“1990 was a great season. What do they call it? ‘Shock the Nation’?” David McWilliams says with a grin. “It was a ‘Shock the Nation’ Tour.”
When Texas had last claimed the national collegiate football title in 1970, McWilliams was going into his first season as a coaching assistant at UT. Now it was 1990 and he was beginning his fourth season as the program’s head coach, with the Longhorns facing a 20-year championship drought.
He certainly knew what a winning program looked and felt like. In 1970 he accepted a position to become a defensive assistant under Longhorn legend Darrell Royal, as Texas posted a 10-1 mark and shared the title crown with Nebraska and Ohio State that year.
McWilliams came from a family that embraced football, but there were certain standards his parents held him to along the way. “My mother -- as long as I made good grades, I could play football. I could go fishing and do anything I wanted. And as long as I went to church, even on Wednesdays, I could play football.” McWilliams says.
Growing up, McWilliams had always played quarterback. But between his sophomore and junior year of high school, the coach at Cleburne told McWilliams that he was moving to center. Reflecting on that news from his teenage years, McWilliams remembers his father asking if he was sure that accepting the move was a wise course of action. “Well Dad, it’s the best thing for me,” McWilliams responded. He was a great athlete at the time and could keep the chains moving with his legs, but McWilliams admits that other quarterbacks on the Cleburne High School roster were more polished passers.
The shift to center was a transition that molded the course of McWilliams’ career.
He went on to play under Royal at the University of Texas, as the Longhorns won a national championship, three Southwest Conference titles, and finished as a top-four team in the nation during all three years that McWilliams served as a starter.
As successful as McWilliams’ time as a player was, he was uncertain whether there would be an opportunity for him at the professional level. “You know, I thought about the NFL,” McWilliams says. “But I didn’t see a spot for me. I mean, I played center and linebacker for Texas at 186 pounds.”
For context, Texas’ starting center during the 2019 season, Zach Shackelford, weighed in at 305 pounds. The Texas starting linebackers, meanwhile, all pushed the scale between 240 and 250 pounds.
“They weren’t huge back then, but they were big enough.” McWilliams says. “I actually had an opportunity to go to a camp that summer (after graduating from Texas). I talked to coach Royal about it and he said, ‘All they’re going to do is use you for fodder and then they’re going to cut you. You ought to go ahead and get started in your career, whatever it’s going to be.’”
McWilliams had majored in mathematics at UT, right around the time programming platforms like CODAP and Fortran were coming into being. He studied under Dr. Bill Guy, who taught at the university for 60 years and became one of the department’s most beloved professors during the course of his career. “He was a great math teacher, but just a friend too,” McWilliams recalls.
When McWIlliams went to Guy for consultation on job options after graduation, he pointed to an Endicott, New York-based company that was rising to international relevance.
“Dr. Guy said, ‘Well, there’s this company that’s starting out with these new computer programs and they’re hiring mathematicians. It’s called International Business Machines.’”
Concurrently, McWilliams had a chance to get a start in coaching. “Coach Royal called me and asked if I’d be interested in working at Abilene High School. They were trying to go to a defensive alignment called ‘Wide Tackle Six.’”’
The Wide Tackle Six was a system that McWIlliams had studied intently, having executed it successfully as a player at Texas. “Almost everybody, everywhere was running the ball. And so that’s why we played a Wide Tackle Six, because you have an eight-man front. It’s a whole lot better run defense.”
The young man elected to go with his heart. “I went back and told Dr. Guy, ‘I’m going to go coach football at Abilene High.’ I don’t know how smart I was, but of course I wouldn’t trade it.”
McWilliams recalls a friend, and former UT student, four years his junior, who went on to work for IBM. “He retired early with lots of money.”
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McWilliams headed to Abilene shortly after graduation, and quickly elevated in the ranks, serving as an assistant coach at the high school for two seasons before being promoted to head coach in 1966. It was at Abilene that McWilliams met his wife, Cindy, and got four years of head coaching experience under his belt, all thanks to the Wide Tackle Six.
During his two-year tenure as a high school assistant McWilliams focused primarily on coaching the offensive and defensive lines. "Abilene had always been an odd defense -- a “50” front. So they completely changed, and they needed somebody that had played the Wide Tackle Six. I had played everything but secondary. And really the secondary was not very complicated, it was a cover three -- pretty simple to teach.”
