The University of Texas at Austin Athletics
National Championship memories: David McWilliams
08.30.2013 | Football
David McWilliams played on the 1963 National Championship team and shared his memories of that season with MB-TF.com.
Editor's Note: David McWilliams is a three-year letterman (1961-63) who played center and defensive tackle on the 1963 Texas Longhorns National Championship team. That season he was named to the All Southwest Conference Academic team and was a team Tri-Captain. He was the head coach at Texas Tech in 1986 and then was head coach for the Longhorns from 1987-1991. He currently is an Associate Athletics Director at UT and the director of the T-Association. McWilliams was inducted into the Longhorn Hall of Honor in 1993 and the Texas High School Football Hall of Fame in 1998. Here he recounts some of his memories of the 1963 season.
It was a personal deal that my mother passed away at age 46 about three days before the game -- well, actually four days before the Cotton Bowl game. I had to deal with that, but my mother loved football and Coach [Darrell] Royal said, "I will leave it up to. You know if you can play and play up to your potential."
My mother loved football so I knew she would've wanted me to play, so I did. From that stand point it was more personal.
I think, though, that probably the thing that stands out the most is we had lost -- in the last two years, we had lost to TCU and we tied Rice and lost the national championship. So at A&M we are trailing pretty badly and I remember in that huddle in the second half, especially in the third quarter and fourth quarter of us saying we are not going to give this up. It was just a moment that I just felt like, "Hey we are going to win this game. I don't know how but we are going to win this game." And of course things happened. That is probably other than the personal [issue] with my mother, that was the point where everybody just started pulling together.
We put [QB] Tommy Wade in there and took [QB Duke] Carlisle out, which is unbelievable, but that is what we had to do because we had to throw the ball and Tommy Wade and Hix Green and [Charlie] Talbert caught the passes that we had to have. I remember when we were getting down to the goal line that they put Carlisle in there and he had run it in [for a TD]. In the second one he ran in, you have Talbert showing touchdown and I just remember the exhilaration of that how it was so close that we could've lost it again. So that is the one that sticks out in my mind.
I remember after the TCU game in '61, Tommy Ford, [Scott] Appleton and I were sitting up there in Moore-Hill Hall saying that we just can't let this happen again. Then after the Rice game [in '62] we were sitting up there saying the same thing. So I think we went into the fall with an attitude of I don't know how but we are going to win this game. We weren't offensive juggernauts by any matter, but we only gave up 71 points in 11 games, so we kind of felt that if we can get three points then we can win.
We certainly weren't going to have another chance at it since we were seniors. But, I tell you it was a calm thing. There wasn't a lot of hollering or screaming or - the good thing then was you couldn't gripe at the offense because you were the offense. And you couldn't gripe at the defense because you were the defense, and you couldn't gripe at the kicking game because you were the kicking game. There wasn't a lot of griping going on. I know there was just a calm reserve that we were going to get it done and other than of course the Baylor game that was tight -- we actually were going in to score and fumbled so we could've put it away there in the fourth quarter and didn't do it. [Versus] A&M was really the only game we were behind that we had to come up and win.
I think 1961 team was that team that got everything started at The University of Texas. It was probably Coach Royal's senior group that he had brought in and there was just so much talent on that team and we got beat by TCU, but I felt like that was the stepping stone that got everything started. We built on that in '62 and we built on that in '63, but to me 1961 was the team that got it started.
The other thing that I noticed was looking at the picture how many of the guys were from small towns. It was a bunch of small town guys that came in and just had a bonding. What helped, too, was in '61, our '61 team got ahead of people so often with the first team, a whole bunch of the '63 guys were sophomores on the second team and we got to play a whole lot. In fact the theory was that we might've lettered before the seniors in '61 because you letter by playing for a certain number of minutes, and I am not sure that we didn't letter before '61. That really got us a lot of playing time and a lot of us started in '62, and then we still had that third year of playing in '63, so we had a bunch of experience.
On the team's 50th reunion that will take place on Friday, Aug. 30, 2013
It is unbelievable that it has been that long. Unfortunately we have lost nine guys. We have lost every coach and the only coach still alive is Art Davis, and Pat Cuppepper was a freshman coach. Coach Davis is coming. He is out in Oregon but we have him coming. We tried to find someone from all those guys that are deceased -- either their wife, son, child, or someone. It is kind of one of those things that no one wants anything fancy, and we just want to visit and sit down and talk. I am fortunate because that is what I do for my job is I deal with former letterwinners in both men's and women's sports, so I am in that all the time. So there is a lot of excitement about it, and we have a nice [commemorative] football we are going to present to them. We have invited Frank Denius and Joe Jamail and Tex Moncrief who are all very important to our team and to Coach Royal back then. So it is going to be a special time, and it will be somewhat of a sad time in remembrance of those that have gone on and passed ahead of us.
But the good news is we got Edith Royal coming. She is going to be there. That will be nice. I think knowing that you have [Coach Royal's] presence there with Edith will be nice.
