On a stiflingly hot September night 50 years ago, as the socially fraught year of 1968 tumbled toward autumn, the Houston Cougars and Texas Longhorns played what may have been the most consequential tie game in the history of Texas college football.

Nobody won, but everybody benefited.

It was the first meeting in a generation between the state's most populous schools, matching Hall of Fame coaches – Bill Yeoman for Houston, Darrell Royal for Texas – running two of the most storied formations in college lore – Yeoman's Houston veer and, in its debut, the three-back wishbone scheme installed at Texas that summer by Royal and offensive coordinator Emory Bellard.

The 20-20 tie on Sept. 21, 1968, at Memorial Stadium in Austin launched, albeit haltingly, the most successful run in Longhorns history and, belatedly, played a key role in Houston's eventual admission into the Southwest Conference.

It also begat relationships forged in conflict – Texas defensive lineman Mike Perrin trying to sack his future law partner, Houston quarterback Ken Bailey, and Houston linebacker Wade Phillips yelling in frustration at his future coaching compadre, Texas quarterback Bill Bradley – that endure as the 20-something young men of 1968 enter their 70s.

"None of us came away with bragging rights from that game," said Texas linebacker Corby Robertson, whose father, Corbin Robertson Sr., helped hire Yeoman as the Cougars' coach in 1962. "But we came away with friendships that continue today."

Then, as now, Texas and Houston existed on separate football planes – Texas in the Southwest Conference, Houston as an independent, having fielded its first team in 1946, more than 30 years after the SWC's creation.

The schools were worlds apart in other aspects as well. Yeoman was among the first Texas college coaches to recruit an African-American player, Warren McVea, who debuted in 1965. Texas would not lift that barrier until 1970, although Royal had by 1966 tried to recruit several African-American players, including Elmo Wright of Sweeny, who opted for UH.

Although Royal was the state's most visible coach, with a national title in 1963 and four conference titles in 11 seasons, the Longhorns had endured three consecutive 6-4 regular seasons and ended 1967 with a 10-7 loss to Texas A&M, their first loss to the Aggies in more than a decade, as quarterback Bradley was intercepted four times.

Houston, meanwhile, entered 1968 on the heels of two seasons in the Top 20, including a 37-7 win over a Michigan State team coached by one of Yeoman's mentors, Duffy Daugherty, while running Yeoman's triple-option veer that led the nation in total offense and rushing offense in 1967.

Yeoman was generous in sharing details of the veer with coaching colleagues and golfing buddies, and Royal was among several who took note of its success.

As part of a staff realignment in 1968, Royal named Bellard, who had coached high school championship teams at Breckenridge and San Angelo Central, as offensive coordinator. Bellard set about concocting his own triple option offense, employing a third back as a lead blocker.

"I was looking at a bunch of people who were running the triple option," Bellard said in a 1992 interview. "Houston was running it and running it extremely well, but they had some problems, some of which stemmed from the fact it was difficult to sustain some of the blocks with the alignment they were using. That is where the whole thing started, getting people lined up to run the triple option."

The three-back offense would take advantage of the Longhorns' strength at that position: two-time 1,000-yard rusher Chris Gilbert, a former Spring Branch High School standout; Ted Koy, a second-generation player from Bellville whose father, Ernie Koy Sr., was a two-sport star at Texas in the 1930s and brother, Ernie Koy Jr., played for Royal's 1963 championship team; and Steve Worster, the most sought-after player in the state after leading Bridge City to a 1966 state title.

As an admirer of Yeoman's who opted to attend Texas because he felt it would be unseemly to play for a coach his father had hired, Corby Robertson was well-acquainted with what Bellard was trying to accomplish in overhauling the Texas offense.

"The wishbone was the Houston veer with three backs," Robertson said. "They couldn't sit Gilbert down or sit Worster or Koy down. They were too good. So they invented an offense where all three could play.