Not only did McWilliams coach football and track while at Abilene High School, he also taught classes. During his first two years as an assistant, he worked a half day teaching four geometry classes and the other half day coaching. McWilliams then took on duties as the offseason coach and shortly thereafter became head coach of the football team.
“In high school, you pretty much take what you’ve got and try to place them in the defense and the offense that they can run. And really in college, you have the opportunity to go out and recruit guys to come in and run your defense and your offense.”
McWilliams admits that he would not have been in a position to be the head coach at Abilene High School, or to later inherit roles at Texas and Texas Tech, had it not been for Darrell Royal. The legendary coach had recruited McWilliams to play at Texas and was always a reliable source of advice throughout his career.
“I completely admired Coach Royal, and he helped me in every job I ever had. He’s just someone who was a friend as well as a coach. Coach Royal was number one. He always was, and always will be in my mind.”
In 1970, Darrell Royal hired McWilliams onto the Texas staff as a coach for the freshman team. McWilliams pitched in with the underclassmen and coached linebackers on varsity initially, but would specialize in coaching defensive linemen in subsequent years.
Fred Akers took over as head coach in 1977 upon Royal’s retirement, and retained McWilliams as a defensive ends coach. Akers had gone an impressive 46-13-1 over his first five years leading the Longhorns, when in 1982, defensive coordinator Leon Fuller received a head coaching offer from Colorado State.
Upon Fuller’s exit, McWilliams took over as defensive coordinator, with his units finishing 15th, second, 63rd and 52nd in scoring defense between the 1982 and 1985 seasons, and the team posting a combined record of 35-12-1 during that span.
Then in 1986, Texas Tech grew interested in recruiting the 44-year-old assistant to lead its program, and McWilliams found himself with his first chance at being a big-time collegiate head coach.
McWilliams signed a five-year deal to become the ninth head coach in Texas Tech program history, but he had a clause in his contract that permitted him an out at any time. He was not opposed to the idea of signing up for a longer-term commitment during negotiations, but McWilliams was advised that he had to prove himself first. “I even told one of the regents there, ‘I tell you what, I’ll sign a 10-year deal if you will guarantee me certain incentives along the way.’” McWilliams remembers the Texas Tech executive responding, “Well we can’t do that, because we don’t know how you’re going to do.”
No matter, even without the insurance of having guaranteed, long-term backing from the program, McWilliams went out and helped lead Texas Tech to its first winning season since 1978. Led by Billy Joe Tolliver at quarterback, along with a trio of backs in James Gray, Isaac Garnett and Ervin Farris, who each topped 500 rushing yards, Texas Tech went 7-4 during the regular season and earned an Independence Bowl bid to take on Ole Miss.
McWilliams talks glowingly of the team he had at Texas Tech in 1986, and perhaps lights up the most when describing the undersized, but crafty set of receivers the Raiders deployed that year, including future Canadian Football Leaguers Wayne Walker (5’8”) and Tyrone Thuman (5’3”). “We had a bunch of... well we called them ‘The Smurfs.’ Little bitty receivers, but they could run, and they would catch the ball.”
The Red Raiders got off to a slow start to begin the ‘86 season, dropping three of the team’s first five games and getting walloped by top-20 programs Miami, Baylor and Texas A&M by a combined 102 points. In each of those three early-season contests, the favorite downed Texas Tech by a margin of at least 30 points.
Then in mid October, McWilliams and the Red Raiders flipped a switch.
It began October 11, with a colossal road upset over the No. 8 team in the land, Arkansas. With a tight game in the fourth quarter, Tyrone “smallest player in major college football” Thurman peeled off a 27-yard punt return to set up the Raiders in scoring position. Six plays later, Billy Joe Tolliver plunged in for a one-yard QB sneak, providing Tech with insurance en route to a 17-7 victory.
After surprising the Razorbacks to get to 3-3 on the year, Texas Tech went on the road again and beat up on lowly Rice, 49-21, before returning home for a much-anticipated duel against McWilliams’ alma mater and former employer of 16 years, Texas.
McWilliams said he held no hard feelings against the Longhorns at any point while he was away from UT, but running his own program now at Texas Tech, he had an obligation to put a winning product on the field for his new university. “Texas had been my school, they had taken care of me. Aw nah, I loved Texas, and pulled for them every game that we didn’t play them that year. But somebody asked me once, ‘Who are you going to pull for?’ I said ‘Well, I look at the paycheck and it says ‘Texas Tech’. So that’s who I'm going to try and pull for.’”
