A Giant Falls in Texas

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There were many giants in college football when I was growing up, and Darrell Royal was one of the largest figures.

He wasn't physically imposing — he always looked rather ordinary to me — but he was still intimidating. Maybe it was his reputation as a winner.

Or maybe it was his way with words.

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"You dance with who brung ya."

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He was an honorable man, and he remained a beloved figure in Texas long after he left coaching.

My grandmother lived in Dallas most of her life, and there was a little Mexican restaurant about three blocks from her home. It was just a little family owned restaurant, not a franchise or anything like that, and the walls were filled with photos of Royal, many of which had been signed by him. Most of them said something like "To my friend [whatever his name was]. I always love to eat at your place when I'm in Dallas. Darrell Royal"

(I don't know if the owner and Royal really were friends or not. I once asked the cashier if the signatures were authentic, and she said they were, but I was never sure she understood my question. Her English wasn't very good, and the extent of my Spanish is that I can count to 10.)

His death today at the age of 88 truly marked the end of an era for me, even though it has been more than 30 years since he walked the sidelines — and even though he was my greatest nemesis when I was growing up.

One by one, the familiar faces from those days have been disappearing over the years, but Royal's death may be the biggest one yet from these parts. As Kirk Bohls writes in the Austin American–Statesman, Royal "became the biggest college football icon in a state that worships the sport."

Actually, a case could be made that Royal was the biggest football icon in Texas — period. Tom Landry may have surpassed him in popularity when he took the Dallas Cowboys to five Super Bowls in the 1970s, but in the 1960s, while Royal was winning national championships on the college level, people around here were talking about how Landry couldn't win "the big one" in the NFL.

I grew up in Arkansas, where the Razorbacks rule, and you just couldn't be an Arkansas fan without hating Texas. The annual football game between the schools was an event — even though it usually didn't end too well for Razorback fans. (I can count on one hand the number of Arkansas victories over Texas in the first 20 years of my life.)

As a result, there was a certain amount of resentment directed toward Royal. It seemed he always had the upper hand.

Arkansas fans knew Texas didn't have a better coach. Arkansas had Frank Broyles, who is justifiably regarded as a legend in the sport as well, but he might have been the most dominant coach in the Southwest Conference had it not been for Royal.

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They had both won national championships in the 1960s. But when they met in 1969's "Great Shootout," Texas fans were strutting with confidence about the success of the wishbone offense that Royal had pioneered with assistant coach Emory Bellard. Any thought Arkansas fans had of beating it, Texas fans said, was nothing more than dreaming the impossible dream.

Texas was to Arkansas what Muhammad Ali was to Joe Frazier or what Secretariat was to Sham — the ever–constant barrier to greater things.

And, for that, many Razorback fans could never forgive him.

But they always respected him.

Bellard Was a Latter-Day Texas Pioneer

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I have had several thoughts about Emory Bellard since I heard of his death at the age of 83 yesterday.

And I have come to the conclusion that he rarely received the credit he deserved.

That may be hard for some football enthusiasts to accept. Bellard was a pioneer in Texas, a football coach who revolutionized the sport at the University of Texas with his wishbone offense. Well, that is what they say.

Bruce Weber of the New York Times calls the wishbone Bellard's "signature contribution" to the game.

In some ways, I guess that is true. It certainly changed things at the University of Texas, which had been struggling until the Longhorns' head coach, Darrell Royal, came to Bellard, an assistant at UT, in 1968 and asked him to come up with an offense that would shake things up.

He answered that challenge with the wishbone formation, which was designed to operate a triple option with a lead blocker. It sure changed things at Texas. In the next four seasons, the Longhorns were 38–5–1 with one national title (almost two), a perfect season (almost two), a 30–game winning streak and four Cotton Bowl appearances as Southwest Conference champions.

Then, in 1972, Bellard took the head coaching position at Texas' arch rival, Texas A&M. In so doing, he embodied the civil war that has been fought in generations of Texas families that have counted graduates of both UT and A&M among their ranks.

After Bellard's departure, Texas continued to thrive, winning two more SWC titles before going into a tailspin in Royal's final year at the helm in 1976.

Bellard's Aggies, meanwhile, struggled, losing their annual showdown with the Longhorns three straight times. It wouldn't have been fair to blame Bellard for that, though. The Aggies had lost to the Longhorns in most of their previous 20 meetings, including the four before Bellard arrived in College Station.

But he turned things around in 1975, winning the annual Thanksgiving showdown and coming within a single victory of taking the Aggies to the Cotton Bowl.

Bellard was never a head coach in the Cotton Bowl, only an assistant. He left A&M in the middle of the 1978 season after the Aggies lost consecutive games to Houston and Baylor.

While Bellard gets credit from a lot of people for developing the wishbone, there is some doubt about that. Former Oklahoma coach Barry Switzer insists that a coach at a high school in Fort Worth actually developed the wishbone in the 1950s. Perhaps Bellard modified something he had seen as a high school coach in the 1950s and early 1960s for use on the college level.

If he did, though, he also applied elements of the veer offense that was being run at the University of Houston and the variation of the triple option that was being used by Gene Stallings at A&M.

So perhaps the wishbone was not strictly Bellard's revolutionary innovation.

But Richard Justice of the Houston Chronicle reminds us of something that was Bellard's innovation — the integration of the A&M football program.

"In 1972, we had one black player on scholarship," R.C. Slocum, one of Bellard's assistants at A&M, said. "Now you can imagine the reputation of Texas A&M at that point. Not just A&M, but pretty much everybody in the Southwest Conference.

"Not many people appreciate what a bold step that was, to bring in nine black players to a place that had virtually no blacks. The deeper story is trust. It's the kind of man he was. Parents trusted him to do the right thing."

Earlier this week, Justice reports, two of those black players came to see Bellard on his deathbed and thank him for what he had done.

As Justice observed, the integration of the Aggie football program was Bellard's true legacy. Integration undoubtedly would have come eventually. Bellard just saw to it that it arrived that much sooner.