THREAD: We're gonna talk about Darrell Royal, Mike Gundy, college football and racial equality.

Pack a lunch.

LIKE MANY FOLKS WHO reject the idea of privilege and say they were born not seeing color but character, Darrell K Royal grew up dirt poor and brick hard.

The K in in the middle of his first and last name has no period because it is not an initial but an honorific to his late mother Katy Elizabeth who died of cancer just four months after he was born.

Royal was born in 1924 in Hollis, Oklahoma, just east of the Oklahoma-Texas state line.

The house he was raised in could hardly be called such. Just off of U.S. Highway 62, his family owned a single Holstein cow, handful of chickens and a garden to till at the height of the Dust Bowl era in a state that still felt like a territory.

The streams filled with dirt and sand. The livestock was dying. The Depression had set in. He and his family headed west to California like the Joads of old with water jugs hanging off the side of his father Burley’s blue Whippet.

He picked fruit in the San Joaquin Valley, but it didn’t take. He was ridiculed for being who he was: an Okie with a loud twang. So he moved back home where he blossomed into an outright football star.

He came to the University of Oklahoma. He played quarterback and once attempted 76-straight passes without a pick. He left OU with the school record for interceptions, longest punt (81 yards) and longest punt return (95) yards.

After a couple stops at Mississippi State, the University of Washington and the Canadian Football League, he was hired as the head ball coach in charge at the University of Texas for a yearly salary of $15,000 in 1957.

Royal inherited a team from former UT coach Ed Price that finished 1-9 in 1956. One of that 1956 team's losses was the first at Texas Memorial Stadium against Texas A&M. It was the only time Bear Bryant beat Texas.

Another was to Bud Wilkinson's No. 1-ranked Sooners, who stomped a mud hole in Texas 45-0 and walked it dry. That same year Prentice Gautt became the first Black player on the University of Oklahoma football team.

Over the next 20 years, Royal won 11 Southwest Conference titles along with national titles in 1963, 1969 and 1970.

By 1974, he’d yet to endure a losing season at Texas, and, at one point, won 30 consecutive games.

He was voted “Outstanding Coach of the Sixties” in a poll performed by ABC ahead of USC coach John McKay, Ohio State coach Woody Hayes and Bear Bryant. Barry Switzer wasn’t even thought of in such a manner in the Sixties.

Royal was so popular in the Sixties that fewer than six weeks after John F. Kennedy was assassinated a Houston attorney wrote a letter to Lyndon Baines Johnson recommending Royal for United States Vice President.

He’d also been head coach of the last all white college football team to win a national championship in 1969—15 years after the U.S. Supreme Court ended separate but equal as law and ruled schools must integrate in 1954.

Royal took great pains to point out Arkansas, the team that finished No. 2 in the polls in ’69, was also an all-white team.

Six of the first Black football players to ever suited up for Texas played for him. None of them felt Royal valued them to the degree that he valued white players.

In his book, “Meat on the Hoof,” UT offensive lineman Gary Shaw, a white man, claimed that after hitting a tackling dummy in practice that Royal told him, “Shaw, if you keep playing like that, we might have to start treating you like a white man around here.”

Alfred Jackson was roommates with Earl Campbell at Texas. In Asher Price’s essential biography about Campbell, Jackson said his uncle told him not to commit to Royal’s Longhorns. “Don’t go to the University of Texas.

"You’re going to be discriminated against. And Darrell Royal doesn’t like Black players. You’re never going to make it there. You’re not going to get a chance to play.”

For his part, Jackson said Royal treated him fairly. But the word was out among Black folks, and he admitted to that.

And that AP series, which remains subject to questions of accuracy to this day, did prove one fact: None of Royal’s Black players, who he’d signed off on being interviewed about race and football at UT, came to him with their uneasiness and complaints.