From McWilliams’ personal perspective, there probably could not have been a more meaningful date on the calendar that season than November 1, when Texas Tech played host to the Longhorns in Lubbock.
McWilliams felt positively about his team’s chances going into that matchup. “We had a good solid team at Texas Tech, and Texas was really struggling on offense. They could not figure it out, I mean, they didn’t do anything on offense that season.”
Coming off Texas’ middling 52nd-place finish in scoring offense during 1985, coach Akers elected to fire offensive coordinator Ron Toman, and bring in Dwain Painter from Georgia Tech to fill the position. The Longhorns’ magic elixir did not turn out to be a change at the OC position, however, as Texas stumbled to a 3-3 start, and had been held under 18 points in three of its preceding four games heading into the matchup against Texas Tech.
The Longhorns’ offense put up 21 points against McWilliams’ bunch, but a late 94-yard punt return touchdown from Tyrone Thurman proved pivotal as the Red Raiders pushed past Texas, 23-21. “Normally you tell the punt returner, ‘Stand on the 10-yard line and don’t back up,’ McWilliams recalls. “As soon as he ran it, he came running up to me, and he started hollering. I told him, ‘Look, a mistake isn't a mistake until the play’s over. You saw it. You took it. I can’t coach that.’”
Fresh off the big win, Texas Tech went on to trounce TCU to get to 6-3, and then suffered a 13-7 defeat to SMU before going on to rout Houston, 34-7. With Texas Tech holding a 7-4 record, and McWilliams owning a signature win over his alma mater, the coach’s value stood at an all-time high.
McWilliams had been in Lubbock for just 11 games -- about six months total including offseason time -- before getting offered the head coaching job at the University of Texas. With two decades of experience on the sidelines for Texas as a player and coach by 1987, rejoining the Longhorns seemed a clear upgrade to McWilliams at the time.
“I really didn’t think they’d fire coach Akers,” McWilliams remembers. “But they did.”
A 5-6 record in 1986 was the Longhorns’ worst in 30 years, ultimately spelling the end to Akers’ run. He was ushered off to Purdue as McWilliams was brought back in to fill his former boss’ position.
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Today with his coaching days over 25 years in the rearview mirror, when asked if being the head coach at Texas was always his dream job, McWilliams cracks a wide grin and says, “Oh yeah, yeah. I… no doubt. It was what I wanted to do.”
On December 5, 1986, McWilliams was officially named head football coach at the University of Texas. Being a face who had been involved with the program so intimately prior to his stint at Texas Tech, McWilliams was a seamless fit for UT’s veteran players.
Ed Cunningham joined Texas as a freshman in 1985, and played defensive line with McWilliams as his coordinator that year before transitioning to offensive line the following season as McWilliams took the reins in Lubbock, and Akers rode out his final season as Longhorns head coach.
“You know, I had liked coach Akers a lot,” Cunningham remembers. “I actually thought when he was fired that I might consider going with him to Purdue, but as soon as coach McWilliams got the job I was pretty comfortable.”
McWilliams was an embodiment of the program’s virtues. He had played for the program and been a diligent student at the university. He had paid his dues as an assistant coach and worked his way through the ranks. He had gone off to a conference rival and defeated his own alma mater, without taking a vindictive pose. McWilliams was somebody who the players could rally behind.
“Fred Akers is kind of like a CEO, he’s much more serious than coach McWIlliams. And coach McWilliams is still serious, but he’s going to joke around with you,” Cunningham explains. “He might have been riding your ass, but you knew he loved you.”
After five years involved with the Texas football program -- including one injury-induced red-shirt season in 1988 -- Cunningham went on to try out for the New York Giants as an undrafted rookie in 1990. He drew admiration from one of the NFL’s all-time legends, Bill Parcells, and seemed on pace to land a roster spot. But late in camp, he broke the third metatarsal in his foot and was sidelined for the remainder of the year. His dream of playing for the NFC powerhouse Giants wasn’t to be, but the experience allowed Cunningham to observe similarities between Parcells and McWilliams.
