Earl Campbell

by Asher Price

  Bryant was a football coach: The comments by Keith Dunnavant, Don Keith, and John Papadakis are from the documentary Against the Tide, directed by Mark Davis, released on Showtime in 2003.

  never face a black player: John Maher, e-mail to author, June 2018.

  Everything starts with winning: Banks, Darrell Royal Story, 186.

  Let’s face it: McEachern, DKR, 108.

  become a stigma: Maher and Bohls, Bleeding Orange, 33.

  Mean Joe Greene: Miller, Game Changers, vii.

  Darrell, what are you doing: John Maher to the author, July 2017.

  This has hurt me in recruiting: Freeman, Hook ’Em Horns, 157.

  Whittier said that his teammates: Whittier’s experience at UT is told in Maher and Bohls, Bleeding Orange, 190–191.

  Senior years are: Billy Dale, e-mail to author, Feb. 2018.

  How can he say that: Jack Keever and Robert Heard, “Racist Image Puzzles Royal,” Austin Statesman, Nov. 17, 1972, 44.

  These newspapers have faith: “The Longhorns and Racism,” Austin Statesman, Nov. 18, 1972, 4.

  We batted zero last year: Lou Maysel, “AP Black Series Didn’t Hurt Texas,” Austin Statesman, Feb. 25, 1973, C1.

  He couldn’t tell you who: Author interview with Larry Temple, Sept. 2017.

  recommending Royal for vice president: The correspondence between Walter Jenkins and the Houston attorney Billy Goldberg, Jan. 2 and 6, 1964, as well as correspondence about the exchanges of gifts and the invitations aboard Air Force One, are in the Darrell Royal file at the LBJ Presidential Library.

  I think I’ve always had: Banks, Darrell Royal Story, 149–150.

  Staving off chest pains: Michael Beschloss, “In His Final Days, LBJ Agonized over His Legacy,” PBS NewsHour, Dec. 4, 2012, pbs.org/newshour/politics/lbjs-last-interview.

  Yesterday it was commonly said: “Remarks by Former President Lyndon Johnson at a Civil Rights Symposium, 12/12/72,” video posted on YouTube by the LBJ Library, Feb. 8, 2013, youtube.com/watch?v=RJKq18m0oYs.

  A few weeks later, Royal: Banks, Darrell Royal Story, 150.

  more than 250 scouts: Author interview with Leon Van Alstine, Apr. 2017; Lou Maysel, Here Come the Texas Longhorns, vol. 2, 1970–1978 (Austin: Burnt Orange, 1978), 15.

  goodies offered to players: Morris, The Courting of Marcus Dupree, 97 and Blair, Earl Campbell, 55.

  any sold black boy: Randy Harvey, “He Was Never Promised a Rose Garden: JT Superstar, Campbell,” Austin Statesman, Jan. 13, 1974, C3.

  And he was persistent: Kirk Bohls, “Dabbs Worthy of UT Honors,” Austin-American Statesman, Nov. 7, 2014, C1.

  scorned passing because it was art: Reid, “Coach Royal Regrets.” Some people also attribute the remark to Woody Hayes of Ohio State.

  the black coach has not reached: Jones Ramsey and Bill Little, press release, Jan. 24, 1970, University of Texas Sports News Service, copy in Darrell Royal folder, Stark Center.

  Such thoughts are not in my heart: Ibid.

  Every black athlete that Royal: Gary Cartwright, “Royal Still Rules in Texas,” publication and date not included with clipping, Darrell Royal folder, Stark Center. Even into the late 1980s, when a star San Antonio high schooler named Johnny Walker was considering where to go to college, his father tried to steer him away from UT. “He told me Texas had a reputation as a racist institution. He was very upset when I announced I was going to Texas.” (Maher and Bohls, Bleeding Orange, 199)

  I understand you don’t like and No, Earl, that’s wrong and I asked simply that they: Blair, Earl Campbell, 54–55.