More Information About the 1968 Longhorns Running back Chris Gilbert became the first player in NCAA history to rush for a thousand yards in three consecutive seasons. He is a member of the College Football Hall of Fame. Offensive tackle Bob McKay was a consensus All-American for Texas in 1969 and is a member of the College Football Hall of Fame. Quarterback-defensive back Bill Bradley played nine NFL seasons and twice was first-team All-Pro. He is a member of the Texas Sports Hall of Fame. Linebacker Mike Perrin was a 1968 National Football Foundation scholar-athlete and a longtime Houston attorney. He was Texas' athletic director and interim athletic director from September 2015 through December 2017. Linebacker Corby Robertson was an All-American in 1967 and has worked in the energy business in Houston for more than 40 years. About the 1968 Houston Cougars Bill Yeoman was head coach of the Cougars from 1962 through 1986 and coached four Southwest Conference championship teams and 11 bowl teams. He is a member of the College Football Hall of Fame. Elmo Wright was an All-American in 1970 and played five seasons in the NFL. He was the longtime chief of staff for Harris County Commissioner Jim Fonteno and a candidate this year for induction into the College Football Hall of Fame. Ken Bailey was named as the University of Houston's top scholar-athlete in 1968-69 and was named a distinguished alumnus in 2015. He is the founder of the Houston law firm Bailey Peavy Bailey Cowan Heckaman. Wade Phillips has been a high school, college and NFL coach since 1969. He is the former head coach of the Broncos, Bills and Cowboys and currently is defensive coordinator for the Los Angeles Rams.

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"To Yeoman's credit, you could throw the ball a lot better out of the two-back set. But Darrell didn't care about throwing, and he had better backs than he had receivers."

Learning the triple option represented a crash course not only for backs but for the Longhorns' offensive linemen.

"We hadn't worked on it during the spring, so it was an altogether new way of doing things," said Bob McKay, a junior offensive lineman in 1968. "We didn't block a person per se. If there wasn't anybody in my way, I was supposed to get downfield and take out the safety.

"It was a beautiful thing to watch, almost like a ballet in the way all three backs took the right step at the right time. But you couldn't watch. The incentive was to block your man and get the hell out of the way and let those guys run. If they hit you from the back, it hurt."

Texas was still tinkering with its alignment as its season opener approached. Houston, meanwhile, opened a week earlier with a pat hand – eight returning starters on defense and one of the nation's best running backs in Paul Gipson, another among Yeoman's group of pioneering African-American stars at UH.

Gipson played up to form in the Cougars' opener, a 54-7 rout of Tulane in which UH scored 40 unanswered points in the second half. The run-oriented veer was augmented by a new threat in sophomore wide receiver Wright, who had touchdown catches of 50 and 81 yards.

Meanwhile, as the Cougars began preparing for Texas, they already knew the Longhorns were planning in secret to roll out a new formation.

"Our coaches told us they were running some kind of three-back offense, but we didn't know what plays they would run," said Wade Phillips, one of UH's eight returning defensive starters.

Amid the backdrop of Houston's recent success and the Longhorns' three tough seasons, anticipation was considerable for the Sept. 21 game, the first meeting between the Longhorns and Cougars since 1953. With no network television broadcast, and with both schools boasting in excess of 30,000 students, tickets were at a premium.

"It was a big deal," Gilbert said. "It was Austin vs. Houston or however you want to say it. For an opening game, it was something else."

Newspaper accounts said it was the toughest ticket for a Texas home game since 1947, when former Highland Park teammates Bobby Layne and Doak Walker suited up for Texas and SMU, respectively.

"Usually for a home game, if you wanted a ticket you could stand outside the stadium or go to one of the hotels and find one," said Mike Perrin, a senior linebacker for the Longhorns in 1968. "But there were no tickets available for this game."

As with every home game of that era, the Texas sports information staff hosted a get-together for reporters the night before the game. Among the group was Houston's radio play by play announcer, Harry Kalas, who had been briefed by Houston coaches about the Longhorns' new offense.