“Parcells would come in to watch film with me (during training camp), and we got to know each other really well. He was still hard on me in front of other people, he would never call me by my real name,” Cunningham recalls. “He would always call me ‘country fuck’ at practice. He called me ‘Ed’ when it was just me and him.”
“Parcells was kind of like coach McWilliams. You know, both of them are brilliant. McWilliams may still have a little bit of a country accent, but I guarantee you that he could have been an electrical engineer, he could have done anything. Same thing with Parcells… just really smart, smart people. They could have been successful in nearly any field they went into.”
Cunningham and McWilliams had initially crossed paths when Cunningham was a prospect out of Sanford Fritch High School, on tour at the university and being considered for a scholarship. “Coach McWilliams was a great recruiter,” Cunningham recalls. “When I left coach McWilliams’ office on my recruiting trip, I was pretty sure I was going to start as a freshman.”
Coming from a small high school out in the panhandle, there were growing pains that came with taking the leap to big league, Division I football. Cunningham struggled to acclimate at first, and obtaining a starting role grew into a doubtful year one proposition. He says that the coaching staff was aware of his background, however, and showed patience in him. It wasn’t until Cunningham entered his third season, and McWilliams was coming back to Texas to take over as head coach, that the pieces began to fall into place.
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There was little indication that a prosperous 1990 campaign was forthcoming for the Longhorns. The prior two seasons had been some of the darkest in recent memory.
Coach McWilliams composed a decent debut season in 1987, leading Texas to a 6-5 regular-season record as well as a bowl victory over Pittsburgh.
By the standards of a once-vaunted Texas program, a 7-5 season and a victory in the Bluebonnet Bowl wasn’t necessarily an achievement to write home about, but it was certainly a step in the right direction. The message in the locker room had seemingly grown stale under Akers, but here was McWilliams, a home-grown coaching product who was helping to put a winning product on the field once again.
What ensued in 1988 and 1989 evoked less enthusiasm from the Longhorn faithful. A 4-7 record in 1988, and a 5-6 mark in 1989 meant that Texas finished with back-to-back losing seasons for the first time since 1937-1938.
Pressure from the fanbase was mounting, but Cunningham could tell that something promising was developing within the program as he left Texas and entered the NFL during the spring of 1990. He pointed to the progression of the Longhorns’ young quarterback as a primary reason for the renaissance.
“Peter Gardere is like a lot of great quarterbacks. What Peter had, even as a freshman, was the ability to stay calm regardless of what had happened on the last play,” Cunningham says.
There was a grittiness to the quarterback that fellow Longhorns admired. Even with Cunningham being a senior and Gardere a first-year player during the tumultuous 1989 campaign, the young signal-caller still garnered respect from his veteran teammate. As time progressed, Gardere’s legend grew with him becoming the first quarterback on either side of the Red River Rivalry to go 4-0 as a starter. “Peter just had this calmness about him from the moment he got in the huddle. When one of us messed up and Peter took a hard hit, he didn’t come back to the huddle looking scared. Peter just never seemed phased by that, and he could stand in the pocket.”
Gardere had come to Texas in large part because of what he saw in McWilliams as a leader and mentor. His freshman year of ‘89 didn’t go according to plan, but Gardere still held a tremendous amount of faith in his coach. “It’s a place I wanted to be. Coach McWilliams made it so much easier because he was a player’s coach. He was really involved with my family. He enjoyed coming into my house and meeting my parents. You know, just the kind of guy you wanted to play for.”
McWilliams was beloved by his players, but he wasn’t going to be around as head coach much longer if results didn’t start translating to the field. He and his staff knew that the tone of the season had to be set well before kicking off Week 1 against Penn State.
A loaded senior class would certainly help in carrying that vision through. Gardere particularly benefited as the quarterback, with a number of those talented upperclassmen filling in at skill positions. Johnny Walker was coming off a 55-catch, 785-yard season heading into 1990, and was the clear No. 1 target on the outside. The Cash twins -- Keith and Kerry -- were entering their collective fourth year with the program and each possessed NFL potential. Running back Chris Samuels returned for his senior campaign alongside Adrian Walker, after the two combined for over 1,200 rushing yards and nine touchdowns the year prior.
The Longhorns had some heavy hitters on the other side of the ball as well, beginning with eventual second-round draft choice of the Buffalo Bills, defensive lineman James Patton. In the secondary, Stanley Richard and Lance Gunn would go on to combine for seven interceptions.