They did not feel comfortable voicing their displeasure to their coach for fear of retribution, and Royal could not understand how his powerful stature and public record on race and football directly worked against any idea of feeling as if you’d be treated fairly in your

fears and concerns for your well-being and inclusivity in an environment created by him that felt hostile and exclusive to Blacks in football and in campus.

Even today just 5 percent of UT's student body is Black. According to the latest U.S. Census, 13 percent of America is Black and 6 percent are Black males.

The stories around Black high school football had reached a space where Royal admitted that they were hurting him in recruiting. Joe Greene grew up in Temple, Texas, and attended Dunbar High—65 miles from Austin, Texas, where the Longhorns play on the 40 Acres.

Greene decided to play college football at a school twice as far away with no where near the pedigree and tradition of Texas and a direction school at that—the University of North Texas—while refusing to even consider UT because of its record in delaying the recruitment of Black

players. Greene went on to earn selection in 10 Pro bowls; named All-Pro five times; named NFL Defensive Player of the Year twice; and NFL Man of the Year in 1979 en route to the Pro Football Hall of Fame.

And he wasn’t the only player UT didn't sign from its state and recruiting footprint in the 16 years before Julius Whittier became the first Black man to letter in football at Texas.

At a moment when Michigan State coach Duffy Daughtery made his living recruiting south eastern Texas—with a heavy emphasis on Beaumont—the Spartans won two national titles in 1965 and 1966 and was the first major college football program to boast more Black players than white

players on the roster, Daughtery ran into Royal. In a story chronicled in Hook ‘Em Horns by Denne Freeman, Daughtery asked Royal, “Darrell, what are you doing in my neck of the woods?” he said.

“This has hurt me in recruiting and has hurt me with just straight friendship with Blacks.”

Even Whittier, the first Black letterman for Royal and Texas, lamented his time as a Longhorn and told the AP as much—while still a player.

He told the AP Black folks don’t get “chill bumps” when the Eyes of Texas is played.

“Since when have you seen the orange (or) red, white and blue doing us a favor?” Whittier said.

Royal didn’t get it.

“How can he say that the orange has done nothing for him? He’s been here on scholarship. He’s been exposed. He’s getting an education preparing himself where he can do something to contribute to his race. What has his country done for him?

"I wonder if he knows what other countries have done for Blacks?”

After recruiting and failing to sign a Black player in 1972. He tried and failed again in 1973.

Then he struck oil with Campbell in 1974, but the question of whether or not Royal was a racist or just too slow in integrating and the opposite of progressive is one I think he answered in a Harper’s feature on race and Texas football the year he signed his first Black player.

“Listen, I know Black people think I’m racist. But what am I supposed to do, run around denying it? That’s incriminating in itself.”

In 1973, he answered it again when he told writer Jimmy Banks after building a relationship with President Johnson where they spoke at length on racial equality.

"I think I've always had, basically, a lot of compassion and feeling for the Blacks. But it’s like President Johnson told me. You know, I never had thought I was prejudiced, and I still don’t believe I was, but I just wasn’t as concerned about their problems as I should have been

“That’s what got me to thinking. I hadn’t done anything to hurt ‘em—but neither had I done anything to help ‘em. Any fair-minded person would say that things had not been fair, and I knew they hadn’t been fair.

"I knew Blacks weren’t being treated equally and I knew they weren’t being given an equal chance. But I really hadn’t worried about it, ‘til then…"

“That feeling came partly from spending a lot of time with President Johnson. If there’s one thing he talked on, during the time I was with him, more than anything else, it was the race situation.

"Equal opportunity. The deprived. This entered into our conversation a lot of the time when were together.”

Mike Gundy is Ray and Judy's kid, the middle child of their three.

His heroes were Robin Yount, Dan Marino, Pete Rose and Roger Staubach. And he wore number 12 as a player. But he told the Tulsa World that he didn't wear it for Staubach.

He wore it for his dad.

Mike first appeared in a big city newspaper not for football but for wrestling accomplishments in middle school. But he didn't like wrestling. His father wouldn't let him quit.