"Darrell thought he had kept things under wraps and that nobody knew about the new offense," said Bill Little, the longtime former Texas sports publicist. "But the night before the game, I pulled Darrell over so he could do his pregame interview with Harry Kalas.

"Harry said, 'Coach, I understand you have this new formation where you line up the fullback behind the quarterback.' And Darrell just stared at him and said, 'Where did you hear that?' It totally unnerved the unflappable Darrell Royal."

While the game had special significance for the Longhorns' Houston-area contingent, which included Gilbert, Robertson, offensive lineman Bobby Wuensch and defensive linemen Bill Atessis and Loyd Wainscott, it had a different feel for Wright, coming at the end of a turbulent spring and summer that had included the shooting deaths of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and U.S. Sen. Robert Kennedy and incorporating his own memories of the juggling act that existed between integration and football in mid-1960s Texas.

Wright attended segregated schools in Sweeny through 1965, when all-black G.W. Carver High School was closed and consolidated with previously all-white Sweeny High School. In 1966, the Bulldogs won the Class 2A state championship, and Wright was named all-state.

"Remember that we're talking about the civil rights era," Wright said. "If not for football, I think that town and many others probably would have had a different (integration) experience.

"Football was common to everyone. You went to the games and cheered for the team."

As an accomplished African-American athlete, Wright was a natural recruiting target as Royal, hamstrung by the opposition to integration by some of his big-money boosters, searched for the right player in the mold of Jerry LeVias, SMU's trailblazer of 1966.

Wright laughs when he recalls his recruiting visit to Texas as the last of 40 players, summoned in alphabetical order, to meet with Royal on the appointed day.

"He was talking to me as if I was already coming to Texas, and he talked to me as if I were an adult," Wright said. "He told me I was going to have to be tough, because some people might not be ready for me.

"He told me I was going to have to be like Jackie Robinson, at which point I said, 'Who's Jackie Robinson?' I was a saxophone player, not a baseball fan. If you had mentioned John Coltrane I would have understood, but I wasn't into baseball."

Family members eventually steered Wright to Houston, but he said his visit to Texas, his admiration for Royal and his keen sense, at a young age, of the cultural and social currents that rippled through the United States in 1968, were much on his mind as he and his teammates boarded the bus to Austin to play Texas.

"Bill Yeoman sent a message back to me that I was going to start," Wright said. "I hadn't been able to practice in the spring because I had a broken finger, and I barely knew the plays.

"And then that bus rolled up to the stadium in Austin, and I saw that sea of orange. I had never seen anything like it. But I remember thinking 'This is a chance for me to be the best that I can be.'"

It was, unfortunately, a hot, sticky September night in Austin – temperature in the mid-80s, humidity in the high 60s, heat index in the low 90s.

"I lost 15 pounds that night, and I was in good shape," Corby Robertson said.

The teams traded touchdowns, predictably, on runs of a yard by Gipson and 57 yards by Gilbert en route to a 7-7 halftime tie.

Each scored again in the second half – Gilbert from 8 yards and Gipson from 66. From there, each kicker missed an extra-point attempt – Terry Leiweke after a 5-yard run by Gipson and Rob Layne after a 4-yard run by Ted Koy - to tie the score at 20 with 14:23 to play.

"It was a heck of a fight," Robertson said. "That's my summation of it, 50 years later. You had to respect what they could do, running the veer, but Ken Bailey would fake the dive to the fullback, step back and throw the down and out, and that just killed us all game."

Phillips, meanwhile, recalls that while the Houston defense knew the triple option game, the Longhorns added new wrinkles to the offense.

"They had a lot of the same plays, but they also had a counter option with a pitch," he said. "They had an extra guy as a lead blocker on all the option plays, and it was a power game. It was really challenging."

All involved agree the Cougars had the best of it in the fourth quarter, running 30 plays to 12 for the Longhorns. Leiweke missed a 19-yard field goal attempt, and the Texas defense stopped Gipson (or didn't, depending on whether you wore orange or red that day), on fourth-and-1 at the goal line with three minutes to play.

