National Championship memories: Pete Lammons

Editor's Note: Pete Lammons is a three-year letterman (1963-65) who played end on the 1963 Texas Longhorns National Championship team. He later played for seven seasons in the AFL and NFL for the New York Jets and Green Bay Packers. He was on the 1969 New York Jets team that upset the Baltimore Colts in Super Bowl III in 1969. Here he recounts some of his memories of the 1963 season and of the 1964 Cotton Bowl when Texas beat Navy and their Heisman Trophy winning quarterback, Roger Staubach, 28-6, to win Texas' first national championship in football.

I remember that when we were coming down the walkway at the Cotton Bowl and we were fixing to run out on the field, both teams were right there and then that Navy coach, Wayne Hardin, I believe, just jumped out there and said, "This is for the national championship and we are going to win," or something like that. And Coach Royal, that just made him a little hot so he just said, "Yeah, we're ready." We then ran out there and of course we were [ready.] We tattooed them pretty good.

I mean, right off the bat we threw the ball and [WR] Phil Harris made some great catches and of course [Duke] Carlisle couldn't throw it more than ten yards. Ha! Ha! So Phil made some great catches and runs afterwards, and we scored. We could've been there for another week, and I don't think they would've scored. They scored with about a minute left against our third team.

It is a little fuzzy to say the least but we were all happy and delighted it was over with, and we came threw it unscathed. Because everybody does have real close encounters and you got to win those lucky games, and we did. In '61 and '62 we didn't, and '64 we didn't. I think we had a better team in '64 than '63, but that is just my thought.

You can look back at it and look at the guys and say, "Damn, we won this?" As I said we didn't have any truly outstanding athletes, we had a lot of good football players. And you just look back - like anything that you look at to accomplish, what it takes to do is that you have to be lucky and fortunate, but you also have to be good. And we were. As I said, together as a group we were really good. I don't think we allowed defensively but about six or seven points a game. If you don't score many more points than that, you are not going to win many games. So we were very good defensively.

We got along great. We had a great -- and I mean a great -- senior class who were the leaders of the whole shebang. And then the juniors -- which was actually my crowd -- and the sophomores. We had some really great guys and quite a few guys went on to play pro ball and have great careers.

I think it started actually in '61 and the drum beat again to keep going and keep going. Then in '63 we were fortunate enough to accommodate what we were all looking for, and like I said [in] '64, with a little bit of good luck we could've won it again. So that just goes to show you how hard it is to win everything.

And like I said, there are no prima donnas on our group of guys. We are a solid group of football players, and it worked out fine with us.

The University of Texas at Austin Athletics

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