The Chronicle’s David Barron uses last night’s Texas Children’s Hospital fund-raising dinner to honor legendary former University of Texas football coach Darrell Royal as a Texas Legend to pen this fun article on two Clear Thinkers favorites — Coach Royal and Dan Jenkins. Barron includes the following gem from Jenkins comparing how Longhorn fans felt about Coach Royal versus how fans of two other top programs felt about their coaches of that era:

As a writer for newspapers in Fort Worth and Dallas and later for Sports Illustrated, Dan Jenkins, got to see all of the great coaches at work. Royal, Jenkins said, had a unique relationship to Texas and Texans, especially when compared to contemporaries like Woody Hayes at Ohio State or John McKay at USC.
“Darrell’s association with the Longhorn fans was more intimate,” Jenkins wrote in a recent e-mail. “Darrell had good buddies in all the other towns. Woody was standoffish, gruff, and stayed out of the public eye. Most Buckeyes respected him but never got to know him.
“McKay once told me he wasn’t revered by USC alums. They expected him to win. When McKay won his first national championship for the Trojans in ’62, I asked him how he was rewarded, and he said some people got together and bought him a new set of tires.”

Barron also passes along the following Jenkins anecdote about the UT sports information director during the Royal era, Jones Ramsey:

Royal was particularly gifted in the care and feeding of the Fourth Estate, with a little help from the Longhorns’ sports information director ó the late Jones Ramsey, the self-styled “World’s Tallest Fat Man.”
“I fondly recall the first time Jones took two or three of us to El Rancho for lunch,” Jenkins said. “Somebody asked him if it was any good, and Jones said, ‘Is it good? You go in the front and eat the dinner and go out the back and eat the garbage.’ It was the kind of thing Darrell probably said first.”

However, for my money, the best anecdote about Coach Royal was the one that UT women’s basketball coach Jody Conradt told several years ago during another fund-raising dinner. Former Chronicle sportswriter Mickey Herskowitz was there and passed along Conradt’s story:

But the [speaker] who stole the show was Jody Conradt, the Hall of Famer who gave the Longhorns a national championship in women’s basketball.
“They built the Erwin Center 21 years ago,” she said, “and obviously it never occurred to anyone that the women would need a separate locker room. So every room in this place had urinals in it.
“Now we have one of our own. Before one of our games, coach Darrell Royal was kind enough to speak to my team. Before he left, someone asked what the biggest difference was between our locker room and all the ones he knew from all his years of coaching. Coach Royal said:

‘Offhand, I can’t remember anyone ironing anything before a game in one of our locker rooms.’ “

Update: Barron follows up his article with this blog post on the dinner.

Say what you will about Texas Tech basketball coach Bobby Knight, but he knows what he is talking about in regard to making college basketball a true intercollegiate sport:

While most college basketball coaches would jump at the chance for a one-year player like Texas freshman sensation Kevin Durant, Texas Tech coach Bob Knight said Monday he would not do so.
In fact, the coach said Monday that he thinks the NBA’s mandate of at least a year of college for high school graduates is bad for the college game.
“I think it’s the worst thing that’s happened to college basketball since I’ve been coaching,” Knight said Monday.
A year ago, the NBA made the decision that players have to attend college for at least one year after graduation from high school. That decision has exposed players such as Ohio State freshman center Greg Oden and Durant ó two players who would have been lottery picks last year and will likely be the first two players chosen in this year’s draft if they decide to leave after one year ó to the college game for what seems to be just one year.
Knight’s primary concern seems to be that the NBA’s mandate allows student-athletes to get around being true students in college.
“Because now you can have a kid come to school for a year, play basketball and he doesn’t even have to go to class,” Knight said. “He certainly doesn’t have to go to class the second semester. I’m not exactly positive about the first semester, but he would not have to attend a single class the second semester to play through the whole second semester of basketball.
“That I think has a tremendous effect on the integrity of college sports. I think what should happen is a kid can come out of high school and go to the NBA and if they chose to put him in the developmental league, fine. But if he goes to college there has to be an agreement that he is not eligible for the draft until after two years of college. That way the kid has to obtain eligibility and then he has to retain eligibility and at least for those two years he is a college student. Now the kid is simply like a hired player.”
Knight said there would never be a scenario where he would knowingly recruit a player who intended to play college basketball for one year.

Again, the “rent-a-player” situation that Coach Knight is talking about is the result of the NBA’s needless regulation, which once again foists upon the universities the risk of subsidizing the NBA’s minor league farm system. As noted here, the colleges have a model already established in baseball that would create the free choice for players that would transform college basketball into a truer form of intercollegiate competition. With the proliferation of minor professional basketball leagues overseas, there really is no legitimate reason to restrict a young player’s access to professional basketball or to force him to fake being a college student while playing a year of minor league ball in the U.S. Let basketball players make the same choice that baseball players have coming out of high school — either play in a professional league or accept the benefits of a college education for a few years in return for competing intercollegiately. Not only will it make Coach Knight much happier, but it is the right thing to do for the players.