When he was just approaching sixth grade, Mike was in a slump while playing baseball. He threw his helmet in frustration. His dad had seen enough.

"He just walked in and grabbed me and told the coach we were going home, just very calm," Mike told World.

"Of course, now I am crying. He loaded me up and drove me all the way back to Midwest City and he told me he would decide when I was ready to play again. And that was hard for me because I loved to play."

Mike won wrestling tournament after wrestling tournament as a kid. He and OSU wrestling coach John Smith—a legend in Del City, Stillwater and the known damn galaxy—were contemporaries and friends.

Mike won so many tournaments that his father scoffed at any finish that was not first place for his son. When he finished second once, on the drive home from a tournament, Mike's father pulled over and tossed Mike's second place trophy in the ditch.

"And I'm not as hard on my kids as he was on me," he told the Tulsa World. "Hopefully about three generations from now we'll get it balanced out."

Decades later you can hear how experiences like that one shaped him as a football coach.

"I think we live in a world where people are non-committal," he said in 2018. "We allow liberalism to say, 'Hey, I can really just do what I want and I don’t have to be really tough and fight through it.'

"You see that with young people because it’s an option they’re given. We weren’t given that option when we were growing up. In the world today, there’s a lot of entitlement. I’m a firm believer in the snowflake."

In 1985, Gundy started at quarterback for the Midwest City Bombers and led them to their first state title in 25 years with a thrilling 40-36 victory against Muskogee.

When Gundy finished at Midwest City he was so good, he was not only offered but committed to play at the University of Oklahoma.

“...but Jamelle Holieway was starting there and won the [1985] national championship,” he told SBNation. "He had three years left, so I was smart enough to say, look, their defense is always gonna be awesome, and he just won a national championship.

"They only play Texas and Nebraska every year, that have the same level of talent as them. How am I ever going to break in and be the starter?”

His brother Cale would also grow up to be a quarterback. He started at Oklahoma and has been an assistant in Norman for two head coaches for more than 20 years. He's perhaps the best recruiter in state history next to Switzer.

Mike seriously began considering Oklahoma State while committed to Switzer and OU. Rather than tell Switzer himself he wanted to visit Stillwater, he hoped his parents would.

His father refused and told Mike he needed to call Switzer himself. He did and later admitted, "It was an extremely difficult thing to do." Had he remained committed, he and OU QB Charles Thompson would've been classmates.

He eventually signed with OSU where he was in the same backfield as Barry Sanders and Thurman Thomas and throwing passes to Hart Lee Dykes. And he was cocksure.

When the Pokes signed quarterback Kenny Ford in 1987, OSU coaches got under Gundy's skin by saying Ford could be better than him.

"Listen, Kenny Ford better be able to play defense because I'm just telling you this right now. He's got no chance to play quarterback here," he said.

The Pokes went 10-2 that year.

He got the starting job at OSU as a true freshman in 1986 because Ronnie Williams kept giving the ball away.

But the move wasn't met with absolute positivity from his teammates.

"Ronnie was black and I was white and all the guys playing with him were black," Mike told the World.

"It wasn't a real racial issue, but I think in their mind there was a little white dude that is 170 pounds and Ronnie just quarterbacked us to the Gator Bowl and why all of a sudden (is there a change)? It didn't bother me, but I think it probably crossed some of their minds."

Gundy responded with a stretch of 138 consecutive passes without a pick. When finished his career at OSU, he held the all-time Big 8 passing record.

Not bad for a man who handed the ball to Sanders 344 times in one season. And 251 times to Thomas in another.

But his lasting impact on OSU football has come as a head coach. Between 1962 and 2002, OSU never beat OU going 0-35-1. Even more remarkable is from his 1989 to 2000, Gundy was never a part of a winning team as a player or coach.

In 16 years as head coach, though, Gundy has doubled that Bedlam win tally to two. That’s not a lot. It’s also one fewer than Lincoln Riley’s total of three. He’s only been head coach at OU for three years.

