, when Malcolm Williams timed his jump perfectly and came down in the end zone with a “Hail Mary” 47-yard touchdown pass from Gilbert.

Texas held a 24-7 halftime lead, and put 21 points on the board in the fourth quarter. Emmanuel Acho returned an interception 57 yards for a touchdown. The Longhorns dominated every statistical category, rushing for 259 yards while the defense held the Owls to 88. Gilbert threw for 263 yards, connecting on 15 of 21 passes, compared with 210 for FAU. That all added up to a 522-298 advantage in total yardage for Texas.

Johnson had a career-high 124 yards on 28 carries. Dustin Earnest led the defense with nine tackles, and Sam Acho added six with three sacks. Emmanuel also had six tackles to go with the pass interception.

Johnson’s performance, and those of Ryan Roberson and D. J. Monroe, exemplified the on-the-go adjustments of this injury plagued season for Texas. At the start of the season, the Longhorns felt they had a solid three-back rushing attack, that included Johnson, Tre Newton and the veteran Fozzy Whitaker. Saturday, Johnson was the only one suited up. Newton was forced to give up football because of health reasons after suffering concussions, and Whitaker missed the game because of a nerve injury that hasn’t responded to rehabilitation. Monroe came into the season after playing primarily as a receiver, and Roberson was a linebacker last year who had moved to fullback.

Yet at the end of the game, Roberson was rushing for 23 yards as part of a flawless 47-yard scoring drive directed by true freshman quartrback Case McCoy. There were times when both offensive coordinator Greg Davis and defensive coordinator Will Muschamp looked out to see a unit on the field that was loaded with freshmen and sophomores, even when the game was still very much a contest.

After the game, Brown was quick to say that this victory wasn’t about the competition, or the streak.

“This was about us. You can talk about how good they (FAU) are, but we’ve played some poor teams and lost. This is about us. Us is good. Us is happy. Us is going to start preparing for A&M. This gives us some hope, because we didn’t have any hope for a while.”

In one of the greatest movie lines of all time, the character Andy Dufresne in the movie “The Shawshank Redeption” writes to his friend, “Remember Red, hope is a good thing, maybe the best of things. And no good thing ever dies.”

The tagline of the movie is, “Fear can hold you prisoner, hope can set you free.”

This team has learned many hard lessons this season, and perhaps the truest of those is that if you want something bad enough, you have to go and fight for it. And this is the most important part about what you learn when you reach that space: a game is an opportunity.

Hope gives you a chance.

11.19.2010 | Football

Bill Little commentary: The presents of the past

Nov. 19, 2010

Bill Little, Texas Media Relations

This weekend brings two things to Austin and The University of Texas athletics. The first is the chance for a new beginning for a Longhorn football team that is trying to end its season with three straight wins. The second is the honoring of heroes of the past, as the men’s and women’s Longhorn Hall of Honor induct their latest classes.

The football connection is rich with some Florida roots.

First, of course, is the return of Ricky Williams, the Longhorns’ 1998 Heisman Trophy winner who is now playing for the Miami Dolphins. He, along with Houston attorney Mike Perrin and Bill Wyman – whom Darrell Royal has called the best center he ever coached – will represent football at the Men’s Hall of Honor induction on Friday night.

Primary for the 2010 season is the 2:30 p.m. game against Florida Atlantic, where the 4-6 Longhorns will try to take the first step in their effort to win two games within six days to even their record and earn the right to be considered for a post season bowl berth.

“Were you as prepared as you could be, and did you play as hard as you could?” James asked.

The names of the past are mostly familiar. The opponent in the football game is one of those dangerous foes that often can be overlooked and taken lightly. Mack Brown has pointed out that this 2010 team hasn’t earned the right to take any opponent lightly, but that hasn’t stopped the media and the pundits from discounting the Owls and looking past them to Thanksgiving night’s game with Texas A&M.

For the Texas football team, that scenario is far from reality. When Mack asked the team to commit to work for 12 days starting after Saturday’s loss to Oklahoma State, it included a couple of interesting things for Saturday.

The first was the introduction by defensive coordinator Will Muschamp and assistant head coach Major Applewhite to the history of Florida Atlantic and the kind of talent the Owls have been stockpiling since becoming a football playing institution just ten years ago. Both had connections with, and recruited against, the Boca Raton school when Will was at Miami and Major was working at Alabama. That also included an introduction to the Owls coach Howard Schnellenberger, whose odyssey as a head coach has produced an interesting involvement with The University of Texas.

There is a great chance that Schnellenberger is the first person ever to serve as head coach of four different teams against the Longhorns. In 1981, he brought his Miami team to Austin to play a Texas team that eventually finished second in the nation. The Longhorns took a hard-fought 14-7 victory, but the star of the day was an unknown Hurricanes’ quarterback named Jim Kelly. Schnellenberger also coached Louisville in two meetings with the Longhorns in 1993 and 1994, as well as a year at Oklahoma and the previous game with Florida Atlantic in 2008.

The fact that the Hall of Honor, which was started in 1957, will be inducting eight members including the three football players Friday, is a recognition of the great history of Texas athletics. The UT Women will honor a class at a noon luncheon, and the men’s event will be on Friday evening. The class will be recognized in pre-game ceremonies prior to the game.

Perrin goes into the Hall as a “vintage” selection. It’s hard to believe he meets the requirement to fit in that category of having played more than 40 years ago. He was part of the beginning of one of the greatest eras of Longhorn football–that window of time in the late 1960s. As a senior linebacker in 1968, he was on the team that became famous for starting the Wishbone offense–and for the first nine wins of what would turn into a 30-game winning streak.

Bill Wyman’s time at Texas followed that era. He played on teams that won three straight Southwest Conference championships from 1971 through 1973, and was the All-American center who led the way in the Wishbone for the running of the legendary Roosevelt Leaks.

Most famous, of course, of the three is Ricky Williams, who still ranks as one of the greatest running backs in the history of college football. A dozen years ago, in that game in Austin against Texas A&M, he ran his way into the annals of the sport when he became the all-time leading rusher in the history of NCAA college football at the time. He was the Longhorns’ second Heisman winner, and captured every award he was eligible for and set dozens of school and national records which still stand.

Just as important, however, were the things he taught us about life. Ricky Williams, with his dreadlocks and his captivating smile, showed us that it is who a person is on the inside that really matters. He still does that. As a star for the Miami Dolphins, he constantly works through the Ricky Williams Foundation to help kids who need help. In his own way as a player on the field and a person off of it, he’s touched countless lives.

As those and the other distinguished inductees, such as Minnesota Twins manager Ron Gardenhire and basketball great Chris Mihm enter the Hall, we are reminded of the essence of sport. It is always about another day, another game, another chance. Like life, it is about the next, and not the last, step.

That is the final piece of Saturday’s football game for the Longhorns. In the midst of what has been a disappointing season, Saturday offers that. It’s a new chance to shine, to show what you can do. Amazing how sport does mimic life. That is why Saturday will be important for the 2010 Longhorns. They get to go play a game they have played since they were kids. A contest of pitch and toss, tackle and block, run like the wind and play as if the day will never end.

That is, after all, why they call it a game.

11.14.2010 | Football

Bill Little commentary: The dozen

Nov. 14, 2010

Bill Little, Texas Media Relations

Mack Brown has always used the calendar for emphasis with his football team. The life of a team lasts 365 (or so) days. It begins the day the previous season ends. And in the year that follows, a team prepares for twelve weekends, expecting that success on those Saturdays will lead to perhaps a thirteenth or fourteenth game.

Now, he has asked his team to play, and practice, for twelve days—a dozen days which will wind up being the legacy of the Longhorns of 2010. Between the end of Saturday’s game with Oklahoma State and sometime late on Thanksgiving night, the 4-6 Longhorns will determine what a single line in the record books will look like for them.

In the final moments of the loss to Oklahoma State, I was reminded of something former Longhorn quarterback James Street told his son, Huston, after his Westlake High team lost to Cedric Benson’s Midland Lee team in the state championship game. This, of course, was before Huston came to Texas as a star baseball pitcher and went on to become one of the top relief pitchers in Major League Baseball.

“Were you as prepared as you could be, and did you play as hard as you could?” James asked.

When Huston, who had made 21 tackles that game, replied yes to both questions, James said, “Then go over there and congratulate them, because they were the better team today.”

And that is exactly what Mack Brown and his team did after the loss to Oklahoma State. This wasn’t one of those games that Texas lost—this one was one that Oklahoma State won. That’s a good football team, folks. That said, Brown was proud of his team, even though absolutely no one in the Longhorn locker room was happy about the loss.

Texas has been a piece of the very strange mosaic that is college football in this season of 2010. The landscape, within the Big 12 and around the country, has changed completely. It is a year of mirages—what has seemed real for the past decade isn’t really there anymore, and visages pop up and go away within the span of weeks. It is the nature of the sport where your players turn over about every four years. We celebrate the careers of the heroes we come to know almost as friends during their time in school. And when they leave, there’s a void. It sounds bold to say, “we don’t rebuild, we reload,” but college football is, and always will be, in the construction business.

South Carolina beats Florida and Alabama and loses to Kentucky and Arkansas. Oregon dominates the west coast, but barely survives against California. TCU wants a bid to the BCS Championship game but has to escape San Diego State. Iowa loses to Northwestern. Iowa State beats Texas, loses in overtime to Nebraska, and then is dominated by a Colorado team which just had its coach fired. If misery loves company, then make up the bed in the spare bedroom because we have visitors.

That doesn’t change the fact that this unfamiliar territory for the Longhorns is frustrating and maddening. It is no longer pride that is being tested—it is resolve. Florida Atlantic will come in with a 4-5 record. Their season includes a respectable 31-17 loss at Michigan State, and given the way this year has gone, the Longhorns are in no position to take anyone lightly. Brown has made it clear as his team approached the final three games that the focus was to win two games, get to 6-6, and become bowl eligible.

