Royal, Akers & Brown: Trends of A Decade

can you throw in a comparison to Mark Richt while you are at it?

Outstanding and interesting article. Thanks for posting it!!

interesting article

I had no idea Akers was so good against top 10 teams.

A couple of thoughts-

1. In their first ten years, Royal, Akers, and brown all received heavy criticism for offensive conservatism. Royal was panned for being too fond of the quick kick, Akers was famously told to, “Turn the page!” of the playbook, and Brown is criticized for going fetal against top opponents. Frankly, I’m not sure why there might be a trend.

2. In Royal’s era, bowl games were almost exhibitions, unless they might decide a post-season MNC award. His staff probably spent more time keeping players out of trouble than game-planning.

I might look at records against ranked opponents using final (end of season) ranks, rather than ranks at the time of play, to see if any trends jump out.

“In Royal’s era, bowl games were almost exhibitions, unless they might decide a post-season MNC award. His staff probably spent more time keeping players out of trouble than game-planning.”

I’m not sure I buy that TTR. Yes, the final rankings were out before the bowl games, but since there were so few, you were lining up against a elite program more often than not.

And since there weren’t that many bowls it was more of a distinction to play in one. It certainly meant more to be playing on Jan. 1.

Royal’s teams didn’t win all their bowl games, but during his first ten years, they showed up to play in all of them.

It would be interesting to see the assistant coaching turn over in the three regimes. I can’t speak to DKR’s group but, if I rememeber correctly, Fred had a staff that was well thought of and stayed together for at least the first five years he was at UT. I believe Leon Fuller left to take the HC at Colorado St. in’82.

I think the hype for Mack’s first group was that they had all been coordinators at one time or another. It did not take long to see that the hype was just that in several cases. Mack could have benefited greatly from a Leon Fuller/DC or a Leon Manley/Off. off Fred’s staff who took some great, and not so great, talent and coached them up pretty good. Mack’s hesitation to make changes has really cost him.

Very interesting read, srr50. The same three and their respective staffs were miles apart in the way they recruited our high school players. Coach Royal and by extension Campbell, Zapalac, and the rest of his staff would never cut a corner or brother-in-law a single day of practice—-if anything a Bowl game preparations brought the best out of them. Course it was a different time back then—-I guess.

“I might look at records against ranked opponents using final (end of season) ranks, rather than ranks at the time of play, to see if any trends jump out.”

I did a quick look at those numbers Taylor and there were a couple of trends that stuck out.

First of all, Royal’s record gets tougher, Akers takes a hit on his Top 10 mark, and Mack’s Top 10 record drops as well. He also loses several games against ranked opponents who fell out after playing Texas.

Darrell Royal
He picks up six more games against nationally ranked opponents when taking into account the final season rankings, and five of them were against Top 10 teams. For instance in 1959, Arkansas and TCU were both ranked between 11-20 when Texas played them, but they both ended up in the Final Top 10.

Darrell Royal 1957-66 (Final Rankings)
Top 10 opponents: 12-10-1 (54.3%)
Top 11-20 opponents: 4-3 (57.1%)
Overall Record Against Ranked Opponents:
16-13-1 (55.0%)

(In-Season Rankings)
Percentage of schedule vs. Top 10 opponents: 16.7%
Percentage of schedule vs. Top 20 opponents: 23.1%

(Final Rankings)
Percentage of schedule vs. Top 10 opponents: 21.3%
Percentage of schedule vs. Top 20 opponents: 27.7%

Fred Akers overall numbers against Top Ten teams takes a hit, but he ends up with exactly the same number of games against ranked opponents either way you look at it (41). Basically looking at the final rankings, you see several teams that Texas played drop after losing to the Horns (and others) while some of the games against mid-ranked or lesser teams, boosted those opponents up in the rankings.

It is also obvious how quickly the program fell during Akers’last three years. From 1977-83 Texas was 17-11 against Top 20 opponents for a winning percentage of 60.7%

The mark against Top Ten was still a very good 10-6 for a 62.5% winning percentage. The last three years of the Akers Era (1984-86) Texas only went 4-8-1 against ranked opponents.