But consider where OSU has come from: From 1960 to 2005, OSU finished the season ranked in the AP top 25 just five times.

In 2011, with Gundy as head ball coach in charge, the Cowboys won their first Big 12 title, spanked Oklahoma with some demonic presence called Squinky and was an Iowa State loss away from playing for national title.

One year later Gundy became the winningest football coach in school history with 63 wins. Through 2019 he's lost just 64 games.

In a town with just over 50,000 residents, Gundy, the late Boone Pickens and OSU built a program that went from seeing crowds of about 36,000 to a stadium that holds more than the population of the town itself at 60,000 seats.

He has coached two players to three Biletnikoff Awards and been a player or coach of nearly 30 percent of all games played by the Cowboys.

He also has brought controversy to OSU’s doorstep over and over again. As a matter of fact, he is the only FBS head coach in the state with a tabbed labeled CONTROVERSIES on his wikipedia page.

From his unprompted and full-throated support for One America News in April; to his wearing a shirt in a photo with the network’s logo on it in June; to his 2007 declaration of his middle-aged manhood in a misguided defense of Bobby Reid;

to his 2017 claim that his bosses at OSU stay angry with him and will eventually run him off; to his players’ recent revolt on Twitter a week ago;

to the three times he managed to botch apologizing for wearing the OAN shirt in two days—each a little more infuriating than the next and only once recognizing it's not about the shirt—he’s manufactured embarrassing moments for the school and its alumni.

Members of the Black Alumni Society at OSU were so hurt and embarrassed that they felt it necessary to send the OSU Board of Regents 10 actionable recommendations for the upcoming school year

in large part due to how poorly Gundy has represented the university over the past two months and absence of action to correct it.

And then there’s this anecdote from a story in Yahoo! Sports in which, Anthony Diaz was a walk-on at Oklahoma State. His heart stopped during a practice in November last year.

As Diaz was treated, Gundy moved practice away from him. Diaz woke in an ambulance.

Gundy spoke to the team after practice where he referred to Anthony as "Nate Diaz."

Like Darrell Royal, Gundy has proven to be the best coach in the history of the school. Both have achieved more at their respective programs than any coach before or since.

Both reached a level of clout and cultural cache within their respective universities that they could have (Royal) and still could do (Gundy) to radically change how cultural diversity are (Gundy) and racial inclusivity were (Royal) modeled.

Royal and Gundy could have brought about change then (Royal) and heretofore unforeseen and unrivaled now (Gundy) within their respective schools. Their legacies deserve investigation and their accomplishments acknowledged.

Like Royal in the Sixties, Gundy has demonstrated a refusal to change his behavior to be more inclusive, less callous and more thoughtful because he has never been forced to do so—as many judges forced public schools around the country in the decades ago.

Even more jarring, Gundy has given mounting evidence that a change, in his case, is unlikely given his past actions. Not long after Royal could no longer dispel his controversial record in integrating Texas Longhorns football he retired.

Even more jarring, Gundy has given mounting evidence that a change, in his case, is unlikely given his past actions. Not long after Royal could no longer dispel his controversial record in integrating Texas Longhorns football he retired.

While it stands to reason, OSU athletic director Mike Holder and President Burns Hargis would anger a group of fans with any decision they choose to make as pertains to Gundy’s future as head coach in Stillwater—

it’s their silence since acknowledging Chuba Hubbard’s voiced displeasure one week ago that has been loudest.

Gundy relayed in his first apology—a video with Hubbard—that he was going to make some changes and issued a written statement to Yahoo! Sports that claims he’s doing more listening with his players.

But who is his LBJ?

Now, what action is the university going to take in helping Gundy and the culture of the program change? The week-long answer has been as simple as it has been heart-breaking.

Nothing.

I owe a debt to Price's work and the World in crafting this essay. Both have made me a better commentator, writer and storyteller.

Unroll this here: https://rj.substack.com/p/race-gundy-race-royal