“We owe that to our seniors,” he told the team after Saturday’s loss.

That is when he came up with the commitment of the 12 days.

Saturday will be particularly special for Longhorn football, as the 2010 class of the men’s Longhorn Hall of Honor will include Heisman trophy winner Ricky Williams, who will be present for the induction. In Mack Brown‘s first year at Texas in 1998, it was on a November day when Ricky ran his way to the College Football Hall of Fame and into the record books as the NCAA’s all-time leading rusher.

Once again, sport reminds us of life. This young and oft injured team of 2010 has taken its shots from opponents waiting for a chance to get a piece of the Longhorns’ tremendous run under Brown. Now, it is about 12 days. The emphasis is on the next game. You cannot get to six wins unless you have five. It may seem trite to say it, but you really do have to take one step before you can take the next.

As hard as it has been on the seniors to see their hopes of returning to that space they left in Pasadena in the BCS National Championship game only ten months ago, the year is providing a difficult learning lesson for the young players who have been forced into action by the many injuries. I can recall a tough year in David McWilliams’ tenure where a particular defensive back seemed to make the highlight films of every single opponent as he was beaten for touchdown passes. The next year, Texas was 10-2 and that DB was all-conference.

One of the most popular lines in the musical “Les Miserables” comes from the young boy who is the symbol of the growing revolution. “Never kick a dog because it’s just a pup…you better run for cover when the pup grows up,” he defiantly sings.

In a year where there has been a revolution of sorts in college football, that’s an important thing to remember. It is right to disdain defeat and celebrate victory. It is important to remember that football is a game. And it is critical to find life’s lessons with each step we take, whether it is compressed into 12 days, or a lifetime.

11.12.2010 | Football

Bill Little commentary: Understanding the challenge

Nov. 12, 2010

Bill Little, Texas Media Relations

It is always an interesting juxtaposition—the intermingling of a high profile college football game with the ceremonies surrounding Veterans Appreciation Day at Darrell K Royal-Texas Memorial Stadium. And when Oklahoma State comes in to play the Longhorns Saturday, it will happen all over again.

The quandary, of course, is the reverence of recognizing the great tradition of the legendary stadium with the excitement and purpose of an athletic event that is part of the culture of the university it represents. As Mack Brown has said, “We are in the education business during the week and the entertainment business on the weekend.

And sometimes, the two coincide.

I was thinking about that Thursday as I was driving in to work, preparing to take assistant coach Duane Akina to his speaking engagement with the Austin Longhorn Club. It would be my job to introduce Duane, and it was a double-duty day because Thursday was also Veterans Day, and the weekend’s activities surrounding Veterans Appreciation Day were high on the list of priorities.

Here, too, was a football team that was going through one of those obligatory “learning experiences” that seem to eventually creep into every era and every part of the life of students—or the lives of everybody for that matter.

How do you best define the reality of tough times in an upbeat setting like the anticipation of a Saturday football game? As important as a football game is, it is important to remember what baseball coach Augie Garrido has said about games: “You don’t ‘work’ games,” he says, “you ‘play’ them.

As I thought of the history of Texas and its encounters with veterans whose lives have made a difference for this country, and given that I was about to introduce Hawaii-native Akina, my mind went back to the Longhorns’ trip to the Islands to play the University of Hawaii in 1995. As it turned out, the game happened to be scheduled at the same time as the 50th anniversary of VJ Day—the day World War II officially ended in 1945.

It was a powerful vision—the young football players taking in the sights of the Island of Oahu, along with the aged veterans who were part of what has been called “The Greatest Generation.” President Bill Clinton was there for a speech, and in one of the truly moving moments of the weekend, old sailors and soldiers gathered on the deck of a giant aircraft carrier and threw wreathes into the sea.

“When we are gone,” asked one, “who will be there to tell our story?”

Mack Brown has answered that question for The University. In his travels to the Middle East last year, and in his continued support of America’s fighting men and women, he has made sure the history of the stadium is never forgotten. The heroic efforts of the decorated Army veteran Frank Denius are constant reminders. In freshman walk-on football player Nate Boyer, a former Army Green Beret Staff Sergeant who served nine years including two tours of duty in Iraq, this year’s Texas team has its own up-close-and-personal look at a modern American hero.

But what struck me most of all on that drive to campus was the messages we get from sport, and the messages sport can take from life.

On that trip to Hawaii, former head coach John Mackovic and his staff did a good job of educating the players about history. And the crowning moment of that came when former University of Texas President Robert Berdahl, a noted historian, addressed the team on the day of the game.

“What did you talk to them about?” I asked. To which he replied, “I told them about the Yorktown.”

Those of you who have seen the movie “Midway,” or have studied history at all, know the story of the USS Yorktown. After suffering severe damage in the Battle of the Coral Sea, the Yorktown was restored to limited fighting condition by crews that worked around the clock to get her seaworthy again. When what was left of the US fleet departed for the Battle of Midway Island—an epic encounter which changed the course of the War in the Pacific in World War II – the Yorktown was in the armada.

The courageous effort of the crew led to the ship’s being a factor in the Midway naval battle, but in one of the few Japanese victories in that encounter, the ship was sunk.

Berdahl had told the team of the valiant teamwork, of the inspired effort, and of the dedication of those who fought so hard to get the ship ready to join the battle. I can remember where I was standing in the stadium in Honolulu when I grinned and told him, “Well, I hope you didn’t tell them that it was sunk.”

“As a matter of fact,” he replied, “I did.”

And then he added, “I thought it was important for them to realize what was accomplished, and yet they needed to see that every story doesn’t have a happy ending. Life doesn’t always turn out like you would like for it to.”

As I introduced Duane, and talked about the fact that from his grandmother’s house you could see the check points which the Japanese had used to guide their planes in the bombing of Pearl Harbor, I thought of how much what Bob Berdahl said that day fit with the struggles of a football team fifteen years later.

It was the same message the Longhorns got last year from another veteran, now General Greg Gadsen, who lost both of his legs to an IED (improvised explosive device) in Iraq. His message to the team was that you can’t control your circumstances, but you can choose how you deal with them.

That is why this weekend, Texas will embark on what the Longhorns are calling “a three-game season.”

And that is why, on this weekend, we will remember the past with honor, even as the team approaches its newest challenge with hope.

10.30.2011 | Football

Bill Little commentary: The second half

Oct. 30, 2011

Bill Little, Texas Media Relations

It would be easy, on a night when the offense put up 590 yards and the defense held an opponent to fewer yards than any Texas team since World War II, to try and dissect what it all meant. So let me help you a little here.

The glass is half full if you bask in the success and the statistics. It is half empty if you choose to discount the evening’s accomplishments based on the record of the opponent. Neither, really, catch the message of what happened Saturday night in the Longhorns’ 43-0 victory over Kansas.

Winning is fun and losing is not, and that shall always be the case. So it shouldn’t surprise you that the Longhorns were smiling as the clock ticked down on a perfect autumn night at Darrell K Royal-Texas Memorial Stadium. Offensively and defensively, Texas had dominated. They had rushed the ball for an amazing 441 yards, and had allowed their opponent only 46 net yards total.

But as they had shucked the leaves of upsets past, they had continued a theme that has been evident from the very start with this crew: they really like each other. They stand as family. They have chosen to grow together. To do it right.

That was evident in the locker room after the game, when an emotional Mack Brown reminded the team of their commitment to loved ones whose lives had been touched by cancer. Each player had chosen to dedicate the game to someone so affected. And in the silence of the moment, they had a chance to give thanks for them, and for each other.

We had seen that when freshman running back Joe Bergeron powered his way for 35 yards for the game’s final touchdown and quarterback Case McCoy raced to the end zone to join his teammates in celebrating. And then, we saw it when McCoy came to the sideline, to be greeted by fellow quarterbacks J.P. Floyd and David Ash. Week after week, day after day, practice after practice, those three have bonded together as three musketeers in co-offensive coordinator Bryan Harsin’s workshop for excellence. Together, they have spent hours watching video, meeting and learning. They have thrown probably a hundred passes a day and measured their steps and executed their snaps and their plays. So like brothers, they had a chance to celebrate-not themselves-but their team.

On the next series, as the Jayhawks moved the ball to the Texas 40 for the first time in the game bringing a moderate threat toward the Longhorn goal line, linebacker Emmanuel Acho stood on the sidelines with the rest of the first team defense. “I’m going in,” he said to fellow senior linebacker Keenan Robinson, “with or without you.” Before the series was over, the first team defense had basically inserted itself back on the field, and the Longhorns’ first shutout since the National Championship year of 2005 was preserved.

That is why we like this team, and it is why Mack Brown and his coaches believe in it. In the two weeks following the back to back losses to the excellent teams of Oklahoma and Oklahoma State, this group has concentrated on one thing – getting better. It is a cliché to call them “A Band of Brothers,” but that is what they are.

It is so fitting that they continue to embrace the theme coined last spring by the football staff of “Brick by Brick.” It’s fitting because despite setbacks and challenges, they are determined to continue building. And you get the sense that they build, not for you and me, but for each other.

Saturday’s defensive effort was a showcase of what coordinator Manny Diaz and the other assistants have been looking for. It was a knock down, shut down of a team that had averaged 30 points a game in facing a tough schedule. The numbers were astounding. By the end of the third quarter, Kansas had two first downs (one by penalty) and a total of nine yards on just 25 offensive snaps. Texas had 28 first downs and had 446 yards on 75 snaps. In third down conversions, Texas was 10 of 13, Kansas 0-7.

A Jayhawk team which had led Texas Tech, 20-0, before fading, ran only 36 plays the whole game to 93 for the Longhorns, and UT held the ball for a little over 44 minutes in the 60 minute game.

