Texas wishbone offense fondly remembered 50 years after the debut

ByLARRY CARLSON Aug 25, 2018

Ted Koy was at home in Bellville, trying to cool off after another hot, humid summer day of hauling hay and digging post-holes on his father's farmland, an hour west of Houston but a million miles distant in feel, when he was surprised to receive a phone call from Texas assistant football coach Emory Bellard. It was 1968, and drills back in Austin were still a week away. But Bellard told his biggest back that he wanted him to come in a few days early.

"My first thought was, 'Okay, they're gonna put me on defense, try and get me adjusted to something else,'" Koy recalls.

The highly-respected Koy, a junior-to-be, had put in a more than solid season for the mercurial '67 'Horns who had managed six straight midseason wins sandwiched between two opening losses and two closing ones. He had competed neck-and-neck in the spring at fullback with Steve Worster, the most heavily recruited runner of Darrell Royal's first decade at Texas, and a starter was still to be determined. Everyone knew that senior Chris Gilbert would be getting plenty more carries. Lizard-quick and durable, Gilbert had set records with a 96-yard burst, dizzying highlights and thousand-yard stat sheets in each of his first two seasons.

Was Ted, the imposing (6-2, 210), swift, emerging junior with star potential and youngest of the Koy clan (Big Ern was a three-time All-Southwest Conference back in the early 1930s and gained fame as major league baseball's fastest man on the basepaths with the Brooklyn Dodgers, and Ernie, Jr. had recently shined for Longhorn teams that went 30-2-1 from '62-'64 and was now a Pro-Bowl RB for the New York Giants) now to shift to a totally different role on the other side of the ball?

Whatever foreboding thoughts flashed through the youngest Koy's mind, they were quickly calmed by an intriguing idea via Bellard's soft drawl on the phone, "He did say 'We're gonna get y'all, all of you, in the backfield," Ted recollects.

Now he was ready to finish off the summertime farm chores and saddle up for an early return to the Forty Acres.

The rest, the results, are there in the record books. And many of those of us lucky enough to have watched, vividly remember. The wishbone, the triple-option formation that Bellard, only recently hired by Royal from the high school coaching ranks, created to debut in September occasionally revved but mostly sputtered through an opening tie with Houston and a loss to Texas Tech in the Horns' first two outings.

But with a quarterback switch from Bill Bradley (future NFL All-Pro safety with the Philadelphia Eagles) to James Street in the second half at Lubbock, the Burnt Orange emphatically hit the reset button away from three straight 6-4 regular seasons and cruised to thirty consecutive victories, two national titles, six straight conference crowns and ignited a home-field win streak that did not die until midseason of '76, just a few games before Royal retired.

It would be vast, classic understatement to say that Bellard's and Royal's brainy scheme to maximize an overflow of backfield talent was successful.

Gilbert would, with the '68 debut of the wishbone, become college football's first three-time 1,000-yard rusher, earning All-America honors.

Street, the ultimate competitor and All-America baseball pitcher for the Texas hardballers, would go 20-0 as a starter at quarterback, cementing legendary status.

"James was never 'at idle,'...he was always excited about something," Koy recalled of his late friend. "The next move or the next play was always gonna be even better."

Koy would be a huge presence in that 20-game span, displaying a rare blend of speed, power and leadership to wreck opposing defenses and captain the '69 national championship squad.

Worster would, astonishingly, live up to and exceed the hype, becoming a three-time All-SWC, two-time All-America pick who would bruise defenses as a runner, blocker or decoy on every play.

A formation that offered the quarterback the option to hand off to the fullback, keep the ball or flip it at the last tantalizing second to one full-throttle halfback riding behind the other as lead blocker, transformed a Texas squad that -- even with the remarkable Gilbert at tailback  -- had averaged just 19 points in '67 to a record-busting group that, on the heels of basically a "dead ball" era of college football, was suddenly putting up 40 points per game (41.4 in 1969 and 41.2 in 1970).

It started with powerful blocking up front by veteran troops such as All-SWC guard Danny Abbott and tackle Bob McKay (pictured above), a consensus All-America choice in '69 who is now a member of the College Football Hall of Fame.  And, boy, did those halfbacks, paving the way on those stealth-timed pitches from Street, focus on blocking.

The scheme, executed properly, looked so beautiful.

And it still does today, via grainy film and video. But it was all about details. And repetition.  And more repetition.

"Everything (Bellard) would say sounded opposite what you thought," Koy remembers of the early tutoring sessions. "We're not gonna block the tackle? We're not blocking the defensive end? It was Greek."

But Koy credits Bellard for obviously having mapped out every pace, step by step, all summer long. To the pipe-puffing coach, Inches of positioning were essential.

