Thursday, Movember 6, 1986/The Battalion/Page 11
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le McWilliams remembers Royal
s influential mentor and coach
j WAfd
id m
id i'll;■ HOUSTON (AP) — When Texas
. ‘jvRech football coach David McWil-
® ‘“Warns came into town to speak before
the Touchdown Club of Houston,
le warmed when he was asked about
, lie influence Darrell Royal had on
ciiar- him.
SCVCeB McWilliams was a 6-foot, 195-
Bound starting center and tri-cap-
pOSl'Kin on Royal’s University of Texas
^^leam that won the national
lhampionship and later became an
Issistant coach under Royal.
I “The first thing was the fact of
laving discipline. You have to be a
lisciplined individual in order to be
luccessful. He (Royal) stressed aca-
lemics, and that was important to
lie,” said McWilliams, who earned
lll-SWC academic honors.
I “From a coaching standpoint, I
earned from Coach Royal that you
tke the personnel you’ve got and
fien you do whatever you think it
ikes to win. He was able to do it by
unning the ball. We (Texas) were
ble to control the ball and run it,”
IcWilliams said.
“I talked to him before I went to
Lubbock (Tech), and 1 said it looks
like we are more of a personnel-wise,
Ihrowing-type team. He (Royal) said.
“/ just got a feeling where
I never wanted to give up
because I had so much
pride and believed in him.
When you get pride in
someone, it’s hard to
make them quit. ”
— Texas Tech Coach
Da vid Mc Williams
‘Look, you take that personnel and
y6u do whatever it takes.’”
What kind of motivator was
Royal?
“Just the way he treated me, the
fairness, and the things that he ex
pected of me — and I knew he ex
pected of me — I wanted to play for
him,” McWilliams said.
“I wasn’t going out and playing
for David McWilliams. I wanted to
play — and I wanted to win — for
Darrell Royal because 1 was so proud
of the things he had done for me. I
didn’t want to let him down. I mean,
really, it was just a feeling of pride.
He treated us as first-class people,
and then he demanded and ex
pected us to be first-class players.
“I just got a feeling where I never
wanted to give up because I had so
much pride and believed in him.
When you get pride in someone, it’s
hard to make them quit.”
McWilliams was a sophomore in
1961 when Royal’s Longhorns put
together a 10-1 record. In 1962,
Texas finished 9-1-1, and in McWil
liams’ senior year, the No. 1 ’Horns
went 1 1-0.
An athlete has his own memories
of each game. In one of the Long
horns’ greatest victories, their Jan. 1,
1963 Cotton Bowl 28-6 win over No.
2 Navy and Heisman Trophy winner
Roger Staubach, McWilliams recalls:
“In that game, I have to be personal.
“My mother died four days before
that game. She had never been sick a
day in her life. She had a stroke that
morning, and Coach Royal got me
up there in time before she died but
she never regained consciousness.
“It was really an emotional type
game for me, more so than the game
itself. All I can remember was want
ing to play well because of her.”
Akers deserves compassion
during UT’s troubled times
UT Coach Fred Akers hasn’t had much to smile about this
year. His Longhorns are in trouble and his job is on the line.
By Ken Sury
Sports Editor
I feel sorry for Fred Akers. Really.
Here’s a man who’s getting
dumped on by most of the free
world, with the exception of Univer
sity of Texas
Athletic Direc- Viewpoint
tor D e L o s s mmmmmmmmm—mmmmm
Dodds, Akers’ family, and mascot
Bevo, which is too stupid to know
anything.
Akers is experiencing one of the
toughest seasons a head football
coach can face. His Longhorns, long
known as a national powerhouse, are
2-2 in Southwest Conference play
and 3-4 overall. Alumni and fans
have called for his firing ever since
Texas A&M hammered Texas 42-10
for last year’s SWC championship.
To make matters worse, UT lost
to former assistant coach David Mc
Williams’ Texas Tech squad 23-21
last week. That defeat only made
fans and alumni cry “Fire Fred”
even louder.
It’s really sad when someone who
has led a team to a bowl game every
year since 1977 and owns an 81-25
record with the school can’t get any
respect from the school’s alumni,
fans or students.
That shows how fickle fans who
are used to supporting a winning
team can be. It also proves some
thing A&M Coach Jackie Sherrill
said before the season began: Suc
cess in the SWC is going to the Cot
ton Bowl, anything else is second-
rate.
However, being the best in the
SWC is not an easy feat. There sim
ply are too many evenly matched
teams in the conference. Look how
close A&M’s wins this year have been
with its toughest opponents: 31-30
over Baylor and 39-35 over SMU.
That’s tough competition.
Today, it’s more difficult to build
a powerhouse in the SWC through
recruiting. There are only so many
star athletes to pick from, and with
nine conference schools (don’t for
get Oklahoma and Louisiana
schools) bidding for the best Texas
has to offer, the blue-chip talent gets
evened out across the conference.
Blame A&M for part of Texas’ re
cruiting woes this year. Since most
recruits want to go to a winning pro
gram, which A&M showed it has by
winning the Cotton Bowl, the Aggies
grabbed blue-chip athletes who may
have gone to Texas.
But that’s part of recruiting, and
Akers knows that. Too bad UT
alumni couldn’t be as enlightened.
Every coach should be entitled to
one bad year. Injuries, bad breaks,
and other problems out of the
coach’s control can be just enough to
keep a top-caliber team from win
ning the games it’s supposed to.
The most disturbing aspect of this
anti-Fred hype is the dirt Aggies are
kicking on Akers.
Every time I see a car with a
“Keep Fred” bumper sticker on it, I
think how much UT fans must have
laughed at A&M when Sherrill’s
teams were struggling just to be a
.500 team. “Some million-dollar
coach,” they sneered.
Now that A&M is a national
power, are our memories too short
to recall when our alumni and stu
dents grumbled about Sherrill’s lack
of success?
And what if A&M falls slightly
next year? Will we grumble again?
Let’s hope not.
That Akers will be out as UT head
coach by the end of this year is pretty
much a foregone conclusion. The
only thing that might save his neck is
a win over the Aggies. But even that!
may not be enough.
So wherever you go Fred, best of
luck.
SMILE
gels
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