Twenty three players, including special teams, were credited unofficially with defensive statistics. There were three sacks and eleven tackles for loss.

Offensively, Ash managed most of the first three quarters before turning it over to McCoy. The true freshman from Belton notched his first win as a starting quarterback by completing 14 of 18 passes for 145 yards. Bergeron (who finished with 13 carries and 136 yards) scored two touchdowns in a relief role to starter Malcolm Brown, who had 119 yards on 28 carries and two TDs. It was also another great night for senior inspirational leader Fozzy Whittaker, who rushed for 68 yards and caught passes for 44 more. Two-sport sensation Marquise Goodwin had his best statistical game with four pass receptions for 36 yards and five carries for 52. And Justin Tucker kicked two field goals, including a career long 52-yarder.

Thus, the first game of the second half of the regular season ended in a solid, dominating victory. The Longhorns are 5-2 on the year. But as Brown gathered his team in the dressing room after the game, the college football world seemed to be swirling out of control around them. Upsets, followed by upsets of the upsettors, seemed to be the order of the day in the middle of 2011. It was important, therefore, for Brown to remind his team that this isn’t about the finished house, or the end of the season. It is about the next brick, now that the fifth is finally in place after a couple of scrap-that-and-replace games in the mythical construction business.

In Mack Brown‘s tenure at Texas, for 12 of the 13 years (last year being the obvious exception), his teams have gotten better week by week as the season turns into November.

“They will remember November,” he often has said.

How they will remember it will depend on the laying of the bricks.

But after a year off the track, this team has brought something special to Texas football. We like this team because they like each other. The fun comes in the winning. But the joy comes in the playing these days.

10.16.2011 | Football

Bill Little commentary: The answer

Oct. 16, 2011

Bill Little, Texas Media Relations

For Fozzy Whittaker, life is no longer about “the question.” It is about “the answer.”

And answer is exactly what he did Saturday in the Longhorns’ 38-26 loss to Oklahoma State. Twelve seconds after Oklahoma State had taken a 28-10 lead with a 100-yard kickoff return to start the second half, Whittaker answered with a 100-yard kickoff return of his own that cut the score back to eleven points at 28-17.

It was, for a guy whose career has been short-circuited several times because of injury, a UT record setting second 100-yard kickoff return in as many weeks.

Entering 2011, the season had been something of a question mark for Fozzy. The senior from Pearland had endured injuries for much of his time at Texas. He missed the season of 2007 because of a left knee injury, and then hurt his right knee and played in only seven games in 2008. He struggled with hamstring and calf problems in 2009, and added a shoulder injury to his myriad of maladies last season.

But the addition of new football strength and conditioning coach Bennie Wylie and a shift of responsibilities that came from the offensive coordinator tandem of Bryan Harsin and Major Applewhite, brought a new look for Whittaker.

Touted young running backs Malcolm Brown and Joe Bergeron captured most of the media and the public’s attention during fall camp, but it was the steadiness and maturity of Whittaker that put him in a featured role for the Longhorns of 2011.

Mack Brown says he builds his football program on “communication, trust and respect,” and no one has locked in on that trio of qualities better than Whittaker. His roles have varied. Prior to the Oklahoma game, he moved in as a return man on kickoffs, and has responded with the two field-length scoring runs. He’s played the “I” back in a traditional running formation, and has mastered the role of taking a direct snap as if he were a single-wing tailback in the “wild” formation.

With his two kickoff returns for touchdowns against Oklahoma and Oklahoma State, he joins teammate D. J. Monroe as one of only two players in recent UT history to score twice on kickoff returns in the same season. He also is only the fifth player in modern UT history to score on a run, a pass reception, and a kick return in the same season. The others included College Football Hall of Famer James Saxton (1960), Olympian Johnny “Lam” Jones (1978), Mike Adams (1992) and Victor Ike (2000). In fact, the Longhorns went 22 years without a kickoff return for a TD between Jones’ record setting 100-yarder and Ike’s return in the Holiday Bowl. Whittaker has now done it twice in back-to-back weeks.

Perhaps his greatest contribution this season, however, has been as a mentor to Brown and Bergeron.

After a frustrating career trying to get the Longhorns’ running back picture in focus, this season he has chosen to crystalize the concept by stepping out of the spotlight. Meanwhile, the highly recruited Malcolm Brown has become the Longhorns’ leading rusher – and Whittaker has filled whatever role that has been asked of him.

He stepped aside as the starting running back in the `Horns’ third game of the season, and Malcolm Brown was surprised by his attitude. Most players want to start, and all want to play. Whittaker set about the business of helping Brown become a better player.

“He’s like a big brother,” Brown said. “He is one of the coolest guys I’ve ever met in my life.”

The extra gear he has exhibited in the two kickoff returns he credits to Wylie, whose work with the team in the summer helped Whittaker push his weight to 202 pounds and increased his speed and quickness.

Fozzy is the perfect package, according to Mack Brown. As a student-athlete, he achieved his degree in corporate communications in May of 2010. He is currently enrolled in graduate school, seeking a master’s in kinesiology. He hopes to play pro football, and one day would like to work in football operations for a college or professional team.

In the secret life of Fozzy Whittaker, he is a lover of animals (he raises rabbits) and is a huge aficionado of the comic book hero Captain America.

Until this season, folks would have been hard pressed to link Whittaker with a super hero, but as 2011 has progressed, he has become a popular and unquestioned leader on a young offense which has few seniors on the two deep.

Where at one point, as a graduate, his return for his fifth year might have seemed a question it is no longer an issue. As the Longhorns close the first half of their regular season and head into an open date weekend before returning to play on October 29 against Kansas in Austin, Whittaker is clearly the team’s offensive MVP through the first six games.

In a career often filled with questions (particularly concerning a myriad of nagging injuries), Fozzy Whittaker carries his Captain America backpack to graduate studies classes at The University of Texas. He no longer has to wonder about being a hero – as far as this Texas team of 2011 is concerned, he is one.

And that, as they say, is the answer to the question.

10.14.2011 | Football

Bill Little commentary: The fifth brick

Oct. 14, 2011

Bill Little, Texas Media Relations

When it comes to bricks and football, there is likely no greater authority than John Hagy. As one of the leading home builders in Austin, as well as a former Longhorn and NFL star who played in a Super Bowl, he knows a lot about both.

So given the Longhorns’ 2011 reconstruction philosophy of “brick by brick,” I asked John what you do when something goes wrong after you have played pretty well for four games and start feeling pretty good about yourselves after four successful layers of bricks have been put in place.

“That’s exactly how the home building business goes too,” he said with a chuckle. “I always joke around and say, `things feel a little too good right now.’ Every time I start to think things are going well, and everything’s scheduled on time, and things are hitting and firing correctly, you had better put your head on a swivel and see what you are missing, because it’s coming.”

And when it does, he says, you go back to brick four and build from there.

That’s the goal of the Texas Longhorns as they approach Saturday afternoon’s game with highly ranked Oklahoma State.

Hagy understands the challenge the UT team faces. In 1987, he was part of a rebuilding effort during his senior season in David McWilliams’ first year at Texas. He’s pleased with what he sees from the young Longhorns this season, and also understands the challenge they faced against a good Oklahoma team in the Cotton Bowl.

He was a UT team captain and earned all-Southwest Conference honors at safety that season. Before injuries ended his career, he played four years in the NFL, and was a starter at free safety on the Buffalo Bills’ 1991 Super Bowl team. For the last 15 years, he has been president of John Hagy Custom Homes, building luxurious houses in the Lake Travis and Hamilton Pool area of far southwest Austin.

So, what’s the philosophy when you hit a snag on brick No. 5?

“You take it back down. You gotta pull it apart and you gotta put it back together correctly. It takes time and effort, just like it does in football. You put in the extra work that’s necessary. You take it back to brick No. 4, where it has all been done correctly. When five is a little out of level, then it’s time to take five down and put things back up together. The scary thing is, you don’t want to put five and then get to 25 and realize it has to come down because it doesn’t line up right. You want to constantly keep checking so that if it gets to seven or eight and doesn’t look right, then you have to fix that.”

Hagy understands the challenge to be excellent, both in football and in construction. And that is how the Longhorns and the coaching staff have approached this game Saturday. Last Sunday, Texas reviewed the video of the Oklahoma game, and as defensive coordinator Manny Diaz told the Austin Longhorn Club on Thursday, they looked to learn – studying the good, and not so good, plays in the game.

It has been just a couple of days over eleven months since the Cowboys of Oklahoma State came to Austin early in November of last year and claimed their first win over Texas in the Mack Brown era for the Longhorns. To do it, OSU scored thirty unanswered points (including 23 in the second quarter) in a 33-16 victory.

The explosive 2011 team for OSU has been posting an average of 50 points per game, and has used its “hurry up” up-tempo offense to log almost 90 plays per game. John Hagy, who in a 41-27 victory over Texas Tech in 1987 became the first UT defensive player to score touchdowns on a punt return and an interception return in the same game, would tell you that you counter that up-tempo offense with alert defensive play and patience on offense. And the secret to success comes in attention to detail with an appropriate dose of intensity.”

“In football, you have to match the other team’s intensity. That has always been the case with the Oklahoma game. That game is always just different. I can remember the 1984 game where we matched each other punch for punch, and it ended in a 15-15 tie,” Hagy said.
“In building, as in football, you try to do the best you can from start to finish.It is never perfect, it can’t be perfect, there are no perfect houses. You strive for it and you try to do the best you can from start to finish. You certainly go through the season and the process of building a house trying to achieve perfection, and that’s all you can do, but you always have to know that something could be a little better and you have to go find that and seek it out and work on it.”

Hagy, who was the fiery leader of the teams on which he played, loves the potential of what he sees in the 2011 Longhorns.

