1957……it was fun

There were fewer sports at UT when I was in school, and trust me no one was writing Deloss was a genius when Mackovic was loosing to Rice.

Make no mistake Mack is the one we will miss. The ONLY sport that matters at Texas is football. If football regresses significantly, paying back the stadium debt will make Deloss’ name a curse word at UT again.

Actually, when Tom Hicks was a new regent, things began to change. He helped change the old mindset. DeLoss was used to having to go to the regents, hat in hand, and presenting a bare-bones budget every year. Hicks asked DeLoss what it would take to put UT in the top echelon facility wise and in essence changed the entire approach to athletics. I will always appreciate Hicks for his foresight. BTW Hicks younger brother, Steve, was appointed to the regents yesterday.

When Title IX came in, Royal set up a independent athletics department for women, and was thought of as trying to do the minimum required, or that he was trying to set up a “Separate but Equal,” sham.

Most schools assimilated women’s athletics into the men’s department.

Royal thought that keeping the women’s department independent, and hiring people who knew what they were doing to run it, would allow the women’s side to grow through fundraising — money that would not be raided by the men’s side. If you look at the majority of women’s programs befoe the NCAA assimilated them ito the fold, Texas dominated, directly because it was independent of the men.

His hiring of Donna Lopiano to run the women’s side was key. She had a personality that didn’t set well with a lot of folks (including Royal at times), but she established a program that could stand alone and thrive. She also understood the “less is more” theory as well. Just look at how long it took Texas to begin women’s softball (which was the sport Lopiano dominated as an athlete). She waited until it was building up in the HS ranks and until she had the money and resources to move to it.

Royal treated the women’s side like he treated the other men’s programs — hire someone you trust and then leave them alone.

BiH, I think he had a whole hell of a lot to do with it, but he wouldn’t have been able to accomplish it by himself without buy-in, and probably quite a bit of guidance from the rest of the institution.

He wouldn’t have been able to do it without higher-ups supporting him, and he wouldn’t have been able to do it without good people working for him. But a lot of those folks have worked in relative anonymity, so I was just trying to make sure I didn’t ignore their contributions.

Sorry I wasn’t clear about that.

The pistol range is still there. The swimming pool awkwardly wraps around it, and you can still hear the pops of .22s when lounging at the pool.

The pistol team was nearly dead around 05-06, but some guys were in the process of reviving it around ‘07, offering the plinking opportunity. Not sure if it made it or not.

Man, that made me laugh.

Lacrosse might be zilch in Texas, but in the mid atlantic, it’s a sport that draws. The NCAA lacrosse final four will fill Byrd stadium at Maryland (which is better than Friedgen’s teams can do).