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| Darrell Royal, at Mississippi State in 1954. |
Royal made his mark in the Magnolia State.
The death of the renowned football coach
Darrell Royal deserves more than passing notice here in Mississippi
where Royal honed his legendary coaching skills.
Actually, there are many connections
between Royal and Mississippi, which we will examine here.
An Oklahoma native who starred for Bud
Wilkinson at Oklahoma, Royal first came to Mississippi in 1952 as the
backfield coach for Murray Warmath at Mississippi State. Those
Bulldogs had a 5-4 record.
Royal left after one season to coach
the Edmonton Eskimos of the Canadian Football League, but returned to
Starkville in 1954 as head coach of the Bulldogs. He stayed two
seasons, coaching State to 6-4 records in both 1954 and 1955. He was
2-0 against Alabama, 0-2 against Ole Miss and Johnny Vaught. He was
1-1 against LSU.
His 1955 Bulldogs won six straight
games and rose into the Associated Press Top 20, before a three-game
losing streak ended the season. Royal left following that season to
take the head coaching job at the University of Washington.
Jimmy Lee Dodd of Starkville played
center and linebacker for those Royal-coached State teams.
“He was a great, great head coach,”
Dodd remembers. “He was very hands on, extremely organized. The players
loved him. We all thought the world of him.”
The relationships lasted for years.
Says Dodd, who spent 35 years as an electrical engineering professor
at State: “We would have a team reunion every two years and Coach
Royal came back to those reunions on several occasions. I think the
last time he came was in 2000.”
You should know that Royal is given
much credit for the development of Hall of Fame State quarterback Jackie
Parker during that 1952 season. His quarterback in 1954 was
Mississippi Sports Hall of Famer Bobby Collins.
••••••
Royal spent just one season at
Washington before landing at Texas where be became the most
beloved college coach in a state that dearly loves college football.
His 20 Texas Longhorns teams won 167 games, lost 47 and tied five.
They won 12 conference championships and three national
championships. Along the way he hired future Mississippi State coach
Emory Bellard and together they introduced the Wishbone offense to
college football.
You should also know Royal served Texas as athletic director as well as head coach. It was in the
latter position Royal tried to hire Boo Ferriss away from Delta
State to become his head baseball coach. The year was 1967. Bibb
Falk, who had coached Ferriss in service baseball during World War II, had just retired as the Texas baseball coach and recommended
Ferriss as his successor.
Royal invited Ferriss and wife Miriam
to Austin to wine and dine them and make the offer.
“I liked him right away,” Ferriss
said of Royal. “He was soft-spoken and low-key, just a really nice
fellow. He offered me the job before we came back to Mississippi.”
Ferriss was making $12,000 a year as
the baseball coach and athletic director at Delta State, where he had
no assistant coaches and no baseball scholarships. The Texas job,
head baseball coach with an assistant coach and scholarships, would have
paid $14,000.
Ferriss remembers weighing his decision
while walking around the baseball field he had recently carved out of
a soybean field near the Delta State campus.
“We had made a home in Cleveland and
my mother was just down the road in Shaw,” Ferriss says. “To make
a long story short, we just decided to stay. I called Darrell and
told him and he was understanding. After that, he hired Cliff
Gustafson.”
That worked out just fine for Texas.
Gustafson led the Longhorns to 22 conference championships, a record
17 College World Series appearances and two national championships.
Says Ferriss, “I've never had any
regrets about my decision. But I sure was sorry to read about Darrell
Royal's death. What a great coach and a fine fellow.”
•••
Finally, this column is written by
Richard Darrell Cleveland. And, yes, the Darrell comes from Darrell
Royal. I was born in 1952, the year Royal spent in Starkville as an
assistant coach for Murray Warmath at State. My dad was the sports
editor at The Hattiesburg American at the time.
Apparently, my
folks met Royal, and Darrell K Royal made as big impression on them as he made on so many during his splendid career.
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