  UT recruiters had one rule: Author interview with Bill Lyons, Feb. 2018.

  if this is a factor: Blair, Earl Campbell, 55.

  my people were bought and sold: Campbell, Earl Campbell Story, 17; Harvey, “He Was Never Promised.”

  “Mrs. Campbell,” Royal told her and We’re coming to Texas: Royal, Coach Royal, ix and author interview with Mickey Herskowitz, Nov. 2018.

  The atmosphere was cold: Blair, Earl Campbell, 54.

  God, if it’s your will: Miller, The Tyler Rose, 41.

  Henry Bell, and his wife, Nell: In 1976, Nell Bell, described by her son Henry as fitting to a T the no-nonsense football-loving mother played by Sandra Bullock in the film The Blind Side, was awarded a spot by the University of Texas on the Cotton Bowl Association’s board of directors.

  I liked what I saw: Lou Maysel, “Bell Cow Likes Longhorns: Campbell Headed for Texas,” Austin Statesman, Feb. 9, 1974.

  He will get a fair chance: Robert Salas, “Campbell Signs with Longhorns,” Tyler Morning Telegraph, Feb. 13, 1974, 1.

  Royal handed Campbell his pen: Blair, Earl Campbell, 58.

  Here at home there has been: Salas, “Campbell Signs with Longhorns.”

  ask for a ten-dollar loan: Paddy Joe Miller, The Tyler Rose: The Earl Campbell Story (Spring, TX: Schuromil, 1997), 192.

  Red Man chewing tobacco: Ibid., 39.

  When school started, I: Avrel Seale, “A Rose by Any Other Name,” Texas Alcalde, September–October 1994, 12.

  If it touched your head: Dan Zehr, “A Separated city,” Austin American-Statesman, Jan. 18, 2015, A1.

  And a gentleman’s agreement: Ken Herman, “Council’s Politics Loses One Identity,” Austin American-Statesman, Dec. 11, 2016, E1.

  known for refusing service: “Station Owner, Ex-Target of Rights Protesters, Dies,” Austin American-Statesman, Nov. 21, 1981, B4.

  He looked surprised after getting hit: Thorne Dreyer, Alice Embree, and Richard Croxdale, eds., Celebrating The Rag: Austin’s Iconic Underground Newspaper (Austin: New Journalism Project, 2016), 78–79. Celebrating The Rag also includes a reprint of Gary Thiher, “32 Jailed in Don Weedon Conoco Protest,” Rag, May 6, 1968.

  It was a clash of two Austins: Details of life around Austin in the mid-1970s are based on advertisements and articles in Dreyer, Embree, and Croxdale, Celebrating the Rag.

  affirmative action program gone berserk: Jason Mellard, Progressive Country: How the 1970s Transformed the Texan in Popular Culture (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2013), 164.

  The whole approach they’re into: Toback, “Longhorns and Longhairs.”

  He liked to hang out: Freeman, Hook ’Em Horns, 165.

  like nothing better than to turn: Toback, “Longhorns and Longhairs,” 70.

  In 1964, the Court found: Anthony Lewis, “Court Says Texas Must Redistrict,” New York Times, Mar. 3, 1964, nytimes.com/1964/03/03/court-says-texas-must-redistrict.html?src=DigitizedArticle. And yet even as the hue of the Texas Legislature was changing, the old guard clung, in ugly ways, to power. After Eddie Bernice Johnson, an African American woman who represented Dallas, filed a complaint with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, claiming that the state comptroller, Robert S. Calvert, was discriminating against women and minorities in his hiring, Calvert explained that he would not hire a woman because “we wouldn’t be about to send her down to one of those nigger or Mexican neighborhoods.” A statewide elected official, he added that Johnson was “nothing but a stupid nigger woman who doesn’t know what she’s talking about.” Based on Calvert’s own comments, the federal agency found, in a bit of understatement, that “it is reasonable to infer that discrimination because of race is taking place in respondent’s hiring practices.” The back-and-forth between Robert Calvert and Eddie Bernice Johnson is in Jet, Oct. 11, 1973, 10.

