The Texas Longhorns met the Oklahoma Sooners on the football field for the 120th time Saturday. That’s a lot of games, but Texas has played almost 1,400 in its history — many of them against closer universities that might satisfy that regional rivalry itch.
Why is the itch so strong with OU?
Kevin Smith wanted to know, so he wrote in to the ATXplained project.
“Being married to [a] Sooner, I've always wondered why the rivalry between OU and UT is so intense,” he said.
Smith has been married to his Oklahoma wife for 15 years. She may have assimilated by now, but Smith said he still discerns some differences with his in-laws.
“I think that there's just less to do in Oklahoma than there is in Texas,” he said. “So they just kind of latch on to that."
Jealousy! A possible theory for one side of the rivalry, but it will take a little more than that to explain all the hype between these two states over these games. Why would Texas care? We have to scratch a little deeper.
A legend enters the game
The University of Texas and Oklahoma have been playing football against each other since before Oklahoma was even a state, first playing in 1900.
Since 1929, the game has been held every year during the State Fair in Dallas’ Cotton Bowl — roughly halfway between the two schools. This is one step in its evolution to a bigger stage.
There are the rides, the fried foods, the pre-game rituals, celebrity national anthems and the pageantry that give this game a unique flavor.
Even the way the fans are seated in the Cotton Bowl turns up the heat, with no traditional home or visitors’ sides – but split down the 50-yard line. Orange and white on one end. Crimson and cream on the other.
But the real answer as to why the game is so intense is likely due to the benevolence of a Longhorn legend – or was he a Sooner legend?
For the most part, the game was one-sided in the early years: Texas-sided. In the first 42 meetings, Oklahoma won only 11 times. Not exactly what stokes a rivalry.
Then a man named Darrell K. Royal stepped on the Oklahoma campus.
Royal grew up in Hollis, Oklahoma, a town just across the border where the Red River meets the Texas panhandle. It was so close, early surveyors actually put Hollis in Texas.
Royal became quite good at football in Hollis. After serving in the U.S. Army Air Corps during World War II, he played for the University of Oklahoma.
At OU, he was an all-American defensive back, quarterback and punter. He still holds the school record for most career interceptions. His senior year, he led the Sooners as quarterback to an undefeated season.
And then Oklahoma just kept beating Texas. Over the next nine years, Texas beat OU only once.
Until a man named Darrell K. Royal stepped on the UT campus.
A revolutionary offensive play
Royal was hired as head coach at Texas in 1957. He ushered in the first golden era of Texas football. The Longhorns would win 12 of the next 14 games against Oklahoma.
Royal won the school’s first football national championship.
And he was doing this often in front of national television audiences. There were just three networks back then.
“The NCAA controlled college football television in those days, and they were gonna pick the best and most enticing contest,” Chris Plonsky, a longtime senior manager with UT Athletics, said. “So, when you have a non-league game [in] early October, with the fairgrounds as your background, the state fair in Texas – it just was special.”
The fans at the Cotton Bowl and a lot of people at home watched Texas beat Oklahoma every year… or what seemed like every year in this era.
Even with this success, expectations were high for Royal. Like "championship every year" high! By 1967, his offense hit a lull, so he promoted an assistant coach, a former Texas high school coaching legend named Emory Bellard.
Back then Texas and many other schools had been running a version of the “Split T” – an offense that featured a fullback and two halfbacks lined up next to each other behind the quarterback forming a T.
But Bellard had an idea. Why not move the fullback up a little bit to look more like a Y?
The new offense didn’t have a name, but when pressed by writers, Royal called it the "wishbone."
That ever-so-slight adjustment of the fullback was revolutionary. It made the ball movement that much quicker. When done right, it always made defenders' choices wrong. It’s no understatement to say it changed college football. Texas won 30 games in a row. They won the next six Southwest Conference titles and two more national championships.
With average athletes, the wishbone offense was effective. With the best athletes, it felt unstoppable.
Aid to the enemy
Around this time, Oklahoma boosters were getting tired of losing to Texas. They considered firing head coach Chuck Fairbanks.
Maybe Royal was feeling a pang of Oklahoma loyalty. Remember, this was his alma mater. Perhaps he was being a nice guy to an old friend. His motivation is all speculation. What we do know is he told Emory Bellard – the inventor of the wishbone – to go help OU’s offensive coordinator, Barry Switzer, learn and install the wishbone at Oklahoma. This is all in the book Blood, Sweat and Chalk by Sports Illustrated writer Tim Layden.
“When you get wind that Texas assisted – aided, and abetted – Oklahoma, with Chuck Fairbanks and then Barry Switzer, you know it's ... it's a bitter pill for Longhorn fans to swallow,” said Larry Carlson, a professor at Texas State University and Longhorn football historian.
It was not just Oklahoma that got help from Texas. Bellard and Royal were teaching their system to coaches from all over the country. Alabama coach Paul “Bear” Bryant learned the wishbone in Austin in the spring of 1971.
Royal even made an instructional film detailing the ins and outs of the offense.
What could possibly go wrong?
Out on a low note
Well, Fairbanks kept his job at Oklahoma. OU beat up on Texas for two seasons, then he became a head coach in the NFL.
OU then made Switzer the head coach. This brought the intensity between the football teams to a boil. Royal and Switzer did not appear to like each other much.
Royal openly complained about Switzer’s recruiting methods. To no avail, Royal never beat Oklahoma again.
“I guess he never saw it biting Texas the way it turned out, too, because he didn't see Barry Switzer coming in there and spying and cheating," Carlson said, "and those are things that Switzer later admitted, he kind of bragged about in his own autobiography, Bootlegger’s Boy."
With the wishbone in place, Switzer at Oklahoma and Bryant at Alabama went on to win six national championships between them.
Bellard left Texas and went to coach at Texas A&M, beating the Longhorns in Royal’s last two seasons with the wishbone.
Royal retired after the 1976 season at just 52 years old. And while he may have left the sideline, the rivalry stuck and has been stoked by big characters, big last-minute plays, even Big Tex and the fans who return year after year.
