The University of Texas at Austin Athletics
Former Royal teammate, UT assistant coach Manley passes away
03.15.2010 | Football
March 15, 2010
Leon Manley, a boyhood friend of Darrell Royal in Hollis, Okla., who spent 18 years during parts of three decades as a Texas assistant football coach, died Saturday night after an extended illness. He was 83.
Manley joined the Texas coaching staff as an offensive line coach with Royal in 1966, and helped coach the Longhorns through one of the most successful eras in UT history. From 1968 through 1970, Texas won 30 straight games and claimed two National Championships. Manley spent nine years with the Longhorns during that stint from 1966 through 1974.
In 1975, he left Texas to join new head coach Fred Akers' staff at the University of Wyoming. After two seasons there, when Akers returned to Texas for the 1977 season, Manley returned as the Longhorns' offensive coordinator and offensive line coach. He retired from coaching for health reasons following the 1985 season.
While serving as supervisor of athletics facilities in June of 1986, Manley suffered the first of several heart attacks, and he continued to struggle with health issues for most of the next 24 years.
Born May 20, 1926, in Hollis, Manley grew up with Royal, and the two began their football relationship on the undefeated Hollis High School team in the early 1940s. Manley and Royal both served in the Armed Forces during World War II, and the two enrolled together at the University of Oklahoma in the fall of 1946, where they played for the next four years.
A tackle for the Sooners, Manley played two years with the Green Bay Packers following his college career, and then became head coach at McAlester (Okla.) High School for the 1952 season. When Royal became head coach of Edmonton in the Canadian Professional League in 1953, he enticed Manley to come and play for him.
In 1954, he returned to Oklahoma, where he earned his master's degree and then went to Northeast Louisiana as an assistant. He spent nine years there, and served two at Colgate before he came to Texas for the 1966 season. At UT, he hooked up with offensive line guru Willie Zapalac, and the two formed one of the most effective assistant coaching tandems in school history. Between 1966 and 1974, the pair produced players who were named all-American eight times and all-SWC 19 times.
In his second tour of duty with the Longhorns staff beginning in 1977, Manley's offensive line produced three first team all-Americans and nine all-SWC selections.
Joined by his late wife, Johnnie, a long-time employee at the UT Swim Center, the Manleys were fixtures in UT athletics through the coaching careers of Royal and Akers, as well as the early years of current athletics director DeLoss Dodds.
Often aided by his former players, Manley was an occasional visitor to Longhorn football practices into the Mack Brown era, and always attended the Longhorn Football Letterman's reunion each spring.
A viewing is currently scheduled for Tuesday evening at Cook-Walden Funeral Home in Pflugerville, with funeral services tentatively set for Wednesday at 10 a.m.
