A royal welcome: Nobody in the wishbone era coached football any better than a man named Darrell K. Royal. (Person to Person).

What was it like growing up in Hollis, OK during the Great Depression?

ROYAL: People were all the same. Nobody had anything. A few families, like the doctors, dressed a little better, but mostly everyone had it tough. Those were the Dust Bowl days and it was pretty hard to scratch out a living.

I remember the highway near my house. All of the cars on it were headed west. Some of them had trailers and some of them were just stuffed with everything the people owned, but they were all headed west, looking for work.

COACH: Who introduced you to football and what are your first memories of the game?

ROYAL: I used to walk across town to watch my brother work out. I loved football and the coaches always impressed me. I learned as much about the game as I could. I always knew that I wanted to be a coach.

COACH: What sports did you play and what high school did you go to?

ROYAL: I played football, baseball, and basketball. There wasn't anything else. There was no volleyball at Hollis H.S.

COACH: You joined the army just as World War II was ending. How did you end up at Oklahoma U. in 1946?

ROYAL: I was a tailgunner on a B-29. My crew trained on bom bardment, photo reconnaissance, and weather reconnaissance. But, none of this mattered for the tailgunner. All I needed to know was how to fire that .250 caliber gun.

We were shipped to Guam, but before we left I came down with an appendicitis. I had the surgery and my flight crew got another tailgunner.

After that, I played on the 3rd Air Force's football team. Being just out of high school, I got some positive attention. The people from Oklahoma saw me play and recruited me. That was fine with me because that's where I wanted to go.

COACH: You had a great career at OU, making All-American as both a QB and DB in your senior year. You played for Jim Tatum in your first year and Bud Wilkinson in your last two. How did these coaches influence you?

ROYAL: Bud Wilkinson was my coach in all my four years at Oklahoma. He was the backfield coach before becoming the head coach, and I used the things he taught me until the very last day I worked as a head coach.

Having known since junior high school that I was going to be a coach, I studied everything all of my coaches did. I studied football just the way I studied everything else in the classroom.

I learned a tremendous amount from Bud Wilkinson. But I never made the fatal error of trying to be Bud Wilkinson. I have seen too many coaches trying to imitate their former coaches. They talk like them and they walk like them, but when it's crunch time, their old coach isn't there to bail them out.

The funny thing about Coach Wilkinson is that we weren't alike at all. Wilkinson wanted to be an English professor. I wasn't even a good English student.

COACH: How did you wind up as freshman coach at N.C. State in 1950?

ROYAL: I took a job at El Reno (OK) H.S. as a football coach with the understanding that I could leave if I got a college offer by June.

Two factors led me to N.C. State. I'm pretty sure Bud Wilkinson called there to recommend me. The other reason was because Beattie Feathers, the N.C. State coach, was interested in the Split T and I had been the quarterback on a team running that kind of offense.

COACH: Over the next two years ('51 and '52), you were an assistant coach at Tulsa and Miss. St. In 1953, you got your first head coaching job with the Edmonton Eskimos of the CFL. A year later, you returned to Miss. State as head coach. Two years later, it was off to Washington, and finally, in 1957 you found a home in Texas. That's seven moves in eight years! Was all of that by design?

ROYAL: None of it was by design. I was just working and hustling to find the right job. I knew that Texas would be my last coaching job. I knew that if I could keep the people at Texas happy, I'd never think of going anywhere else.

COACH: You were only 32 years old when you arrived at Texas to become one of the immortal coaching names in college football. From 1957-76, you amassed a record of 167-47-5, winning three national titles (1963, 1969, 1970), three coach-of-the-year designations, and a 30-game win streak. What kind of offense did you bring with you to Texas?

ROYAL: I ran the Split T. Later on, in 1961, we went to the flip-flop. It was a variation of the Wing T, but we flipped the linemen. We had a strong side and a weak side. In other words, if we wanted to run the pitch-back off-tackle power-play to the right, we'd call right formation and the entire line would take an odd sort of departure from the huddle. Kind of like a line of ants. Then they'd go line up on the left side and the left side would go line up on the right side.

That way, we only had to teach assignments for about four plays from each side. It sure cut down on busted assignments. Of course, we didn't run too many plays in our offense anyway.

This way, we had the same people working on the double teams and we had the same guards pulling. It meant we only had to teach things one time for right and left.

General Neyland had done that for years at Tennessee, we were the only ones outside of the Vol crowd to copy it.

We didn't have a name for it until a reporter asked me about it. I said, "We don't have a name for it. We just flip-flop our linemen." They took that and ran with it.

We didn't have a name for the wishbone offense, either. I told a group of reporters that they could call it the "Y" because that was the basic shape it made. They complained that it wasn't a very original name. Mickey Herskowitz, the legendary sportswriter from Texas, said, "How about the Wishbone?"

I said, "Mickey, you just named our offense."

COACH: You unveiled the Wishbone offense in 1968 and promptly went on a 30-game win streak, winning back-to-back national titles. How did you come upon the Wishbone? What made it so special?

ROYAL: Emery Ballard was an assistant on the staff at that time and he came up with it. He had been at Texas A&M as an assistant and at Miss. State as head coach. The Triple Option, which was called the Veer, was similar to the Wishbone. The difference was that we had a lead blocker for the pitchman in the Wishbone. It was a little more powerful. The Wishbone was just so much quicker around the line.