“We are young and we’ve got good young players out there. I’m excited to see some of those young guys, and the secret to success will be how they all work together. You are as good as the pieces around you. You have to rely on other people,” he said.

But from a man who played the game and now builds homes for people looking for a future, it is not only about today, but about what he sees for tomorrow.

” I hope those young kids come together and in the next couple of years we are striving for a national championship,” he said. “I believe that can happen.”

In the web description of Hagy’s company, it refers to “passion” as one of the key ingredients of its success, but it also adds “attention to every detail and a commitment to excellence.”

It is the same as in the game. That’s why you build brick by brick, and have the determination, commitment, and foresight to fix it if it is off line, and get it right. The future depends on it.

10.09.2011 | Football

Bill Little commentary: Spinning wheel

Oct. 9, 2011

Bill Little, Texas Media Relations

DALLAS – It was prophetic that Pastor Rickie Rush brought an old wagon wheel to the chapel service of the Texas Longhorns on Friday before the Texas-Oklahoma game on Saturday. It was a wheel, he said, that he had been carrying with him everywhere he goes lately.

The highly successful preacher at the 20,000 member Inspiring Body of Christ Church in Dallas takes the wheel along to make a point. A former high school friend of Longhorn assistant coach Bruce Chambers, Rush has overcome paralysis and a diminutive stature to become a dynamic speaker and minister.

The wheel is weather-worn, but Rush uses the spokes and the hub to make life’s points. And for emphasis on Friday, he tied a bandana at the top of the wheel, and then rolled it forward.

“Life,” he had said, “is like this wheel. Right now you are rolling, but you will find there are bumps in the road. The bandana represents the good times you are having right now. As it rolls, it will be at the bottom of the wheel. Does that mean it is gone? No, it simply means it will be coming around again, and you will be at the top. The good times will always come around again.

And then he addressed life’s challenges: “What would you do, if you could do anything in the world, and knew that you could not fail?”

The answer, of course, was, “do it anyway.”

All of which leads us to Saturday’s football game in the Cotton Bowl against Oklahoma. Like a kid brother who would like to whip his big brother, Texas tried, and failed, to see if youth and enthusiasm could whip age and experience. It wasn’t a case of the Longhorns’ lack of effort, it was more the simple fact that on this day, Oklahoma played superbly.

You have heard the story before of the conversation between Longhorn legend James Street and his equally legendary son, Huston, after Huston’s Westlake football team lost to Cedric Benson and company in the state championship football game.

“Were you as prepared as you could be, and did you play as hard as you could?” James had asked. When the answers were both “yes,” he then said, “Then walk across that field and shake their hands and congratulate them, because that day, they were the better team.”

In retrospect, the events of the day seemed to reflect one fact about the game that even the best intentions and preparations cannot overcome. Priest Holmes, the former Longhorns running back who went on to become one of the best ever in the NFL is now an analyst on the Longhorn Network’s postgame show. In the press box Saturday, he said the thing the Longhorns had trouble solving was “the speed of this particular game.”

You can practice it, you can hear about it, but the only way you learn it is to live it. And when a young team sees it for the first time, it sometimes is almost impossible to adjust. It is important to note that Mack Brown has often quoted Darrell Royal about judging the performance of a day. There are, and were, individuals who played their best games. They are the spokes of the wheel. If enough spokes hold – even if some fail – the wheel can go on. The wheel fails when not enough spokes hold their stability.

Senior running back Fozzy Whitaker gave the Longhorns one of their brightest moments in the game with a 100-yard kickoff return for a touchdown. Junior defensive end Alex Okafor and several defenders had outstanding games, and while the result of the whole was not good, players on both sides of the ball did enough good things for the coaches to see an opportunity to eliminate mistakes and get better. Senior punter-kicker Justin Tucker was excellent, hitting on a 49-yard field goal attempt and averaging 44.6 yards per punt. It was Tucker who stood at the dressing room door as the Longhorns came off the field after the game and exhorted them to, “get your heads up. We’ve got a big game next week!” Others encouraged, “freshmen, remember this. Remember how it feels.”

That, perhaps, is the most important fact to understand. Losses, particularly in rivalry games, bother fans and observers, but nobody hurts like the team and the coaches. But lesson number two in the school of hard knocks is that when you get knocked down, you have to get back up. That’s why the Longhorns have a 24-hour rule. After Sunday’s film review, the game is recorded as a moment of success or a lesson learned, regardless of its outcome. The Texas-Oklahoma game, with the demise of the Texas-Texas A&M rivalry this year, takes full center stage as the biggest game of the year. It has always been that for the Sooners. It is part of the fiber of the state of Oklahoma. And as time progresses, it will be important for UT to not only deal with the magnitude of the game prior to mid-season, but understand the implications of what is ahead.

In the days before these two became conference partners, the game was a showcase where, afterwards, each team went away to determine its own success in its own league. Now, it is an early league game in a ten-team conference. For both teams, there is still much to do.

That is particularly true in this season. Where Oklahoma may have played as a juggernaut Saturday, there are a bunch of Big 12 challengers out there who will take both the Sooners and the Longhorns to the limit. Few expected Texas to be 4-0 and No. 10 in the country after coming from nowhere in the early season. Where Texas came into the game Saturday with enthusiasm and high hopes, Oklahoma was a decided favorite, and won decisively. That should not surprise.

This “brick by brick” season has been all about reconstruction, and there are days in that business where a rainy day comes, and the work is delayed. Then, you go back to work. There are no easy losses – whether in the last seconds or in a blowout. A loss is a loss. The key, as Mack has often said, is to not let one loss beat you twice. After a month away from Austin, Texas gets to play at home Saturday against a very good Oklahoma State team. It is a challenge, and an opportunity, for the team and the legion of Texas fans.

The lesson of Rickie Rush’s wheel is important here, because his imagery includes life as the wheel, the spokes as the team or the people around you, and the hub as the all-important center of self. It is in that space where, for everything to work, you have to keep moving.

That is why he carries the wheel with him. In its turning, it is sometimes blocked and goes up and down hills – each spoke sharing the effort, and the speed of the other. Its only promise is in its consistency, and the fact that if you keep it working, the good times will roll around to the top again. And there, you decide if you are willing to try something, even if some judge your effort futile.

It is, after all, your wheel.

10.02.2011 | Football

Bill Little commentary: Another opening, another show

Oct. 2, 2011

Bill Little,Texas Media Relations

AMES, IA – You had the feeling that the well-dressed lady who walked from the elevator at Jack Trice Stadium Saturday night had her world in the proper perspective. She had come to the game hopeful, with anticipation. She was leaving with disappointment, and yet a sense of pride.

“There was such excitement,” she had said. “Everyone believed that this was our time.”

For the record, her dreams had been dashed. Texas had defeated her Iowa State Cyclones, 37-14, on a picture-perfect evening in the middle of America. For a day, nay, for several weeks, Iowa State had been living the dream. With a hard-nosed favorite son of a coach named Paul Rhoads, ISU had been the comeback kids of 2011. They had rallied from behind to beat state rivals Northern Iowa and Iowa, and they had overcome Fiesta Bowl runner-up Connecticut.

At 3-0, the Cyclones were off to their best start in years, and a 28-21 shocker of a win over Texas a year ago gave them a moment to remember. Trouble was, Texas remembered, too. As the Longhorns boarded their buses for the 45-minute drive from their hotel in West Des Moines to the stadium, the focus was evident. It was the second straight road trip for Texas, and it was a stark contrast from the cornfields here and the star power of the Rose Bowl and Los Angeles, 1,800 miles away, where UT had defeated UCLA two weeks before.

The crowd, in number, would be similar. The crowd, in enthusiasm, would be quite different. That is because all day Saturday, as the 6 p.m. national TV kickoff approached, the people of the land believed. It had been years, and only briefly then, since the Iowa State faithful were so hopeful, and that is why the lady was disappointed at the end of the game. Everything had been in place for a program turning opportunity of historic proportions. Little kids and their parents and grandparents had spent the day at tents and tailgates around the stadium. A school famous for being America’s first land-grant college dedicated to agricultural pursuits and later for inventing the first digital computer, now was on the nation’s radar for inclusion among the top 25 teams in the country.

Mack Brown and his Texas staff knew all of this, and they knew that teams in hostile environments on the road can be a challenge for a young team. They knew that, couched in the posture of “brick by brick” was a healthy determination to avoid the traps of last year. It wasn’t about “pay back,” but it was clearly a classic example of the reason to respect your opponent. There was no concentrated effort to “remember last year,” but seared in the mind of all in the travel party was a promise not to forget what had happened.

So as the buses took the side roads through the tiny farming communities that make up much of the center of America’s Heartland, and the ISU faithful enjoyed the remains of the day, the signature “storm warnings” sounded at Jack Trice Stadium. And for the color and pageantry of college football, all that was good. All of that, however, was about to change.

When the smoke came from the “storm shelter” announcing the arrival of the Cyclones, as thousands of fans stood on the field to celebrate their home team, Texas made its own entrance, dressed in their “Star Wars” storm-trooper white uniforms, carrying the flags of America and Texas. The scene was set. Unfortunately for ISU, it was over almost before it started.

Where it had been the offense, with the alternating effectiveness of quarterbacks Case McCoy and David Ash, that had captured attention in the come from behind victory over BYU in Austin and in the firepower of the win over UCLA in Pasadena, this time it would be the defense and special teams that would seal the deal.

Texas scored six times in the first half to take a 34-0 lead at intermission, and four of the scores (including a blocked punt for a touchdown) came from inside the ISU 30 yard line. Two fumble recoveries and an interception set up three of them. Before the ISU band took the field for their halftime show, Texas had been deadly efficient. Even though the Cyclones had an edge in time of possession and had gained almost as many yards (181 to 221 for Texas) and first downs were even at eleven apiece, the game decidedly belonged to Texas. The second half in the 37-14 UT victory found the Texas coaches exhorting their players to “keep playing.” The second stanza provided valuable playing time for some of the younger Texas players.

