Replies

Truly one of the greats. Loved his “let’s go for it” attitude. RIP Darrell.

Wikipedia had some of his quotes that defined his attitude:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darrell_Royal

Coach Royal was famous for the inspirational Royalisms he deployed as motivational tools. These sayings include:

• "God gives talent, size, speed. But a guy can control how hard he tries."
• "I want to be remembered as a winning coach, but I also want to be remembered as an honest and ethical coach."
• "You've got to think lucky. If you fall into a mud hole, check your back pocket--you might have caught a fish."
• "Punt returns will kill you quicker than a minnow can swim a dipper."
• "Don't matter what they throw at us. Only angry people win football games."

Those were taken from DKR: The Royal Scrapbook which was a really well done book that was recently published.

ESPN has a nice write-up about him

Above all, Royal laid the groundwork for the colossus of Texas athletics that stands astride intercollegiate athletics today. And he did so with courtliness and a wit as arid as the Oklahoma Plains where he grew up. Royal, a native of Hollis, was a product of the Depression and the deprivation of the Dust Bowl. Outside the soda shop in Hollis in the summer of 1942, he met Edith Thomason. They married two years later, when Darrell, by then an enlisted man, was 20 and Edith 19. She survives him after 68 years of marriage.

If there was a secret to Royal's success, it may have been his gift for communicating with people, be they his players, his fans or the many friends he collected over nearly nine decades of life. Whatever Royal achieved, he made sure to deflect attention to the people around him.

"He gave Emory Bellard credit for the wishbone," said Spike Dykes, a Royal assistant who coached Texas Tech for 13 seasons. "Instead of saying, 'We did it.' he said, 'That's Emory's deal.' He totally, completely, had no ego. And yet you never did have to figure out who was head coach. … There's just not that many people who are that good at what they do who don't have an ego."

Doug English, an All-American defensive tackle for Royal at Texas in the early 1970s who would join his coach in the College Football Hall of Fame, described Royal's gift as "colloquial efficiency."

Royal loved "pickers," the guitar-playing songwriters and singers who emerged out of Texas a generation ago and changed the face of country music. He loved their ability to turn a phrase, to say a lot in a single line of lyric, perhaps because he spoke that way, too -- with colloquial efficiency.

It was Royal who made famous the line, "We're gonna dance with who brung us," meaning that he would depend on the skills that his players had and not have them try to do something they couldn't.

James Saxton, the quarterback who in 1963 led Royal's first national champion, "could run like small-town gossip."

"A coach," Royal once said, "likes to have a lot of those old trained pigs who'll grin and jump right in the slop for him."

And there was the saying that captured the essence of the man and his life: "There ain't a hoss that can't be rode and there ain't a man that can't be throwed."

I remember in the 70s, Bear Bryant visited with Royal for some time to learn the wishbone.

They were long time friends.

THERE IS A SAYING IN ISRAEL/JEWISH ...
“MAY HIS MEMORY BE FOR BLESSING”.

IT CAUGHT MY ATTENTION. WHEN WE THINK OF/ remember DARRELL ROYAL,

MAY THE MEMORY BE FOR A BLESSING.

A good thing.