Texas Football: 10 greatest coaches in program history

1. Darrell K. Royal: 1957-1976

• Career Record: 167-47-5
• Awards and Accolades: 1959, ’61-’63, ’68-’73, ’75 Southwest Conference Champions, 1963, ’69 & ’70 National Champions, 1961 & ’63 Eddie Robinson Coach of the Year, 1963 & ’70 AFCA Coach of the Year, College Football Hall of Fame Class of 1983

The namesake of the stadium the Longhorns play in is legendary coach Darrell K. Royal. Royal played college football at rival Oklahoma under Bud Wilkinson. Immediately after graduating, Royal became an assistant at North Carolina State for one season. He would also be an assistant at Tulsa and Mississippi State before becoming head coach of the CFL’s Edmonton Eskimos. After a year in Canada, he became head coach at Mississippi State for two years, and head coach at Washington for a year before Texas came calling.

Royal turned around the Texas program immediately, winning six games following a one-win season the year before. By 1959, he won his first Southwest Conference Championship and by 1963, Royal won his first national championship. Texas slipped a little bit in the mid-60’s, until Royal unleashed his experimental wishbone offense on the college football world and wreaked havoc with it.

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Over a three-year span from 1968 to 1970, Texas compiled a 30-2-1 record, won three Southwest Conference Championships and two national championships. Royal would win eleven Southwest Conference Championships in his tenure at Texas, the last coming in 1975. Following a 5-5-1 season in 1976, Royal retired from coaching but remained AD until 1980. In 1996, Texas honored Royal by renaming their stadium “Darrell K. Royal-Texas Memorial Stadium”.