30 best college football coaches of all time, ranked

27. Darrell K Royal, Mississippi State 1954-1955, Washington 1956, Texas 1957-1976

Darrell Royal was so good as the Texas Longhorns head coach that he got the stadium named after him. That’s how you know you made it as a head coach. When the school starts naming stadiums after you, that’s the key to legendary status.

The wild part of the Darrell Royal legacy is he played football for the Oklahoma Sooners before coaching the Texas Longhorns for two decades. It took him a while to get there. He was an assistant coach for NC State, Tulsa, and Mississippi State before going to coach for the Edmonton Eskimos of the CFL. He eventually became the head coach of Miss. State, but he left to take the head coaching job at Washington. He was there for less than a year when he was named the head coach at Texas.

Texas was coming off its second one-win season in history. They had nine losses for the first time in 1956, so a change was necessary. Darrell Royal came in and immediately turned the ship around. Royal led the Longhorns to a 4-1-1 record in the conference and a Sugar Bowl berth in his first season. He was responsible for finally bringing the national championship to Texas’ state capital. He won his first in 1963, then he won two more that decade.

Royal was there for a lot of big moments. He was there for the first African American to play for UT, although some say it should have happened earlier with Royal’s pull within the university and his reported desire to make it happen. Royal is still the best coach in Longhorns history, and that’s why he has the stadium named after him.