Overall, the Texas defense was credited with three sacks, two fumble recoveries and a pass interception. Led by Blake Gideon, Emmanuel Acho and freshman linebacker Steve Edmond, the Longhorns had 29 players involved in at least 12 defensive snaps.

McCoy and Ash were both 7 of 12 passing, for 110 and 145 yards each. And while Texas ran only 64 plays to ISU’s 89, the Longhorns notched an even 400 yards total offense. Malcolm Brown rushed for 63 yards and Fozzy Whittaker added 41, and Jaxon Shipley had six pass receptions for 141 yards and a touchdown and Mike Davis had three catches for 72 yards and a 48-yard TD.

It was the reversal of fortune in turnovers that reflected the difference in the 2010 and 2011 meetings. Where ISU took advantage of Texas mistakes in Austin a year ago, Texas pounced on the Cyclones because of early errors. The two fumbles and the pass interception all led to points.

As the Longhorns’ headed back to Des Moines to catch their charter flight back to Austin late in the crisp fall night, it was important to show some respect to Iowa State, which had done exactly as their coach at urged. They played tough, and they never quit. That is to be commended.

For Texas, however, the midnight hour brought a recognition of the importance of being 4-0, and of the challenges remaining in this three game part of the 2011 season. The first quarter included the victories over Rice, BYU, and UCLA. The second began with an amazing stretch where the Longhorns will likely face three straight unbeaten teams in Iowa State, Oklahoma, and Oklahoma State.

In the 1920s and 1930s, the vaudeville acts that would make their way to Broadway would get tested in lesser cities in the country. One of them, much like Ames, Iowa, was Peoria, Illinois. The expression, “Will it play in Peoria?” became the measuring stick to determine if an act was mainstream ready for showing on the big stage in New York.

In the Heartland, where the drying corn stalks and the turning leaves painted a mosaic with the lush green of the rain-blessed creek banks and rivers, the children of the Horns had again put on an exciting, successful show. At 4-0 and rising in the country’s top 25, the team has passed its early tests.

Now, they have earned a chance to take their act to the big time, as the nation watches Saturday against Oklahoma in Dallas. It should be an interesting week.

09.30.2011 | Football

Bill Little commentary: It’s all about attitude

Sept. 30, 2011

Bill Little, Texas Media Relations

AMES, IA – It will not surprise you to learn that Chuck Swindoll, the noted preacher whose radio messages are heard on two thousand radio stations in fifteen different languages, is a Marine. The operative word being “is.” I learned some time ago from my son, who became a lieutenant colonel after serving as a Marine reservist in Iraq, that there are no “ex-Marines.”

And it will also not surprise you that a Marine would be the first to tell you about the importance of “attitude.”

“The longer I live,” says Chuck Swindoll, “the more I realize the impact of attitude on life.



“Attitude, to me, is more important than facts. It is more important than the past, than education, than money, than circumstances, than failures, than successes, than what other people think or say or do. It is more important than appearance, giftedness or skill. It will make or break a company… a church… a home.



“The remarkable thing is we have a choice every day regarding the attitude we will embrace for that day. We cannot change our past… we cannot change the fact that people will act in a certain way. We cannot change the inevitable. The only thing we can do is play on the one string we have, and that is our attitude… I am convinced that life is 10% what happens to me and 90% how I react to it.


“And so it is with you… we are in charge of our attitudes.”

It is not surprising, therefore, that when Mack Brown spoke highly of “attitude” when he was talking to Bob Cole during his weekly Thursday morning appearance on the Longhorns’ flagship radio station of KVET in Austin.

It was in reference to why Mack was having so much fun coaching this young 2011 version of the Texas Longhorn football team. It was all about “attitude.”

Attitude can make you believe in yourself, and the display of it can make others believe that you are a force to be reckoned with. Other pieces fit – check your ego at the door, be willing to put team above self, be “all in”, and, yes, have confidence and show a little swagger. But the umbrella under which they all live is attitude.

“It’s not bragging,” Darrell Royal once said, “if you can do it.”

All of this is critical to the mission Texas undertakes Saturday as they visit the Iowa State Cyclones at Jack Trice Stadium in Ames at 6 p.m. for their Big 12 opener. The game will match two unbeaten teams, and for maybe the first time ever, both teams think they can win. Until last year, Iowa State had never beaten Texas. But with a 28-21 victory in Austin, the Cyclones changed the dynamic of a series that had been decidedly (like, 7-0 decidedly) on the Longhorns side of the won-loss chart.

With that loss fresh in their memories, and a healthy respect for what Iowa State has accomplished already this year, Texas goes on the road for a second straight time. This, they know, will be a challenge – and so far, it is that part about attitude which this young team seems to relish the most.

Texas has used its open date to continue learning as the `Horns have studied and practiced the evolving offense of co-coordinators Bryan Harsin and Major Applewhite and their fellow offensive coaches as well as the defensive schemes of coordinator Manny Diaz and his group. Practice with this crowd has been an effective blend of stern corrections and pat-on-the-back “attaboys.” They have been about one more rep, one more kick coverage, just in time to catch the bus back from the practice field to the dressing room.

Win or lose Saturday, each day this team is growing up.

Mack is happy with his staff, and pleased with the talent of the players. Most of all, however, he is buoyed by their attitude. It has been a time of hard work, physical practices, hollering and hugs. And you get really good when both are happening. You can, as the Texas head man has said, coach a team harder after a win than you can after a loss, and this team is 3-0.

The lucky fans have been those whose cable providers have chosen to add The Longhorn Network to their television lineup. They have seen behind the scenes looks, including live practice coverage. What they have seen most of all, is an effort, and a willingness, to learn.

Paramount in the atmosphere, for the players, the opponents, and the fans, is the open-your-Christmas-package intrigue of the element of surprise. The defense has had linemen dropping in pass coverage, and the offense has made runners out of backs, wide receivers and quarterbacks and quarterbacks out of ends and running backs. You hang around just to see what is going to happen next.

Make no mistake, however. This is a work in progress. Texas’ history with innovations reflects that there can be early struggles. The new looks on offense and defense mark the most dramatic changes the Longhorn program has seen in many years. It is like when Darrell Royal and his staff invented the “flip-flop” offense (where the offensive linemen actually switched sides from right to left depending on the blocking required) in 1961, and the college-game changing innovation of “The Wishbone” in 1968. The Wishbone started 0-1-1, before taking off on a 30-game winning streak.

This is not a prediction that similar success will happen, but it is a stone-cold statement that it can happen.

And that, you see, is the secret to attitude. Most of all, it is about believing that you can.

In the book, One Heartbeat II, we tell the story of Denise, a large bus driver with Technicolor hair, who was charged with driving the Longhorn basketball team back from a game in Houston against Rice in the 1980s.

Rice students, known for their innovative pranks, had blocked the bus with two sleek new cars, one in front, and one in back, making it impossible for the bus to get out. As they gleefully watched the Texas coaches and players become frustrated, Denise stepped off the bus.

She took one look at the cars, and another at the young wizards who thought they had foiled her.

“My name is Heavy D,” she said, her dark eyes sparkling.

And then she added: “Now, I am going to move my bus. I can get another bus. Can you get another car?

That, my friends, is attitude. Commit to something, keep working, be willing to learn, be willing to risk, and be willing to do.

09.19.2011 | Football

Bill Little commentary: Where dreams come true

Sept. 19, 2011

Bill Little, Texas Media Relations

PASADENA, CA – At the happy-ending finish to the movie “Pretty Woman” a bystander walking through the final scene says, “Welcome to Hollywood! What’s your dream? Everybody comes here; this is Hollywood, land of dreams. Some dreams come true, some don’t; but keep on dreamin’ – this is Hollywood. Always time to dream, so keep on dreamin’.”

And so there they were, these young dreamers that make up Texas Football, 2011. Right there on the edge of Hollywood, in the historic Rose Bowl, cradled in the shadow of the Arroyo Seco and the San Gabriel Mountains. Starting with a short practice on Friday, the trip was both a journey down memory lane, and a brave new world tour of a place they had seen, but had never been to before.

Somewhere in the midst of all of it, senior linebacker Emmanuel Acho injected reality into nostalgia. As head coach Mack Brown was reflecting on the fact that the Longhorns would be on the west sideline – the same one they had in the Rose Bowl Game during the victories over Michigan and Southern Cal during the seasons of 2004 and 2005, and what a special place the Rose Bowl was – Acho interrupted politely and respectfully said that this meeting with UCLA on Saturday was about this team, and this game, and redemption for last year’s game.

By the time the 49-20 victory over the Bruins was over, this team, in this game, had affirmed that the Longhorns of 2011 have high goals and big dreams. In a community where stars abound, this game became a microcosm of its surroundings.

Psychologists say it takes three seconds to form a first impression, and as the college football world got its first real look at this Texas team, it was an impressive first impression. In arguably the Longhorns’ first test of 2011, against BYU last week, the game produced a team victory where the defense kept fighting to give the offense a chance in a 17-16 victory. This time, it was the offense which not only set the pace, it maintained it in a game where both sides of the ball were outstanding in the first 20 minutes.

The Longhorns came in looking for a fast start, and they got it, turning first quarter interceptions by defensive backs Carrington Byndom, Adrian Phillips (off a tip from safety Blake Gideon) and Kenny Vaccaro into three scoring drives and a 21-0 lead. When the lead had reached 28-10 by the end of the first half, the offense – led by Case McCoy with calculated help from David Ash – had amassed 254 yards of total offense.

