College Football: 10 toughest coaching careers to follow

9. Darrell Royal (Texas)

Few things are quite as difficult as following in the footsteps of the coaching legend whose name graces the stadium. In Austin, more than four decades after his retirement from the Texas sidelines, Darrell Royal’s coaching prowess continues to hover over the Longhorns program and made it that much harder for his successors to live up to that benchmark.

After attending the University of Oklahoma after World War II, Royal took over the rival of his alma mater after short stints with the Edmonton Eskimos of the CFL and stops at Mississippi State and Washington. Neither stop along the way presaged his eventual blossoming into one of the coaching profession’s greats. And even his first few years in Austin were inauspicious, going 6-4-1 and 7-3 in his first two seasons with the Longhorns.

By the early 1960s, however, Royal’s work turning the Longhorns into a national powerhouse were bearing fruit. Texas won the Southwest Conference in 1959, 1961, and 1962 before stringing together an 11-0 season in 1963 to win the school’s first national championship. Two more titles followed, in 1969 and 1970, amidst a streak of six straight conference crowns.

When Royal went just 5-5-1 in 1976, it spelled the end of his time on the sidelines as he focused full-time on athletic director duties. Fred Akers kept Texas at a respectable level, posting double-digit win totals three times in his decade leading the Longhorns, but only two SWC titles and poll finishes no higher than fourth doomed Akers once he posted the school’s first losing record in three decades. Until Mack Brown’s arrival, following in Royal’s coaching footsteps proved unmanageable for his first three successors.