"That first step was critical," Koy emphasizes, then recites a few imprinted lessons. "Stay on that arc. The outside hip would never dip," Koy laughs, remembering that he did the footwork so much that it became the stuff of Rote memorization. "I can do it today," he says, a smile in his voice.

Intricacies aside, it didn't take Texas long to make short order of opposing defenses. Koy says today that the momentum really did start with Street's promotion and the late offensive success in the September loss at Tech, and got very strong with just one win, a 31-3 home game against a less-than-stout Oklahoma State team.

"After that, we knew what we were doing and had the confidence it would work," he says.

A late comeback for a 26-20 triumph followed at the Cotton Bowl against OU.  A week later, Texas took a comfortable 39-15 lead over an excellent Arkansas team before the Hogs added two late garbage touchdowns to make the final score more respectable. The wishbone was flourishing.

All four backfield members were eating up yardage. Helpless defenses, trying vainly to stop them, often left split end Cotton Speyrer wide open, resulting in long TD bombs from Street.

No opponent got closer than 21 points on the deficit side during the remaining five conference knockouts. The first-team offense frequently built big first-half leads and sat out most of the second half as backups polished their skills for the future. Typical was the Thanksgiving Day game in Austin. The Longhorns manhandled the Aggies for five touchdowns to take a 35-0 halftime lead, and Bill Bradley intercepted four passes before the starters exited.

Now a Cotton Bowl date with powerful Tennessee awaited. But the Vols turned out no better equipped to tone down the wishbone than had the Aggies, Horned Frogs or other conference doormats.

As the wishbone had been fine-tuned and the Longhorns had rocketed in the rankings, Koy had noticed the futility that opposing defenders must have acutely felt.  He looks back at regularly "almost chuckling" as he would lead the way for Gilbert and encounter a lone, hopelessly outnumbered defender in wait, standing sentry and angling to "force" just a long gain instead of a touchdown.

Perhaps the best single example of that came, more than once, against All-America DB Jimmy Weatherford during Texas' Cotton Bowl whomping of "the other UT."

Koy does laugh aloud now, recalling the recurring nightmare the Vol defender faced with Koy and Gilbert taking turns stampeding toward him.

"He would literally be hollering, 'help, help.' It's him against me and an All-American running back. He saw a mismatch coming."

The help didn't arrive. It wasn't pretty, except for Texas, running away with a 36-13 win over the eighth-ranked team in the nation.

The showy victory was UT's ninth straight and earned Texas a final ranking of number three.

More importantly, a large portion of the letter-winners would be back the next season and the next. Back-to-back national championships. A seemingly endless beam of blowout wins and orange towers. The Texas Longhorns, after a few years of doldrums, were cresting again atop college football with an offense that would begin to be copied and exploited and would remain, in various circles, unstoppable for more than a decade.

When Texas, then Oklahoma, and Alabama ran roughshod over foes, they exploited defenses with speed, savvy, and talent second to none.  Decades later, use of the wishbone in college usually correlates to service academies and the odd outlier such as Georgia Tech. Those programs use it, not with standout size, speed and talent but seemingly because of a lack of such. The wishbone can work in these situations because, just as in UT's early heyday with it, few teams have the time or know-how to adequately prepare for a peculiar formation.

Dr. Koy, now 70 and retired from a long career in veterinary medicine that followed five seasons in the NFL, think the wishbone could, hypothetically, still succeed at college's highest levels but for one giant roadblock. That would be recruiting.

"If you're running that option, you're not going to have a lot of the top kids look at you," Koy said, mentioning the obvious desire of most top recruits to play more of a pass-happy offense and dream of NFL careers.

Like those contemporary players in at least one regard, Koy is used to looking forward more than recalling memories. He's in a well-entrenched habit of attending all Longhorn football games, home and away, and said he's primed for the trip to Maryland. He has been a regular visitor, along with former teammates like McKay, to UT practices this summer, and said he has been impressed by what he has seen of Tom Herman's 2018 charges.

"I haven't seen a lazy step from anyone," Koy said. "They're more comfortable and I see a lot more stability. I think we've got a good foundation moving forward."

A half-century has passed since the debut of the wishbone. Times, styles of play, and student-athletes have changed greatly. But it's a solid bet that Ted Koy and others closely watching UT drills notice that some things, like summer Texas heat, endure.

Larry Carlson saw his first Longhorn victories in 1960 and grew up in a bedroom that was painted burnt orange. He was the sports director and host of "Longhorn Locker Room" for KVET radio from 1977-79 and later co-hosted "Longhorn Pipeline" on San Antonio's ESPN Radio affiliate from 2008-2011. He has been teaching broadcast journalism at Texas State University since 1984 and resides with his wife in the Alamo City.

Write to Larry Carlson at lc13@txstate.edu