Junior Coffey Should Have Been a Longhorn!

Darrell Royal has been underground since 2012. He is buried along with his faithful wife, Lois, in Statesman’s Meadow, section 2(G), row B, number 19 at Texas State Cemetery in Austin. If he were still alive, he would probably ask, “Why is Pennington always picking on me?” I would tell him, “Coach, I have said numerous times verbally and in print that I respect how you survived Dust Bowl–era Oklahoma, became a star football player for the Sooners, won three national titles at UT and so forth. But your failure to get on with the process of integrating the team cannot be denied. I will repeat—I do not think you were a racist, but you certainly were a coward and a weakling, the very opposite of a leader. You had no vision, Coach! Your vision did not extend beyond the tip of your nose.”

Let’s examine his first four seasons, keeping in mind that the Longhorns had gone a woeful 1-9 in 1956, the year before Dana X. Bible brought him to the Forty Acres. They won 29 games, lost 12 and tied two, making appearances in the Sugar, Cotton and Bluebonnet Bowls. (The next four would be even more impressive: 40 wins, 3 losses and a tie, Cotton [thrice] and Orange [once], and the school’s first natty in ’63.) As the 1961 recruiting campaign began, Royal and his assistants surely knew of a player in the little Panhandle town of Dimmitt. Junior Coffey—6′ 1″, 210 pounds with 10.2 speed in the 100—was studly as a linebacker, but first and foremost as a running back. Coffey, who got strong through long hours of bucking hay and picking cotton, gained 1,294 yards as a junior and 1,562 as a senior for the Bobcats. Furthermore, he yearned to enroll at the University of Texas and play there.

It was the tail-end of segregation, and enforcement at the fringes (the Panhandle, the Valley and West Texas—especially El Paso) was not too rigorous which helps explain why Coffey, a black guy, was able to play with and against White guys. This was in the framework of the University Interscholastic League; the Prairie View Interscholastic League was its black counterpart. He wanted to be a Longhorn despite the challenges that would await him if given the opportunity. To provide a degree of context, four more years would pass before Jerry LeVias and John Westbrook suited up for the SMU and Baylor freshman teams, respectively.

Royal’s defenders would say that his hands were tied since the UT Board of Regents did not open intercollegiate athletics to all students until September 1963. Technically speaking, that is so. But if DKR had been intent on recruiting Coffey or any other black player, he could have done it. He could have told athletic director Ed Olle, president Joseph Smiley and mossback alumni that the fool’s paradise of all-White Jim Crow football in the Southwest Conference was over. Integration had to happen (for reasons of both fairness and winning games), and further delay made no sense. It would have been a ballsy thing to do, I know, but he darn sure could have. Maybe it would have cost him his job. But Royal, you recall, was a proven commodity. How many schools would have jumped at the chance to hire him? Somebody in the Big 8, the Big 10 or the Pacific Coast Conference would have been knocking on his door the next morning with a pen and contract in hand. Would the sky have really fallen if he had offered a scholarship to Junior Coffey? Exactly five years earlier, a group of black doctors and pharmacists in Oklahoma City had pooled some money for Prentice Gautt to matriculate at Royal’s alma mater, the University of Oklahoma. Coach Bud Wilkinson had no choice but to capitulate, regardless of any ostensible rule prohibiting athletic integration at OU. Gautt, needless to say, turned out to be a great running back, a great teammate and, indeed, a great scholar (after an eight-year pro career, he earned a doctorate at the University of Missouri and was a high-level administrator in the Big 8). Others followed. Not to put too fine a point on it, but Royal must have realized that Coffey could have been his Gautt.

The Horns remained all-White—although there had been occasional Hispanics on the team starting in the 1920s—for the rest of the decade, fixing Royal’s reputation as a fence-sitter and a nervous Nellie. Luckily for Coffey, Harold “Chesty” Walker had coached for many years at nearby Philips High School and knew about Dimmitt’s superb RB/LB. Walker had moved on to a job as an assistant at the University of Washington (interestingly enough, Royal had been the UW coach in 1956 before getting the call from Bible), and he told head coach Jim Owens about this promising player down in Texas. Owens was amenable, and so Coffey became a Husky. During the 1962, 1963 and 1964 seasons, he played in every game but one, gaining 1,604 yards (a fine 4.8-yard average) and scoring 16 touchdowns. Washington took part in the 1964 Rose Bowl, a 17-7 loss to Illinois, although Coffey had to sit it out with a broken foot.

Drafted in 1965 by the Green Bay Packers of the NFL and the Houston Oilers of the AFL, he opted for the former. Coffey made the cut as a rookie but played mostly on special teams as coach Vince Lombardi had two veteran running backs in Jim Taylor and Paul Hornung. Even so, Coffey celebrated with his teammates in the Lambeau Field locker room after they had vanquished the Cleveland Browns, 23-12, to win the NFL championship. An inauspicious start to his pro career, but things soon got better. The Atlanta Falcons selected Coffey in the 1966 expansion draft, and he supplied most of the team’s offense in those first two seasons, gaining 1,444 yards and scoring 10 times. Coffey dealt with injuries in later years, missing two full seasons and ending up with the New York Giants. He got out of football entirely after the 1971 season, moving back to the Seattle area where he had a long and successful career as a trainer of race horses. His equine athletes won more than 170 races, most of them at nearby Longacres and Emerald Downs.

I will now return to the 1966 season, the first in the history of the Atlanta Falcons. One of his teammates was a rookie, Tommy Nobis, out of the University of Texas. Thrice all-SWC, twice all-American and one of the greatest linebackers ever in the college and pro games, he and Coffey may well have had a conversation or two in which they speculated about how things might have gone if Royal had rolled the dice and made him part of the UT football program. He had the size, speed and moxie—of that, there was no doubt. Also, he was accustomed to interracial competition. But could he have handled the pressure? In light of what LeVias and Westbrook endured between the 1966 and 1968 varsity seasons, you have to wonder. I would like to think that Nobis, despite being one year younger, would have demanded fair treatment for his black teammate. Coffey would not have been alone long since Bubba Smith, Mel Farr and Warren McVea (all destined for college and pro success) wanted to come to Texas, too. What a huge paradigm shift that would have been. But Royal, stereotypical Jim Crow football coach that he was, refused to act.

Coffey died on August 30, 2021 of congestive heart failure. He was 79.

Coffey with Dimmitt High School teammates, 1961…

Chesty Walker gives Coffey a practice-field tip…

Program for the 1964 Rose Bowl in which Dick Butkus and the Illini won, 17-7…

Coffey in action against Baylor during the 1964 season…

Coffey as a member of the 1965 NFL champion Green Bay Packers…

Coffey in his heyday with the Atlanta Falcons…

Coffey takes a handoff from Fran Tarkenton during his stint with the New York Giants…

Coffey with one of his equine athletes…