  UT’s entering law school class: Steve Wisch, “New Law Class Has No Blacks,” Daily Texan, June 11, 1971.

  We have found continued lip-service: John L. Warfield to Representative Senfronia Thompson, Oct. 23, 1973, John L. Warfield Papers CDL3-2005-08412, Correspondence / Texas Black Legislative Caucus, 1973–1979, DBCAH (hereafter cited as Warfield Papers).

  out of 1,600 faculty: Cascell Noble, “A Report on Black Faculty at the University of Texas at Austin,” 1979, copy in Warfield Papers. At the start of Campbell’s senior year, September 1977, UT had 1,641 white and 24 black faculty members. By the summ
er of 1978, a half year after he won the Heisman, three black UT faculty members resigned, including the history department’s only black professor. That professor, Douglas Daniels, told me in November 2017 that he took a pay cut to join the University of California system. “The University’s priorities do not lie in the area of Afro-American Studies, nor do they make much of a pretense of attempting to benefit the Afro-Americans who live in the state,” Daniels told the Daily Texan (Debbie Wormser, “UT Racist, Warfield Says,” Sept. 21, 1978). “When you get large numbers of whites in positions of power, they hire large numbers of whites,” Daniels continued. “The question is not one of finding qualified blacks, but rather of finding people who are qualified to recognize their merits.”

  there were only 600 black students out of 41,000: Chuck Kaufman, “Racial Imbalance Worries Blacks,” Daily Texan, March 7, 1975.

  Out of more than 1,500 students at UT’s law school: Duren, Overcoming, 32.

  Sometimes I get the feeling: Ibid., 27.

  Social Life Called Deficient: Derby Bay and Henry Wells, “Social Life Called Deficient; UT Blacks Afforded Little Mixing,” Daily Texan, Apr. 13, 1971.

  Gary Bledsoe, a law student: Erna Smith, “UT Association Wants More Black Grad Student Requirements,” Mar. 30, 1975, UT Information Records, box CDL2/G45b, folder “Black Studies, 1969–1978”; see also “Black Students Describe UT,” 1975, in the same folder.

  $500,000 to resurface: Craig Collisson, “The Fight to Legitimize Blackness: How Black Students Changed the University” (PhD diss., University of Washington, 2009), 259.

  UT’s new president, Lorene Rogers: Anna Marie Pena, “Rogers Opposes 7 Demands,” Daily Texan, April 18, 1975; Duren, Overcoming, 18.

  Coming to UT was a sort of: “Black Students Describe UT,” 1975, UT Information Records, box CDL2/G45b, folder “Black Studies, 1969–1978.”

  hoping the next class: Erna Smith, “Psychological Obstacles at UT,” Austin Statesman, Mar. 30, 1975, clipping in ibid.

  One black senior spoke: Goldstone, Integrating the 40 Acres, 111.

  chiseled from stone and ran into the end zone: Brad Buchholz, “Rock of Ages,” Austin American-Statesman, Dec. 9, 2007, A1. The chiseled remark was said by Doug English; Brad Shearer remembered how Earl ran into the end zone.

  He’s got a lot of tools and might have gone straight: Maysel, Here Come the Texas Longhorns, 56.

  Royal ran the wishbone: Jenna Hays McEachern, 100 Things Longhorns Fans Should Know and Do Before They Die (Chicago: Triumph, 2008), 196.

  a discovery more pleasing: Morris, Courting of Marcus Dupree, 46.

  would sit on the curb: Seale, “A Rose by Any Other Name.”

  Put that ole gray suit: Marty Akins, “Our Lovely Dixie,” Darrel K Royal Papers, box 3J14, folder 82–236, “Poems and Works of Players,” DBCAH.

  has provided an image: McEachern, 100 Things Longhorns Fans, 86. Leaks was the first African American inducted into the university’s Hall of Honor—but only in 1985, thirty-five years after the tradition of honoring its athletes began (Maher and Bohls, Bleeding Orange, 190).

