When in Doubt, Punt

Coach Darrell Royal, 39, of the University of Texas is the kind of man who looks both ways before crossing a oneway street. The forward pass, he insists, is strictly for masochists. "When you throw the ball, four things can happen --and only one of them is good." The best offense, he says, is a good defense: "If the other team can't score on you, you can't lose. You can tie, but you can't lose." Royal's Longhorns content themselves with grinding out bite-sized chunks of yardage, and to make sure that they don't try anything foolish, he calls a fair number of plays from the bench. When in doubt, he punts. "If we can kick the ball from our 30 to their 10," he says, "that's six first downs in one play."

The only regular-season game Royal's infantrymen have lost in three years was an 0-6 squeaker to Texas Christian in 1961. "T.C.U. is like a cockroach," Royal complained then. "It isn't what he eats or carries off, but what he falls into and messes up." For five straight weeks this season, Texas has ranked as the nation's No. 1 college team, and last week it avenged that lone T.C.U. defeat by holding T.C.U. to 34 yds. on the ground while Texas Quarterback Duke Carlisle mixed straightforward runs with pass-option plays to gain an economical 150 yds. In true Royal style, Texas' sophomore backs Phil Harris and Tommy Stockton scored twin touchdowns on little-bitty three-yard runs; shoeless Placekicker Tony Crosby added the insult by running his string of conversions to 24 straight and toeing a 42-yd. field goal in his stockinged feet. At game's end, the score was Texas 17, T.C.U. 0--and Royal's Longhorns, the only unbeaten and untied major college team in the U.S., had clinched at least a tie in the Southwest Conference and the host's berth at the Cotton Bowl. A royal ending to a Royal afternoon.

Texas Talk. An All-America quarterback in 1949 under Bud Wilkinson at Oklahoma, Royal arrived at Texas in 1957 under somewhat harrowing circumstances. The year before, the team lost nine out of ten games, and his predecessor was hanged in effigy three times. But Royal talked a Texas game. "We'll hit," he promised. "We'll find us some guys around here who want to dance every dance. We'll do some bloodletting." And he made good the brags. He scoured the state's 1,000 high schools for rugged, rangy youngsters, drilled them endlessly in his "attacking" defenses, hired a "brain coach" to ensure that they toed the mark scholastically. In his first season, Royal's Longhorns won six out of ten, went to the Sugar Bowl (and lost to Mississippi).

This year's Texas team averages 207 Ibs. per man in the line, has allowed opponents a meager 195 yds. per game, only 52 points all season. Enemy quarterbacks fill the air with footballs (an average of 35 to 40 passes a game) until, as Royal says, "they have us blinking like a horned frog in a hailstorm." But all to no avail. Even in practice, the fanatical Longhorns play for keeps. Last spring, Tackle Scott Appleton, a 235-lb. All-America candidate, halted an intrasquad scrimmage to protest a referee's call. The startled ref admitted that he was wrong. But what difference did it make? "Sir," growled Appleton, "we're not playing this game for fun."

Slugging It Out. With only one game left, against Texas A. & M., Royal still is not banking on a national championship--yet. In nearly a quarter of a century, no Texas college has managed to wind up a season No. 1 in the football polls and the downtrodden (2-6-1) Aggies would like nothing better than to bulldog the proud Longhorns. A. & M. has been slugging it out with Texas since 1894; they are such passionate rivals that they have a day all to themselves--Thanksgiving Day--when the rest of the league sits back and enjoys the fight.

If Texas gets past A. & M. and wins the paper championship, it will still have to prove its right to the title Jan. 1 in the Cotton Bowl, perhaps against No. 2-ranked Navy and brilliant Quarterback Roger Staubach. And that could be the game of this or any year--defense v. offense, running v. passing, Royal's thundering herd v. the Middies' one-man gang.

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