“It started in the offseason, we did six o’clock morning wakeups. We did everything as a team. We had t-shirts saying ‘WIT,’ for ‘whatever it takes’. So that was kind of the mentality going in,” Gardere says of that 1990 campaign. “Playing Penn State, you know, the tradition. Going up there, it was a perfect day, the weather was great. Just a fun place to play, and we were excited to show everybody that we were legit. The ‘Shock the Nation’ Tour. And that was the start of it.”
Penn State entered the contest ranked as the No. 21 team in the country, and would reach as high as No. 7 toward the tail end of a nine-game tear between late September and late November. During that stretch, Joe Paterno’s Nittany Lions knocked off the top-ranked team, Notre Dame, in South Bend. The Tony Sacca-led Lions offense was far from electrifying, but the defense carried the team to wins that year, ranking seventh best in the country in points allowed.
Penn State jumped out to a quick 7-0 lead on the visiting Longhorns that day, with Leroy Thompson punching in a two-yard touchdown run at the 13:33 mark of the first quarter. Texas was able to get the contest nearly back to even by halftime, as Michael Pollack knocked down chip-shot field goals of 30 and 29 yards to result in a 7-6 score heading into the locker room.
It was during the third quarter that Texas took control of the game. Chris Samuels tallied his first touchdown run of the year just 19 seconds into the period, and with a successful two-point conversion and subsequent 20-yard field goal from Pollack, the Longhorns carried a two-possession lead into the fourth. A late TD from backup Lions running back Gary Brown provided window dressing in the final minute of the fourth quarter, but Texas flew out of Happy Valley with a 17-13 victory.
The following week Texas hosted Colorado, a team that would score 338 points and allow just 160, and conclude the season as national champions upon defeating Notre Dame 10-9 in the Orange Bowl. Current Kansas City Chiefs offensive coordinator, Eric Bieniemy, ran for 1,628 yards and 17 touchdowns that season for the Buffs.
On September 22, in front of a crowd of 77,000, Texas jumped out in front with a six-yard touchdown catch by Kerry Cash at the 8:46 mark of the first quarter. Colorado responded with a 86-yard drive of their own, capped by a 38-yard touchdown strike from Darian Hagan to George Hemingway. The Longhorns trailed 13-14 at the halftime break, but would retake the lead late in the third quarter by virtue of Phil Brown’s two-yard touchdown run.
Texas would expand its lead to 22-14 with a Michael Pollack field goal early in the fourth quarter, but Colorado poured on 15 unanswered points from there, sealing the win by sacking Gardere for a safety in the waning moments of the game.
The result could have easily gone the other way, with another favorable bounce or two going to Texas.
“We had Colorado beat. Had ‘em beat,” McWilliams said years later. “Just made one bad play and they beat us.”
The defeat was slightly damaging to the Longhorns’ chances at a national title, but Gardere reflected on the loss with a sense of optimism. “In some respects, it was a good loss for us because it brought us back down. It was like, ‘Hey, we need to get ready for conference play. We got a loss, let’s get back to business.’”
Get back to business Texas did, indeed. As Colorado proceeded to beat Missouri two weeks later in the controversial “Fifth Down Game,” the Longhorns sparked a magnificent streak of their own, beginning with a 26-10 win over Rice on October 6. The following Saturday, Texas had a date with its archrival, Oklahoma, in the 85th rendition of the Red River Rivalry. This year, as had been tradition every year since 1924, the game was to be played at the Cotton Bowl in Dallas, Texas.
In what would prove to be a classic slugfest between the two schools, Texas prevailed 14-13 as Peter Gardere threw two touchdowns and zero interceptions, and ballooned his career record to 2-0 against the Sooners.
Texas had escaped, and now would benefit from a light upcoming schedule the following three weeks. In the first outing of a three-game homestand, Texas drubbed unranked Arkansas 49-13 on October 20, before beating down on recently “death-penalized” SMU, 52-3. Texas Tech then rolled into town on the first Saturday of November, only to be beaten handily by its former coach, 41-22.
The impending matchup against the No. 3 team in the country, Houston, posed a formidable challenge. Cougars quarterback David Klingler was midway through a record-breaking campaign that saw him toss 54 TD passes, and he would soon become a top-10 pick of the Bengals, supplanting former NFL Most Valuable Player Boomer Esiason in Cincinnati.