  Plans after college: UT Athletics Media, Men’s Hall of Fame, Earl Campbell folder, 1974-2006, Stark Center.

  During practice I was: John Maher and Kirk Bohls, Long Live the Longhorns: 100 Years of Texas Football (New York: St. Martin’s, 1993), 186.

  That shows how smart: Mickey Herskowitz, “Campbell Earned Respect of All,” Houston Post, July 28, 1991, Earl Campbell folder, Stark Center.

  He’s the only one: Maysel, Here Come the Texas Longhorns, 65.

  He got up on a bench: Bob Galt, “The Rose Grows on Steer Soil,” Dallas Times Herald, Apr. 22, 1975.

  Lord Don’t Let It Rain: Steve Pate, “A Rose Is a Rose to Momma,” Dallas Morning News, Nov. 3, 1977, 1B.

  There once was a Texan: “Chitter Chatter,” undated, Earl Campbell folder, Stark Center.

  More black students: Author interview with Gary Bledsoe, July 2017.

  are content to identify: Erin Tarver, “College Football Is Here; But What Are We Really Cheering?” New York Times, Aug. 21, 2017, nytimes.com/2017/08/21/opinion/college-football-black-athletes.html.

  You might hear things: Tom Cushman, “Game of the Week,” Philadelphia Daily News, Oct. 15, 1975, 43.

  working, of all places: Author interviews with Bill Lyons (Feb. 2018) and Wally Scott (Mar. 2018).

  If a guy works in: Jim Lefko, “Brain Coach,” Daily Texan, Dec. 7, 1977, DBCAH.

  I was sitting in front: Seale, “Rose by Any Other Name,” 13.

  determined not to return: Author interview with Barry Warner, Nov. 2018.

  He began sitting: Campbell, Earl Campbell Story, 33.

  Bob Hope offered to send: McEachern, 100 Things Longhorns Fans, 67.

  It was kind of strange: David Maraniss, “Dear Earl: Campbell Runs On, Only Now He’s Carrying Advice,” Washington Post, June 12, 1990, C6.

  Despite its impersonal nature: Shaw, Meat on the Hoof, 196.

  We sure never went: Reid, “Coach Royal Regrets.”

  I lost my mom three years ago: Earl Campbell, “Darrel Royal, 1924–2012,” Sports Illustrated, Nov. 19, 2012, 20.

  I just remember people saying: Maher and Bohls, Bleeding Orange, 194.

  it is a relief to have: Dale Robertson, “This Year the Real No. 20 Will Stand Up,” Dave Campbell’s Texas Football, July 1977, 109.

  I kept reinjuring it: Ibid.

  He was running under wraps: Ibid.

  Darrell, we brought you down here: Royal, Darrell Royal, from the foreword by Cactus Pryor, ix.

  Some coaches don’t want: David Barron, “Rank and Style,” Houston Chronicle, Oct. 5, 2001, Sports, 9.

  I don’t care if a coach: Reid, “Coach Royal Regrets.”

  the final straw came: Author interview with Ken Dabbs, July 2017.

  This is Secret Agent Aught-aught-six: Reid, “Coach Royal Regrets.”

  build a university the football team: Morris, Courting of Marcus Dupree, 359.

  The Night It Rained Furniture: Ibid., 356.

  They are like tribes: Ibid., 357.

  easily the most bizarre: Stephen Ross, “One More Time: Why This Game is Special,” SB Nation, Sept. 30, 2010, barkingcarnival.com/2010/09/29/one-more-time-why-this-game-is-special.

  Coach Royal, I want you: McEachern, DKR, 121.

  We finally have Earl: Reid, “Coach Royal Regrets.”

  I wanted everything to go: Robertson, “This Year the Real No. 20,” 109.

  spent the entire frustrating: Ibid.

  Everyone from the Black Muslims: Gary Cartwright, “The Lonely Blues of Duane Thomas,” Texas Monthly, February 1973, texasmonthly.com/the-culture/the-lonely-blues-of-duane-thomas.