We didn't come out like gangbusters. We tied the first game and lost the second, and the people around here started grumbling. We straightened things out and won 30 in a row, so I guess it proved to be OK.

Mind you, the Wishbone didn't make us as a team. We had good personnel and that's what it takes to win games. But I don't think we would have won 30 in a row without the Wishbone.

The Wishbone was something new, and it took teams a while to figure out how to counter it.

We weren't trying to fool anybody with all of these offenses. We were just trying to keep things simple and not make mistakes. I never believed in the outsmart deal.

COACH: What made the Wishbone impossible to stop?

ROYAL: It wasn't. Eventually, defenses became more aggressive. The defensive theory had always been: Bend, but don't break. In other words, give a little bit of ground, but don't give up the big play.

To defend against the Wishbone, they had to get across the line of scrimmage. Out in the wide area, the cornerbacks used to play back, but they started bringing those corner-backs across the line of scrimmage to meet the lead blocker. That's the way they got around to playing it.

COACH: Your 15-14 win over Arkansas in 1969 has been called "The Game of the Century" You made two crucial calls in that game: You went for two points when you were down 14-6, and you called a deep throw on fourth and 3 with 4:47 left in the game and you team down 14-8.

You made the two-point conversion and, later, your QB, James Street, completed a 44-yard pass to TE Randy Peschel on the go-ahead touchdown drive.

What was the motivation behind those two incredible calls?

ROYAL: Well, I've had time to think of a lot of reasons, but, really, we hadn't moved the ball and there were four minutes and something left in the game. I felt that if we ran the ball and luckily made three yards, we'd still be a long ways off from the end zone. I didn't think we had enough time for a ground attack.

One thing was for certain: We were going to use four downs and we weren't going to punt. I felt that we had to take a huge gamble. At halftime, Randy Peschel came to me and said, "Coach I can't force-block their halfback when I release off of the option play."

He was supposed to have to go down and block the halfback that was covering him on the pass. He said, "He is coming up so fast I can't get to him."

He also said, "I think I could get behind him if we ever needed it."

Well, I felt we really needed it!

After looking at the film for the first time, I thought that Randy might be a little bit wrong in that. He was actually behind the halfback, but the safety had overlapped and the halfback had recovered and actually there were six hands up there for the football. We had two and they had four.

James Street threw it through a keyhole.

It was a perfect throw and a great catch. Six hands, and he hit the right two and that was that.

As far as the call on the two-point conversion, I had decided that if it came to a tie or go for two, that we were going to go for two. If we missed it and then we scored again, we could go for two again and go for the tie. But if we kicked it and waited until the last time, it'd be do or die. You either make it or you don't, and the odds are against it. So I wanted us to have two chances to make two.

I felt that if you're No. 1, you ought to play to stay No. 1. I met with our coaching staff late the night before and we discussed it. I asked Mike Campbell, our defensive coordinator, what play gave him the most trouble on the goal line? He said the counter option, and that is what we ran.

COACH: You were only 52 when you quit coaching in 1976. Twenty-five years later we have Joe Paterno at 73, Bobby Bowden at 70, and Lou Holtz at 68. What do you think?

ROYAL: Those other guys are tougher than I was! It's not like I've looked back and wondered whether I should have continued coaching. I don't regret one day of it. I've enjoyed my life thoroughly.

COACH: How much has college football changed since you stopped coaching?

ROYAL: I think the biggest changes have been in the rules. They allow people to block differently now. You can do anything to a guy if you don't get out on the edges of his uniform.

When I coached, you had to have your hands next to your chest on all blocks. Now, guys use their fingers and everything else to block.

It's changed on the outsides, too. The way those receivers engage the defensive backs, you don't know who's on offense and who's on defense.

COACH: Allow us to let you in on one of our trade secrets: From 1960 to the day you retired from coaching, we received at least a dozen requests from high school coaches which were phrased exactly the same way: "We would like to order every issue of SC in which you published an article by Darrell Royal."

ROYAL: That is amazing. I have to say that I am truly surprised by that. It warms an old coach's heart.

I learned a lot from my fellow coaches. I already mentioned Coach Wilkinson and I learned a lot from Mike Campbell, my defensive coordinator.

I learned an incredible amount from Quinn Decker, the guy who coached my Air Force team and who had played at Tennessee under General Neyland. Eeveryone who ever went through General Neyland's program carried that positive stamp forever.

I once gave a lecture at one of General Neyland's coaching schools. He was sitting in the front row. Would you like me to tell you about pressure?

COACH: What kind of offense do you think you would be using if you were coaching today?

ROYAL: I think we'd be throwing the ball more. Coaches use the passing attack more today and I like it. Of course, we'd have to have a passing QB. In the Wishbone, our QB had to be a runner first, before having throwing talent.

It's not that we didn't ever pass the ball in the Wishbone. We never got credit for any passes that we threw, but all of the big ballgames we won involved the passing game.

There was one time, we were leading the nation in scoring and I thought that we had a good offense. The press kept asking me when we were going to open up our offense, but I thought we were full throttle.