Texas more than rose to the occasion, however, whalloping Houston 45-24 to hand the Cougars their lone defeat of 1990. Houston would finish 10-1 and rank as the No. 2 team in the country, with the loss to Texas very possibly serving as the only obstacle between them, and the first title in program history.
McWilliams and the Longhorns then went on the road back-to-back weeks in mid November, beating Southwest Conference foes TCU and Baylor, 38-10 and 23-13, respectively. All that remained on the regular-season schedule was the annual finale against Texas A&M, and the Longhorns would benefit from a game at Darrell K. Royal Stadium this time around.
Despite the home-field advantage, defeating the Aggies would be no cakewalk. Between the first time Texas and Texas A&M faced off, and 1983, the Longhorns absolutely dominated the series, owning a 63-22 advantage in head-to-head play against the Aggies, with five ties. Coming into 1990, however, A&M had rattled off six consecutive wins over Texas, with double-digit victories in four of those six games.
During magical seasons such as the Longhorns’ “Shock the Nation” Tour, long-standing losing streaks are typically put to rest. Texas had lost six straight to Texas A&M going into 1990, and would lose four more in a row to A&M between 1991 and ‘94, but the Longhorns would not be denied this year, capping the regular season with a 28-27 victory over the Aggies. With the ground game working to full effect, backs Adrian Walker and Patrick Wilson racked up 149 yards rushing. Gardere added another 70 yards and two rushing touchdowns, while throwing for 82 yards and one TD through the air.
Texas concluded the 1990 regular season at a record of 10-1, while securing its first conference title since 1983 and remaining on the periphery of national championship consideration as the now-No. 3 team in the land.
It was announced shortly thereafter that the Longhorns were to face off against the star-studded Miami Hurricanes in the Cotton Bowl.
“If you watch that ESPN 30-for-30 (The U), they had no qualms about it. They were ready to fight,” Gardere says when reflecting on the concept of facing Miami. “It was something else. They were talented. I think they could have beat some NFL teams that year, how good they were.”
Two years removed from the Jimmy Johnson era, Dennis Erickson had maintained the high standard established by his predecessor. After coach Johnson steered the Canes to a 1987 championship and 52-7 overall record between ‘84 and ‘88, Erickson led Miami to a title in his very first season at the helm in 1989. With two losses already on the docket -- one to BYU and the other to Notre Dame -- the Hurricanes’ chances at a repeat were remote heading into the 1990 Cotton Bowl, but it remained an extremely formidable squad nonetheless. They had bludgeoned Texas’ Southwest Conference cousin, Texas Tech, 45-10 two months earlier, and were outscoring teams by 27.6 points per game since getting knocked off by the Fighting Irish on October 20.
Not only was Texas faced with the task of competing with an ultra-talented Miami team, but there were also extenuating circumstances during the leadup to the game that threw the Longhorns out of rhythm. Namely, practice conditions being far from what the players and coaches had grown accustomed to.
Texas was slated to do its on-field work at SMU’s home stadium in the days leading up to kickoff, but with the turf frozen over with ice, practices were relegated to a hotel ballroom. “We look up on the TV and Miami is practicing at Texas stadium,” Gardere recalls.
Gardere remembers that there was also a Fellowship of Christian Athletes breakfast the week of the Cotton Bowl, an event that Texas staff was adamant about its players attending. “They asked for all of the Miami representatives at the breakfast to please stand up, and they had one player there. All of us were there, and this was at 7:30 in the morning,” Gardere says. “All of (the Miami players) were probably sleeping. Not that we needed it... it was that kind of stuff that we did a lot of, but we probably should have scaled back.”
On gameday the Hurricanes deployed mental warfare immediately, standing at midfield and staring down the Longhorns, as players ran out of the tunnel to begin the afternoon’s festivities. Moments later, on the opening kickoff, Texas running back Chris Samuels caught the ball at his own goal line and began to run up the left sideline, but Miami’s Robert Bailey swiftly delivered a punishing helmet-to-helmet hit, downing Samuels at his own 14-yard line. Early momentum was on the Hurricanes side, and things would only snowball from there.