  Even the criticisms of his: Morris, Courting of Marcus Dupree, 80.

  Whatever you say anywhere and For all his bluster: Dugger, Our Invaded Universities, 130.

  Shivers’s differences with Royal: Details on the Shivers-Royal dynamic and the layout of Royal’s home are in Roy Edwards, “Darrell Royal: Sad End of an Era in UT Athletics,” Texas Sports, April 1980, clipping in Allan Shivers Papers, box 2.325/C66, folder “Athletics,” DBCAH.

  You brought me more: Author interview with Jim Phillips, Aug. 2017.

  all walks of life: Edwards, “Darrell Royal: Sad End.”

  It wasn’t his interest: Maher and Bohls, Bleeding Orange, 34.

  The only Longhorn to stay: Earl Campbell, thetylerrose.com/the-college-years.

  I’m leaving Earl Campbell: Miller, Tyler Rose, 90.

  Every morning at precisely 6:30: Kirk Bohls, “Earl: A Trip with a Star,” Austin American-Statesman, Dec. 4, 1977, D1.

  even gamblers, posing as journalists: Ron Hutcheson, “Bookies, Gamblers Savor OU Clash,” Daily Texan, Oct. 8, 1976, 1.

  his dark crusading face: Shaw, Meat on the Hoof, 82.

  customarily described in old press releases: The University of Texas Off Season Football Training Program Press Release, UT-Austin Sports News
Service, June 1976.

  smutty or foul talk: Jack Gallagher, “Medina, UT’s Antiseptic Atmosphere,” Houston Post, Nov. 20, 1968, Frank Medina folder, Stark Center.

  he called all of them “Mr. Man”: McEachern, 100 Things Longhorns Fans, 53.

  It was like a little bitty man: David Flores, “Tiny Trainer Medina Was Giant in UT Football Heyday,” San Antonio Express-News, Feb. 3, 1989, 1-B.

  divided players into their Christian denominations: McEachern, 100 Things Longhorns Fans, 54.

  now and then dole out cookies: “Background Information on Frank Medina,” University of Texas at Austin Athletics Media Relations Men’s Hall of Honor Collection, Frank Medina folder, 1954–1993, Stark Center.

  The all-American hurdler Ray Cunningham, You didn’t want to go, and When you’re in two-a-days: Billy Dale, “Frank Medina,” Texas Longhorn Support Network, texaslsn.org/frank-medina-1.

  I heard him hollering: “The Earl Campbell Story: Winning Personality,” 31, unidentified clipping (possibly a 1978 UT Sports program) included in Earl Campbell folder, Stark Center. The exchange also appears in Blair, Earl Campbell, 84–85.

  Akers, like Royal and I figured since Ford: Kevin Sherrington, “Farm Couldn’t Hold Sharecropper’s Boy,” Dallas Morning News, Apr. 24, 2016, C2; various articles, Fred Akers folder, University of Texas at Austin Athletics Media Relations, Former Coaches Files Collection, Stark Center.

  By his own count, Akers: Kenny Hand, “Royal Mess: Despite Solid Achievements, Akers’ Job on the Line at UT,” Houston Post, Nov. 22, 1986, 1F.

  his sole hobby, he said: Kirk Bohls, “The Final Days,” Austin American-Statesman, Dec. 22, 1976, E1.

  inaugural UT press conference: Mike Jones, “Akers Has Cool Emotions,” Dallas Morning News, Dec. 1, 1977, 1B; Kirk Bohls, “Horns Believed in Akers—and Themselves,” Nov. 28, 1977, D1; Kirk Bohls, “Akers Meets the Press,” Austin American-Statesman, Dec. 29, 1976; Kirk Bohls and George Breazeale, “It’s Wyoming’s Akers for UT Coach,” Austin American-Statesman, Dec. 16, 1976, A1.

  But the hiring committee: Lou Maysel, “Mike Campbell: ‘I Guess I’ll Get Another Job . . . ,’” Austin American-Statesman, Dec. 17, 1976, E1.