And for a large regional television audience and a crowd of 54,583 that filled almost two thirds of the stadium that is the cradle of college football, it wasn’t about what the Longhorns did, it was about how they did it. They had an incredible amount of fun. In the first quarter alone, 55 members of the traveling squad of 76 got in the game. Twenty-three of them were on offense.

The Friday workout had introduced the young Texas players to the field and the scene, and it gave the veterans who were part of a Longhorn team which had played for the national championship there just 19 months before, a chance to reconnect. Fresh on their minds as well was a chance for some unfinished business after suffering a season altering loss to the Bruins in 2010.

It is important to note, however, that this game was not about what had happened in the disappointing loss in the national championship game in 2009, nor that game in Austin last year. You do not get “do-overs” in college football.

If this game assumes a place in Texas football history, it will be remembered as the premiere performance of what is shaping up to be a season of just plain fun for this Longhorn team and its fans.

“Not many people thought this team would be 3-0,” Mack Brown said after the game, which produced the first dominant win over a quality opponent since the 2009 season.

It is important to note that, like the remodeling of the Rose Bowl Stadium itself, this team is also part of a construction zone. The “brick by brick” mantra carries over into every phase of this team and its staff. Its games are as much about discovery as they are about execution, and both are critical for the long-term success Texas is seeking.

When co-offensive coordinator Bryan Harsin came from Boise State, he promised an offense that would have many different looks and roles for many different players. He has delivered that. Mack Brown wanted a power running game, and the Longhorns rushed for 284 yards Saturday, with nine different players carrying the ball.

Certainly the most visible offensive move centered around the quarterback position, where two young players – sophomore Case McCoy and freshman David Ash – had scant game experience as they took the field in that grand old stadium. Texas, with four appearances and a 3-1 record in the stadium over the last eight seasons, has actually played as many games there as it has any road arena except the Cotton Bowl over that period.

And even as the stadium seemed magical for Dusty Mangum and Vince Young and for a handful of shining moments even in defeat in 2009, the spirits that dance in the foothills of the scenic San Gabriel Mountains seemed to be smiling at the varied offense of Harsin and Major Applewhite and the innovative defensive attack of defensive coordinator Manny Diaz and his crew.

They were there for freshman running back Malcolm Brown, veteran Fozzy Whittaker and Cody Johnson, as Brown rushed for 110 yards on 22 carries in his first start. The speed of Marquise Goodwin, and the versatility of Jaxon Shipley were also showcased. And as part of the “feel good” come-back-from-devastating-injury story of Blaine Irby and D. J. Grant, the magic continued as Grant caught six balls for 77 yards and three touchdowns, and was named the Longhorns’ offensive player of the game.

With Vaccaro and Keenan Robinson each credited with nine tackles and 16 players (including special teams) making at least one key play, the defense continued as an impressive work in progress.

It was a marvelous day for Justin Tucker, the senior kicker who excelled in punting, kicking off, and in a perfect seven-for-seven in extra points.

And finally, there is Case McCoy.

What can you say about a guy who sat with his friend and now roommate Jaxon Shipley in the stands in the stadium in January of 2010 as their brothers played in the BCS National Championship Game? Saturday, on a post card kind of day in the Rose Bowl, he had stepped into the sunlight, completing 12 of 15 passes for 168 yards and two touchdowns and had been the primary conductor for an offensive scheme which answered every UCLA challenge with seven touchdowns.
I
In a postgame interview on national television Saturday, he answered a commentator’s question.

“Are you now the leader of this team?” she had asked.

“I consider myself a leader,” he said, “but we have a lot of leaders.”

It was, for Case McCoy, not about his brother, his heritage, or anybody else. It was about the team, and as the interview ended, he ran to join them for the last strands of “The Eyes of Texas.”

As the team loaded the plane to head back to Austin, McCoy had finished a final phone call and cleared security as he walked up the stairs to the front door of the jetliner. At the top, he paused and looked back over the tarmac at Los Angeles International Airport, to the majestic skyline of the City of Angels in the distance. Only he knew where he was looking, or at what.

But nestled somewhere in the sunset mosaic, which included the San Gabriels and Pasadena and the Rose Bowl, was Hollywood.

Where dreams come true.

09.16.2011 | Football

Bill Little commentary: A stepping stone

Sept. 16, 2011

Bill Little, Texas Media Relations

PASADENA, CA — A little known fact in the grand scheme of history is that the first editorial advice for men to seek their fortunes in the western United States supposedly is not only often attributed to the wrong person, it is also misquoted. And the guy who gets most of the credit steadfastly denied that he ever said it in the first place.

It seems that long before a newspaper man named Horace Greeley was supposed to have said “Go west, young man, go west…,” an editor at the Terre Haute Express in Indiana named John B. L. Soule wrote, “Go west, young man, and grow up with the country.” Greeley said he never said it or wrote it, and nobody can prove that Soule actually wrote it in 1851, because it wasn’t in the Terre Haute Express that year – or so all parties said.

Well my, my.

Since all of the parties who did, or didn’t, have since departed the stadium, that debate will never be settled. What is known, however, is that a very young Texas Longhorn football team is headed that way in search of growing up.

It will be the sixth meeting between Texas and UCLA in a series that, while it hasn’t been of epic proportions, has had more than its share of significant games. Where this one will fit, only history (which will be reported by 60,000 or so people and a regional television audience) will determine. In the past, this game has either been a stumbling block, or a stepping stone for Texas.

The first time these two high profile national programs hooked up was for a home and home series in 1970 and 1971 before the current children of the ‘Horns were even born. That Texas team was defending national champion, was riding a 22-game winning streak and was ranked No. 2 in the country. With a dramatic 45-yard touchdown pass from Eddie Phillips to Cotton Speyrer, the Longhorns scored with 12 seconds left to survive in the 1970 game in Austin, 20-17.

The next season it appeared business as usual for the Longhorns, as they were ranked No. 3 nationally when they played UCLA in the Los Angeles Coliseum. Phillips was the master of the Wishbone offense, and he deftly directed his team to what appeared to be an easy, 28-10 victory. But on the final touchdown drive late in the game, Phillips pulled a muscle in his leg that would never completely heal. Texas would go on to an 8-3 season.

The two schools didn’t meet again until the 1997 season, in a game that turned out to be a disaster of dashed dreams for John Mackovic and his Texas program. The Longhorns had finished the 1996 season as one of the most talked about programs in America. Mackovic had wowed the college football world with the famous “Fourth and Inches” call that produced a game-clinching pass in a shocking 37-27 victory over Nebraska in the first Big 12 Championship game in St. Louis. And after dispatching Rutgers, 48-14 in the season opener, Texas was a heavy favorite over the twice-beaten Bruins.

The bright, sun shiny day turned dark quickly, however, and by the time the carnage was over, UCLA had won, 66-3. For all practical purposes, the Mackovic era at Texas had abruptly ended, even though he wasn’t re-assigned until after the 4-7 season.

When Mack Brown took his first Longhorn team to California to play UCLA in 1998, the Bruins had moved their home games to the storied Rose Bowl Stadium in Pasadena. And to the dismay of the 15,000 Longhorn fans who showed up, things didn’t start well there, either. But despite an overall mismatch in personnel, things began to look up for the Longhorns in the second half. After starting quarterback Richard Walton broke his finger early in the game, a redshirt freshman named Major Applewhite took over as the Longhorn signal caller.

Eventual Heisman Trophy winner Ricky Williams and Applewhite helped the Longhorns score 28 second half points, and despite the 49-31 loss, Texas left the stadium with hope in a season that would end with a 9-3 record.

Then came 2010. Just as in 1997, Texas came into the game highly ranked and unbeaten. The Bruins had struggled. But with a second half rushing explosion, UCLA stunned the ‘Horns, 34-12. It was a harbinger of what would end as a 5-7 season for UT.

All of which brings us to this game Saturday at 12:30 p.m. (Pacific Coast time) in the Rose Bowl.

So much has happened since Brown brought that out-manned crew here 14 seasons ago. First, the venerable old stadium which once seemed so ominous to the visitors from Texas has become a comfortable place. In the last eight seasons, Texas has played three times in the Rose Bowl, winning two sterling silver champion trophies in 2004 and 2005 (the second, of course, in what was also the BCS National Championship game).

Many of the players on the Texas team were also on hand in 2009, when Texas played the BCS National Championship game on January 7, 2010.

Now, there is a “wow” for you. Nineteen months ago, in the same stadium where this very young Texas team with up to 17 true freshman who may play Saturday, Texas played Alabama for the national title – in a game where, save for a freak injury to their quarterback, most folks think Texas had a heck of chance to win.

You can dwell on all of the ironies – of the turns and twists of fate in past Texas-UCLA games and Rose Bowl visits – but the fact is, Mr. Soule, or Greeley, or maybe it is even Mack Brown and his staff that have summed this up pretty well.

This 2-0 Texas team flies to California for the purpose of playing and winning a football game. You can toss out all five of those other meetings, including what happened last year. The venue is a very special place – a hallowed place in all of college football. In the canyons of the Arroyo Seco looming over the northeast corner of the stadium, the ghosts of college football past watch.

It is they who have seen the hopes and the dreams, and it is they who know so well that it is the spirit within, and not some outside force, that determines who fights to the end. In the rocks of the canyon and the history of the mountains, they also understand the wisdom of the Longhorns’ season theme of “brick by brick.”

For it is in that, in their growing-up trip to the west, that the young men of Texas will come upon a stumbling block, or build a stepping stone.

09.11.2011 | Football

Bill Little commentary: It’s about the mortar

Sept. 11, 2011

Bill Little, Texas Media Relations

It was in the video room of Sally and Mack Brown‘s home that former Longhorn defensive back Johnnie Johnson stood there, talking to the 2011 Longhorn seniors who had just reported for fall practice last month. The discussion centered around the theme adopted by the team – a rebuilding theme of “brick by brick.”