After registering a quick defensive stop, Miami went down and put three points on the board with a Carlos Huerta field goal at the 8:53 mark of the field quarter. The Hurricanes would continue to pour it on early, chalking up a 19-3 half-time lead by virtue of another Huerta field goal, as well as two TD passes from Craig Erickson to Wesley Carroll. They would all but put the game away when linebacker Darrin Smith picked off Gardere and ran it back 34 yards for a touchdown, just three minutes into the third quarter.
By that point it was 26-3, and Miami’s score would continue to swell from there, resulting in the most one-sided victory in the 55-year history of the Cotton Bowl. One of the keys to the game was Miami’s swarming pass rush, which racked up an incredible eight sacks on Gardere and helped force three interceptions on the afternoon.
The disjointed week of preparation spelled itself out on the field, as Texas was crushed by Miami, 46-3.
It was not only a deflating outcome in an otherwise marvelously surprising season for Texas, but also the end to an era of Longhorns football. The talented senior class that catalyzed the magical run was now moving on, and uncertainty remained as to whether the talent pool could be adequately replenished in the near future.
“We lost so much leadership after that season. Going into 1991, it was really hard to replace that talent,” Gardere explains. “As far as coach McWilliams was concerned, I mean those were some great players. To try and come back and replicate the same thing, it was going to be really tough.”
With a number of key offensive skill players graduating, the Longhorns’ offense sputtered in 1991. Texas did retain its quarterback, but the cupboards were left bare elsewhere. Gardere threw five touchdowns to 13 interceptions, as the Longhorns’ offense dropped from 24th to 81st in scoring, with 12.1 fewer points per game in ‘91 compared to ‘90.
Outside of the impressive 10-2 season in 1990, by the end of Texas’ 5-6 1991 campaign, the Longhorns had endured losing campaigns over three of the past four years. Coach McWilliams could have extended his tenure temporarily by blaming his coaching staff, but he instead decided to resign on his own terms.
“I just got discouraged and thought, ‘Well this is my school and I love it too much... we just need to get somebody else in here.’ So I stepped down,” McWilliams says.
The coach gave some consideration to moving on and starting over at another school, but he felt as though he had worked his entire career just to get to Texas.
“I looked at it and thought, ‘ What I’m going to do is go take an assistant job over here at this school, so that I can try to get back to a school like Texas. And I had the Texas job and didn’t do a good job to keep it.’”
With close family residing in the Austin area, and little desire to pick up and move to another community at that stage in life, McWilliams decided to end his professional coaching career.
“I missed coaching of course. I used to say, ‘I miss the competition, and I miss the fourth-and-1 on the goal line against Oklahoma. I miss the players. I miss the money they’re paying the head coaches today… and not necessarily in that order,” McWilliams exclaims as he laughs heartily. “Like Bum Phillips said, ‘I don’t know any coach that hadn’t been fired or isn’t going to get fired.’”
McWilliams held no animosity towards Texas, and appreciated every minute he experienced on the field as a Longhorn.
“I wasn’t angry. I wasn’t mad. It was just something that I felt needed to be done. I wasn’t necessarily even asked to quit. It was just my decision. I felt like we had to get someone in there who could do a better job. I decided to just put it down.”
But given McWilliams’ strong bond with the school, his time wasn’t necessarily over at Texas. Shortly after his retirement from coaching, McWilliams received an offer addressed from the president and athletic director DeLoss Dodds, proposing that he return to UT as an Associate AD. He was grateful for the opportunity, one which permitted him to give back to the university that provided him with so many fond memories.
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Fast forward three decades. Ed Cunningham, a four year letterman for Coach McWilliams at UT and still residing near his college town of Austin, TX, accompanies his son to a Westlake Pop Warner football practice. The staff was reported to be a few short that day, and Cunningham was asked to fill in. Upon arriving at the field, Cunningham saw a familiar face.
“There’s coach McWilliams, back there coaching linebackers and DBs. I’m thinking, ‘Why you need me, you got one of the greatest coaches ever, why’d you ask me to come out here?’”
McWilliams’ grandson was an offensive lineman for Westlake, and the former coach was out on the field once again, sharing in the game he loves. Coaching the practice of his life.
“He was coaching them up every play. Every play he had some funny comment. There’s a lot of guys like him that would just stand around, sign autographs, but he was out there and he was full-on coaching these kids up. I love the guy, but that made me love him even more. He’s out here in 100-degree heat, just coaching these kids up. He would coach any time, anywhere, he was loving every minute of it.”
Once a coach, always a coach.