Fred Akers 1977-86 (Final Rankings)
Top 10 opponents: 11-10-1 (54.7%)
Top 11-20 opponents: 10-9 (52.6%)
Overall Record Against Ranked Opponents:
21-19-1 (52.4%)

(In-Season Rankings)
Percentage of schedule vs. Top 10 opponents: 20.2%
Percentage of schedule vs. Top 20 opponents: 34.4%

(Final Rankings)
Percentage of schedule vs. Top 10 opponents: 17.6%
Percentage of schedule vs. Top 20 opponents: 34.4%

For Mack Brown, looking at the Final Season Top 25 rankings, his record against Top 10 teams drops even lower, and his total number of games against nationally ranked opponents is reduced by 10 games. Basically teams ranked between 21-25 that Texas beat during the season dropped out of the rankings.

Mack Brown 1998-2007 (Final Rankings)
Top 10 opponents: 4-14 (22.2%)
Top 11-20 opponents: 10-1 (90.9%)
Top 21-25 opponents: 2-1 (66.7%)
Overall Record Against Top 25 opponents:
16-16 (50.0%)

(In-Season)
Percentage of schedule vs. Top 10 opponents: 14.1%
Percentage of schedule vs. Top 25 opponents 32.0%

(Final Rankings)
Percentage of schedule vs. Top 10 opponents: 14.1%
Percentage of schedule vs. Top 25 opponents: 25.0%

One trend easy to spot. Royal had the best record in his first decade against all ranked opponents (55%). Akers was just above 500 at 52%, and right now Brown is right at 50% against nationally ranked opponents from the final season rankings.

The other trend? Both Royal and Akers were fairly balanced in their success broken down between Top 10 and Top 20 teams.

Meanwhile Mack has suffered at the hands of Top 10 opponents consistently, but has done a much better job of handling the mid-range teams from the national rankings.

Why does this beergut soul post so much on all the t.u. boards? Is it his burning desire to beat the hell outta t.u? Aaaaaaaaa!!!!

Whenever I go over to the tamc boards I’m almost immediately repulsed to the point of logging right back off. Normal response of a fan who does not in any way feel inferior to his rival.

“When Royal took over the program in 1957, he faced nationally ranked opponents in 6 of the 11 games that year. He lost to #1 OU and #7 Ole Miss in the Sugar Bowl, while defeating #4 A&M, #10 Arkansas, #13 Rice and #17 TCU.”

—when we consider that UT had its worst season ever in 1956, going 1-9 and losing by scores like 45-0 to OU and 46-0 to TCU, that’s an amazing accomplishment against top-flight competition.

You boys haven’t been reading your Eyes of Texas.

I’ve got record breakdowns against ranked teams and rivals for Mack/Fred/Darrell as well as Texas as a whole since 1950. I’ve also got Mack compared with Pete Carroll, Stoops, Bowden (Papa), and JoePa. The ranking records are broken down by individual ranking and added up to make ranges like top five, next five, top ten, next ten, top twenty, etc.

Can’t give you the meat for obvious reasons, but this is essentially what my article was about.

Good read and excellent analysis. It’s difficult to compare different eras, be it coaching or playing, because of cultural differences, makeup of teams, etc., etc.

Just comparing coaches, however, the biggest distinction I see is that:

Darrell Royal was highly respected and his teams were feared. Mack Brown, not so much in either category. Akers was somewhere in between.

JMO.

I love the Akers-era hat . . .

For me, it all boils down to records against top-flight competition and championships, to wit:

Darrell Royal 1957-66
Top 10 opponents: 9-8-1 (52.7%)

Mack Brown 1998-2007
Top 10 opponents 6-12 (33.3%)

Royal won or shared four conference titles in his first ten years, compared to just one for Brown.

Mack Brown, while doing a good job of reviving the program, hasn’t approached Darrell Royal’s level of greatness. Hopefully, he can close the gap in the next few years and bring us some hardware.

Awesome post, srr50.

Great post and discussion.

To Taylor’s point, using end of season rankings has advantages, principally that it corrects for outcomes against teams which were ranked or unranked undeservedly at the time of the game, particularly early in the season. Though I also imagine those tend to average out.

But it creates a different problem, which is that winning or losing, particularly to a program like Texas, is itself highly determinative of whether that team ends up finishing ranked, and particularly whether they end up finishing in the top 10.