But Johnnie wasn’t talking about the bricks. He was, instead, talking about the glue that holds them together. It was about role playing for some, and leadership for others. The point was, you can stack all the bricks that you want, but unless you have mortar between them, the wall is easily knocked down.

Mortar.

The web’s Autonopedia–described as “the practical encyclopedia for sustainable living,” says this about the bonding agent used in construction:

“Mortar consists of the body or aggregate, which is fine sand; and the binding material, which is cement mixed thoroughly with water. Mortar is used to bed blocks as well as for plastering. A good mortar should be easy to use and should harden fast enough that it does not cause delays in the construction. It must be strong enough, long lasting and weatherproof.

“The best mortar for a particular job is not necessarily the strongest one. Other properties like workability, plasticity or faster hardening can be more important, though the strength of the mortar must of course be sufficient for the job. Mortar should neither be much stronger or much weaker than the blocks with which it is used.”

Johnnie’s simple lesson in construction was manifested Saturday night as the young Texas Longhorns overcame a 13-point deficit to beat Brigham Young, 17-16, before a packed house of over 100,000 in Darrell K Royal-Texas Memorial Stadium.

The game was not about the bricks, it was about the stuff called teamwork that holds them together. Pick a player, and you pick a brick. Pick the effort of the entire team, and you have the beginnings of a wall.

It is important here to not get ahead of ourselves. The come-from-behind win conjured memories of games in the first decade of the 21st Century which often featured such dramatics. The cast of characters has changed drastically, but the thrill of the hunt, and the conquest, remains the same.

Time will tell whether what happened in the second half was a growing-up reality or an illusion, but what we do know is, you can’t prove you can do it until you’ve done it. And that is what happened Saturday night to the youthful players and staff in the second game of Mack Brown‘s 14th season at Texas. They did it.

The signatures of the new staff on both sides of the ball were written all over the two halves of football. For the second game in a row, the defense played endorsing a theory that the late Longhorn defensive coordinator Mike Campbell was a big subscriber to -“bend, but don’t break.” Despite repeated assaults on the Texas goal in the first half, BYU came away with two field goals and a passing touchdown. With the Longhorn offense struggling, the defense played with a fierce passion that reflects the attitude of defensive coordinator Manny Diaz and the defensive coaches.

And as they held on, the offense came on.

Adhering to the philosophy of “if it’s not working, try something else,” Texas co-offensive coordinators Bryan Harsin and Major Applewhite switched styles and quarterbacks with enough success to win the game.

Through it all, however, the game was a reminder that a team is not a collection of individuals…rather, a collection of individuals is a team. They are the mortar between the bricks. The evidence came from the support of the crowd, but it was again manifested by the work of the team.

Through two games, this team appears to be one of the more interesting collections of young people in recent years at Texas. You can fill in the blanks with the sentence: “this team (or this guy) reminds me of….”

Still, it is important to remember that it is way too early to expect anything. At this point, you can expect everything. Sometimes, the wall needs elastic values, and other times it needs hard-rock solid. History tells us we Longhorns can get way ahead of ourselves in anointing super stars. That is why the approach of the staff has been so impressive.

When wide receiver Marquise Goodwin decided to return to football last week, some questioned how quickly he could get back into the mix (what was that in that mortar business about “faster hardening?”), because he didn’t know the plays or the offense. To which receivers coach Darrell Wyatt responded, “He knows fast.” Goodwin’s 40-yard kickoff return was a critical play in the comeback. But you could say the same about plays from Malcolm Brown, David Ash, Jaxon Shipley and Case McCoy offensively. Justin Tucker was superb both punting and kicking, and defensively, folks such as Carrington Byndom, Quandre Diggs, Kenny Vaccaro, Jordan Hicks, Emmanuel Acho and Adrian Phillips were part of that mortar as well as being a brick.

At the end of the game, the players and the coaches were exhausted – the happy kind of exhausted which comes when you check your ego at the door and leave everything you have to give on the field.

That was the final, exciting piece about Saturday. Again it wasn’t perfect, but it was another positive segment of building a wall. The bricks and the mortar were coming together – flexible at times, solid at others.

It’s like watching one of those TV shows where the characters evolve and the plot changes each week. And nobody really knows where that will lead us. But right now, the journey is really fun.

09.09.2011 | Football

Bill Little commentary: Two dozen sandwiches

Sept. 9, 2011

Bill Little, Texas Media Relations

As the Texas Longhorns get ready for Saturday’s meeting with BYU in Darrell K Royal-Texas Memorial Stadium, emotions are sorted in many different stacks in our world. On the one hand, there is the excitement of the second game of the new era of football featuring Mack Brown‘s young staff and their equally youthful players.

The flip side, of course, is that the game will feature a tribute to the events of September 11, 2001, when America’s mainland was attacked in what signified the first volley in a war that would be waged by terrorist aggressors. Throughout our country, much will be noted, and rightly so, about how much has changed because of that day.

It is also important, however, to think about what hasn’t.

In the summer of 1998, I took a solo trip through the northwestern states of Washington, Montana, Wyoming and Idaho. The beauty of the country reminded me that God was on a roll when he made the mountains. But it was in Yellowstone National Park that reality really struck me. There, in the historic park, were the scars of the epic fires that had ravaged almost 800,000 acres in 1988. The remnants of charred log pole pines—some more than 100 feet tall—remained.

It had been ten years, and I guess the time frame with the events of 9/11 is what began to trigger the genesis of this commentary.

America has changed. Throughout these days, you will hear about the loss of liberty, the heightened security, enhanced distrust. We will remember our resolve of that day, and be sad by the loss of lives then, and in the longest war in our nation’s history which has followed. There will be reflections of disillusionment with our leaders as they deal with troubled foreign policies and a struggling economy. It will be noted that our churches swelled with people in the days after the tragedy, and yet have slowly dwindled in attendance since. Even the powerful patriotism which swelled inside all of us then has ebbed in some cynics.

Beyond that, here in Texas, we have just gone through the hottest summer and the worst drought in history. Our lakes are drying up and our rivers dwindle to a trickle.

We are a people living in fear. And that is why I am telling you this story – because at the heart of our soul and the fiber of our spirit, we also live in hope.

That is why that trip to Yellowstone matters. Underneath those burned trees were hundreds of new seedlings, healthy, green, and reaching for the nourishment of the sun and the skies.

History tells us that this is not the first, nor will it be the last, time we have walked through – if you will pardon the expression – the fire together. For 100 years, decade after decade, we have had those challenging times. Wars and depressions consumed moments during much of the first half of the 20th century. The “Greatest Generation” endured the days of the Dust Bowl and the horror of World War II. Those of us who grew up in the 1950s learned to fear the “Bomb,” as our big brothers died in a far off country called Korea. Then, too, Texas burned and baked in the years when it never rained. The sixties brought Vietnam and a myriad of protests, and in the seventies came the national disgrace of Watergate. Time after time, we have been there, and returned.

That is because America was founded by people who came – and keep coming – because of the hope of a better tomorrow. That is why men and women of our armed services fight and stand sentinel in distant lands to preserve our freedom. It is because of them that Saturday night, the teams of BYU and Texas can play a game called football. It is at that core that education lives, for the college game thrives because it is all part of a process of growing and learning. Learning the truth, the slogan on the UT Tower says, “shall make us free.” And that is the powerful extra benefit of education.

How we haven’t changed, you see, is that we are a free people. That means that our service personnel fight – not to make war – but to create peace. That means we remember those who died on 9/ll, and honor those who stand in harm’s way for us.

We have the capacity of the principles on which Mack Brown had built this football program – faith, family, friends and a common purpose. And we have something else as well.

With the arrival of the young football staff, a blessing that has accompanied that is the children who came with them. In the midst of one fall practice, as the receivers were running routes and the quarterbacks were pinpointing their throws, co-offensive coordinator Bryan Harsin looked up and saw his five-year-old son, Davis, playing with defensive coordinator Manny Diaz‘s kids among the blocking dummies on the far side of the practice facility. When a pattern came close to the youngsters, the Longhorns’ play caller stopped and shouted across the field to his son and the other boys.

“Davis…guys…move out of the way!”

To which his son sheepishly replied, “Okay.”

And then he added, “I love you, Dad.”

Our ability to love…that will always be with us.

In the last week, fires devastated many areas in Central Texas. One that you heard little about was a near-miss that came only a few feet from a close-in area of Northwest Austin called Angus Valley. The fire, in Yett Creek Park, endangered hundreds of homes, as well as the Riata Apartment complex. And that’s the final piece of this story.

Vigilance by homeowners, and quick work by firefighters, managed to stop the fire before it turned that part of Austin into a tragedy. Late in the evening, as neighbors gathered on the street to discuss the events of the day, two fire trucks continued to work at the edge where the Valley joined the park. It was then that one of the women came walking out of the woods.

“They need food,” she said. “There are 24 of them, and they will be there most of the night. Let’s go make them some sandwiches.”

The reality reminded us that brave folks had walked into that fire for us, just as the men and women of our armed services, police, fire and EMS do every day. What we had before 9/ll, and what we realized in that moment, is that whatever happens, we have each other.

That is thread that ties a football team, a community, and a people together. It is why we remember 9/11, with resolve, honor, and most of all, hope.

09.04.2011 | Football

Bill Little commentary: The air of confidence

Sept. 4, 2011

Bill Little, Texas Media Relations

In the musical, The Sound of Music, the Julie Andrews character of Maria sings “What will my future be? I wonder.” Maria must have known about the atmosphere in Darrell K Royal-Texas Memorial Stadium Saturday night.

For just less than a year, Texas football has been talking about moving forward. It has embraced its rich tradition, with the caveat that you respect the past–both the good and the not-so-good–and move toward the future. Conversations centered, not on the missteps or the championships, but on the “now.”

