Sport: Longhorns of Plenty

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Texas eyes the national championship

It has never been a picnic, the annual football ferocity between the University of Texas Longhorns and the Oklahoma Sooners. But this year it was strictly M*A*S*H for Texas quarterbacks. On Texas' seventh play, the starting quarterback was scissored by two Sooner defenders and carted off the field with an ankle injury that will keep him out for the season. The second-string signal caller lasted longer—nine plays—before he too went down with a torn knee. From the farthest reaches of the Texas bench came Randy McEachern, a senior quarterback who had sat out last season, his knee in a cast, as a spotter for U.T. radio announcers. When he entered the game, according to campus wags, he had to introduce himself to other players in the offensive huddle. Suddenly in the midst of the fray, McEachern recalls, "my heart was pounding. The whole game went by real fast." Too fast for Oklahoma, which lost to Texas for the first time in six years.

It has been nothing but happy endings ever since for McEachern and the Longhorns. Though Randy himself had to miss the Texas Christian game with a sprained knee (fourth-string Quarterback Sam Ansley came in to lead the team to a 44-14 win), Texas last week remained atop the college polls with the only undefeated record among the football powers. The No. 1 ranking has enabled Coach Fred Akers to emerge early from the long shadow of his legendary predecessor, Darrell Royal. It has also vindicated members of the university athletic commission who disregarded a Royal choice and picked Akers instead. Actually, they had good reason for their decision. Akers had prepped as a Royal assistant before moving into the head coaching job at Wyoming in 1975. In two years he turned the perennially lackluster Cowboys into co-champions of the Western Athletic Conference.

Akers had his job cut out for him: Texas was in a downhill slide; the Longhorns' 5-5-1 record last season was the worst in Royal's 20-year reign. With just 16 seniors on a 60-man roster, the inexperienced Longhorns were expected to finish well down in the rugged Southwest Conference this year. As Defensive Coordinator Leon Fuller said at the beginning of the season: "We're so young, we hold hands going onto the field." But Akers and the staff he brought with him immersed their players in a rigorous training program, breaking down and emphasizing the physical requirements of each position in carefully coordinated drills.

The youngsters learned quickly and, with the handful of blue-chip upperclassmen anchoring a green team, Akers' prodigies became a scourge, ranking in the nation's top five in fewest points allowed and in total points scored. Says Senior Guard Rick Ingraham: "Things were different with Coach Akers and his staff—just the electricity they were generating. I can't remember being so enthused to go out and play."