In three of our last five bowl games — 2003 Washington State, 2005 Michigan, 2007 Arizona State — our opponent did finish or for certain would have finished the season top 10 by beating us (all three were ranked between #12 and #15 going into the game). None of the three did finish or would have finished top 10 by losing to us.

So we basically could have gone 0-3 against top 10 teams at worst, or 0-0 against top 10 teams at best. That doesn’t seem like a very useful measure of how our program or our coaches do against “top 10 opponents.” We played a given opponent in each of those games, and all we could do is either beat them or lose to them, so the credit for winning should be equal to the debit for losing.

It almost seems like the ideal thing would be use final ranking for your opponents in the first two thirds of the season, and use the ranking at the time of the game for the last third of the season, or something like that. Because the early season rankings are the most inaccurate and based on projections and assumptions, whereas the late season rankings are based mostly on actual accomplishment in that season.

Thinking about it some more, the same was true for the 2000 Holiday Bowl. #8 Oregon finished top 10 by beating us, and would have finished outside the top 10 if they had lost to us.

Cali, you’re absolutely right about game results skewing the stats. Would it be better to use Sagarins, or some least squares ranker that doesn’t weigh the games at the end of the season more heavily than those at the beginning?

I remember hating the stat about Chris Simms’ record against top 10 teams. He led the Horns to a gutsy win at KSU one time, when he had noting in the way of a running game. The ‘cats weren’t top 10 at the time, but I think they finished top 10. He got no credit for a very difficult win.

I hate it when the media says something like, “They only beat one (or two or three or X number) team that ended up ranked at the end of the season” when the team they played and beat was ranked at the time the game was played. If the team in question had lost the game to the ranked team, they would still be ranked. Same goes for saying someone only played X number of teams who finished with a winning record, when some of those teams would have finished over .500 had they beat that someone in their game.

Hope that makes some sense.Basically, if you beat a team that ended the season 5-7, I don’t thin they should criticize you for beating a team that finished under .500, when if that team had beaten you, they would be a .500 team.

Great read, Steve.

When did the Longhorn logo become the distinguishing symbol on our helmets? Did Royal initiate that? Anyone?

Thanks ’Wulf. I believe Royal added the Longhorn logo on the helmet in 1961.

I’m an Auburn fan that randomly stumbled across this. I think comparing the records is interesting, but comparing the eras is not very fair to Mack Brown. Sure, he’s stumbled against OU, but I believe there are more competitive teams, more importantly, more elite players spread around to the teams, that makes Mack’s era much more competitive as a whole. I would say the overall quality of your typical # 8 team in the 50’s and 60’s was not as good as the typical # 8 team of the 2000’s….meaning the difference these days between #1 and #15 is not as much as it used to be (just look at all the upsets last year).

Just to stir it up, if Mack Brown could borrow Tommy Tuberville’s record against top 10 teams in the last 6 years (15-6), UT would have had a couple more titles in his 10 years.

Good luck this year guys, hope you beat OU!

Quick example of what I mentioned above…in 1957 Darrell Royal’s team finished 6-4-1 and finished #11 in the polls. In 2003 10-3 only got Mack Brown #14. In fact, UT has won 10 or more games 21 times, 1/3 of those (7) have been by Mack Brown. (yes, I know they play more games now, but it’s still a significant achievement).

Side note: 1957 National Champs…10-0 Auburn University.

The difference between Mack Brown and Fred Akers is that Mack made all the right calls in his big chance. he put the right players on the field and let them play. You can’t say the same for Fred.

“Quick example of what I mentioned above…in 1957 Darrell Royal’s team finished 6-4-1 and finished #11 in the polls. In 2003 10-3 only got Mack Brown #14”

That’s more because the polls came out before, rather than after bowl games.

But again, Texas played four Top 10 teams in 1957, and only one Top Ten team in 2003.

And no I don’t buy your theory that the talent is so much better distributed today as to make a relative difference between Top Ten teams of the era.

Maybe at the bottom (21-25) but everyone was playing by the same rules back in the 50’s 60’s and since it was basically single platoon football, the talent was spread out more in terms of no specialization.

“Side note: 1957 National Champs…10-0 Auburn University.”

True That.

Of course Auburn won the AP national title while Ohio State won the UPI coaches vote. Seems Auburn was ineligible for a bowl game that year because they were on probation for paying a couple of HS recruits. :)

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