And so the 34-9 win over Rice Saturday night was a blending, and a beginning.

All of the ingredients were there. The new Longhorn Network launched its inaugural game with class, in a continued showing of what has been a series of rave reviews of those who have had a chance to view it. As Texas-based Grande Communications jumped on board on Friday, 140,000 homes in Central Texas were added to the more than four million viewer base already developed for the fledgling UT exclusive network.

The season opener had been described as the most anticipated in years at Texas, and the packed house of over 101,000 fans got what they came for. The youth movement – both on the field and in the coaching staff – reminded us all that youth is served best, not by the “what has been” but by the “what can be.”

Now, here’s the connection to Maria’s song: while to some Saturday may have been about tradition and trick plays, touchdowns scored and those not allowed, most of all it was about confidence. Mack Brown has said over and over again that his program is built on “communication, trust, respect and a common purpose.”

The quest for a new beginning had been forged by a winter of discontent after the 2010 season ended. Good coaches and great people left the program for a variety of reasons. Mack was left with the challenge of reconstructing a staff and redefining his mission. And as the first game for the new staff approached last week, the learning process was an interesting one. The challenge for the staff on Saturday became blending the divergent experiences and ideas from a bushel basket of respected universities and professional teams, with those worthy standards which have reflected the Mack Brown era at Texas for the past 13 years. Everything from pre-game to bench operation would be new in this initial contest of the new version of Texas football.

And that was before you ever got to the game.

Maria, you see, sang of “wonder,” but she sang most about “confidence.”

And that is really where our story begins.

First, Mack had to have confidence in his new hires, and the coaches had to have confidence in their boss and the UT establishment. Then, the staff had to have confidence in each other. That is how Bennie Wylie had begun the important summer work with the counseling of his friend Jeff Madden. It is how Manny Diaz took the knowledge and wisdom of the veteran Duane Akina and blended it with the youth and ideas of Oscar Giles and Bo Davis, both of whom had coached defensive linemen who were part of national championships.

And it was the golden thread that bound Bryan Harsin, Darrell Wyatt, and Stacy Searels with the young ideas of Major Applewhite and the stability of the veteran Bruce Chambers.

History tells us that James Street, who was one of the winningest athletes in Texas Longhorn history, used to walk away by himself before games, just to focus his thoughts. Saturday night in the DKR-Texas Memorial Stadium press box, I saw Bryan Harsin do the same thing. And then, he went to work.

Collectively, they had to believe in themselves. Most of all, however, they had spent a spring and a gruelingly hot summer trying to get their players to do the same thing. If Saturday night were Christmas morning, 7 p.m. meant it was time to open their packages.

With a theme of unity and a mantra of “brick by brick,” the first phase had been to get the players to understand the meaning of the poker term “all in.” They had to do that. They had to be that.

Diaz had promised an attacking defense which would protect its end zone at all costs, and with Emmanuel Acho, Keenan Robinson and Kenny Vaccaro leading the tackling, they did that. Both sides of the ball promised to play a lot of players. The defensive statistics chart (which does include special teams plays) included 26 different players who made at least one play.

Offensively, Harsin’s innovative attack included seven players with rushing statistics, four different players who threw passes, and eight who caught at least one. Of all the reclamation efforts from last season, however, Harsin’s bench mark was at the quarterback position. That had begun with the instilling of the final piece of the confidence message.

You can have confidence in your head coach, you can have confidence in your position coach, you can believe in faith, family and friends, but in the end, your success will be determined by your belief in yourself. In the summer work when the NCAA rule prohibits coaches from instructing players on football business, the quarterbacks who hoped to play checked their egos at the door and accepted the responsibility of learning the fundamental principles of the offense Harsin and Applewhite had melded from Boise and Texas. In learning together, they also bonded together, and the friendship that developed between Garrett Gilbert, Case McCoy and Davis Ash has permeated the “brick by brick” philosophy. Under Harsin’s tutelage they each have a critical role in the position, and they have each other’s back.

That same trait is spread throughout this team that is an interesting blend of a few veteran seniors and juniors and a host of sophomores and freshmen. Seventeen freshmen played Saturday night. “Unity” has been a major emphasis. That is why you won’t find a lot of conversation about rankings or opponents. For this team to continue to grow, it cannot be about “them” and “outside influences.” What you saw the beginning of Saturday was a team that has been forged on the simple principle of being about “us.” Admittedly, they have a long way to go, but you get the feeling that whatever their final destination, they are going there together.

Just as young people are pieces of adults, Maria’s song in The Sound of Music has pieces that will be a part of the determination of what this team learns, and where it may actually go.

“Face my mistakes without defiance”…”with each step I am more certain”…

So it was Saturday. The defense shut Rice down in the second half, and the offense scored on three straight touchdown drives of 72, 99 and 94 yards in a ten-minute span in the middle of the second half. What it all came down to was Maria’s final line in The Sound of Music song: “I have confidence in confidence alone! Besides which you see, I have confidence in me!”

And though there is a long way to go and opening games are far from perfect, that’s a great place to begin.

08.25.2011 | Football

Bill Little commentary: Here comes fall

Aug. 25, 2011

Bill Little, Texas Media Relations

Dr. Paul Tucker, one of Austin’s great cardiologists, tells the story of an encounter when he was the Chief Medical Resident in the renowned heart complex in Houston. He was standing at the elevator with the legendary heart surgeon and UT graduate Denton Cooley when the doors opened and a distraught woman walked out.

“Dr. Cooley, Dr. Cooley, ” she said. “I have to know…is George going to be alright?”

To which Dr. Cooley placed his hand on her shoulder and reassuringly said, “Yes, George will be fine.”

Doctors Cooley and Tucker then stepped alone in the elevator, and as the doors closed, Cooley said, “Paul, I have no idea who that woman was…but I can’t stand a doctor who is a pessimist!”

That kind of positive attitude is why I love Bill Hecke, the weatherman on the easy listening station which awakens us every morning. The other day, in the midst of the heat and drought, as we all fight to keep fires away and trees, grass and plants alive, Mr. Hecke gave the usual “heat advisory” and talked about the remote possibility that some storm would come from the waters of the Gulf of Mexico and save us.
And then he said this, and I am paraphrasing here; as he looked at the weather maps, north of Canada, he could see the stirring of atmospheric phenomena which meant one thing:

Fall is coming.

Tuesday morning in the midst of the hottest summer ever recorded in Austin, the Texas Longhorns went through their 22nd practice of their two-a-day drills in preparation for the start of the football season on September 3rd.

While the work in the meeting rooms and at practice has been extensive, there have also been opportunities to listen and learn from other sources. On Sunday, August 14, the Longhorns boarded buses after practice for a short trip to Camp Mabry, the historic home of the Texas National Guard and training facility for other important military reserve units. The plan had been to actually practice on the drill field, but what had germinated as an idea in the cool spring was frustrated by grass that had turned to brittle straw. Still, the players had a chance to meet and sign autographs for military personnel, their families, and families of those who are deployed.

Then, they heard from the commanding general and the chief aide to the Adjutant General of the State of Texas. They heard of the cold, and the heat, of the remote places in the Middle East where American service men and women stand in harm’s way for our freedom.

A week of practice followed, and then came a visit with two very diverse Longhorn legends. First was Red McCombs, who as one of The University’s major benefactors has both the business school and the “Red Zone” (the north end zone) at Darrell K Royal-Texas Memorial Stadium named for him (and he shares the softball field name with his wife, Charlene).

Red’s annual talk to the team triggered a memory and a challenge.
In the late 1960s and 1970s, the University of Southern California dominated the sport of college baseball as no team has ever done before or since. Each year, eight outstanding college teams would qualify for the College World Series in Omaha. Seven of the teams journeyed to America’s midlands in pursuit of their dream–they went “hoping” to win.

Southern Cal, on the other hand, went “expecting to win.”

And they did.

That was the challenge Red offered to the Longhorns of 2011–regain that swagger that brought Texas football to a similar place in the first decade of the 21st Century.

He then revived a familiar phrase that was part of Texas’ campaign that took them to the national championship game in 2009–go “All In.”

At the Sunday practice on August 21st, as temperatures even inside the “bubble” (the indoor practice facility) reached into the 90s, the team heard from the other part of that Longhorn history tandem.

Eric Metcalf, who arguably was the best Texas football player in the decade of the 1980s, has been a frequent visitor to Longhorn games over the years. The former NFL star and world class Olympian came with a special message this time, however. With UT President Bill Powers and his wife, Kim Heilbrun on hand, Metcalf told the team he liked what he had seen in practice, and how the young guys should embrace their opportunity. He was no stranger to some of the players. Co-offensive coordinator/running backs coach Major Applewhite has put together a tape of the legendary Longhorn runners to show his young players, and Metcalf is part of that highlight reel.

But this day, he talked of something beyond just the game. Eric Metcalf played his last down of football for Texas in the season of 1988. And in the fall of 2011, he stood before this latest version of the Longhorns as a brand new college graduate. So when he spoke of taking care of your work in the classroom, he spoke from the heart.

As classes started at Texas on Wednesday and the final scrimmage closed pre-season practice Thursday, game week is only a few days away. Friday, the Longhorn Network will launch its live telecasting of all things associated with The University of Texas.

Following Sunday’s practice, Mack Brown took time to visit with the members of the Longhorn Band, who have also begun their practice in anticipation of the 7 p.m. meeting with Rice which will open the season on September 3rd.

Two years ago, the summer of 2009 was one of those times where everything was centered on “expectations.” The excitement carried all the way to the national championship game.

The excitement that has been building this year (brick-by-brick, by the way) has been focused on “anticipation.” And in that space, we celebrate with Dr. Cooley in his mandate for optimism, and rest assured by Mr. Hecke.

Fall, after all, is coming.