Both teams suffered interceptions in the final minutes, and Texas ran out the clock from its own 38-yard line to settle for the tie.

"I remember hollering at my friend Bill Bradley – now my friend, although he wasn't that night – when they kneeled on the ball at the end of the game," Phillips said. "I thought they should try to win the game, but they probably did the right thing."

"Wade came unglued a little bit," Bradley said. "We've laughed about that over the years."

The polished veer and nascent wishbone fought to a draw, with UH holding a 298-297 edge in rushing yards, but the Cougars threw for 110 yards to 17 for Texas. Gipson had 173 yards on 28 carries to 159 yards on 21 carries for Gilbert. Houston also had the edge in first downs, 21-12.

There would be one bit of postgame drama when Royal, for only the second time in his coaching career, visited the opponent's locker room to offer congratulations.

"He told us we had a heck of a football team," Phillips said. "He didn't have to do that, because we weren't in the conference and a lot of people thought we were outlaws. I've always remembered the class he showed."

So the Longhorns had a new formation, but the formation didn't have a name. Little's initial description was the "Y" formation, based on the positions of the three running backs, but everyone agrees that the name "wishbone" was inspired by Houston sportswriter Mickey Herskowitz during Royal's regular postseason chats with writers at the Villa Capri hotel.

"Lou Maysel (in his book "Here Come the Texas Longhorns") says it happened after the Houston game, but Mickey has said it was after the Arkansas game later that year," Little said. "I remember Mickey saying that it looked like a pulleybone, and Darrell said, 'OK, the wishbone.'

"I was standing three feet away from Mickey, and that's what I remember. Darrell taking it from pulleybone to wishbone is my memory."

Under any name, that first clash of veer and wishbone would on its own merits would stand as a classic of Texas college football. The aftermath, in 1968 and beyond, is what makes it emblematic of the waves of change that swept society and sports in the late 1960s.

A week after tying the Cougars, Texas lost 31-22 at Texas Tech as Bradley, who struggled with the option game, was replaced in the second half by James Street.

The Longhorns arrived in Austin at 4 a.m. after the night game in Lubbock, and Bradley was awakened two hours later by a knock on his door, summoning him to Royal's office.

"I knew that when you got a call like that, three things could happen, and all of them were bad," Bradley said. "(Royal) told me James would be the starter, and I called my dad in Palestine and said, 'I think my life here is over.' I had been drafted by the Detroit Tigers, and I said I thought I would come home and play baseball.

"He got quiet and said, 'The hell you are. The Bradleys don't quit. You're a captain of that football team. Go out there tomorrow and act like a leader.'"

Lining up as a fifth-team receiver on a day when Royal had demoted several other starters, Bradley helped break the tension during practice when he loosened his sweatpants so that they fell around his ankles when he dove to catch a pass from Street.

"I got up and saw coach Royal laughing his ass off," Bradley said. "People have told me that was the day I became a leader on that team."

A week after a 31-3 win over Oklahoma State, Bellard and line coach Willie Zapalac made a key adjustment to the wishbone's alignment, moving the fullback an additional yard behind the line to improve timing and blocking angles, and the new offense was off and running.

"Every game they would add two or three new plays, and you can't believe the confidence it gave us, knowing that no matter how much film the other team watched, they had never seen what we were about to do," Gilbert said. "It was such a positive thing for us."

Texas ran the table from there, beating old foes Oklahoma and Arkansas and closing with nine consecutive wins, including a 36-13 rout of Tennessee in the Cotton Bowl.

Along the way, they also exacted sweet revenge against the Aggies, with Bradley, who had been moved to defensive back late in the season, again in the spotlight. Summoned to midfield for the coin toss and asked to decide whether the Longhorns would kick or receive, Bradley replied, "We don't give a (bleep)."

Suitably inspired, he had four interceptions on defense to match the four he had suffered the previous season as the Longhorns won going away, 35-14, to begin a seven-year win streak over the Aggies.

Houston's offense, meanwhile, kept cranking after its first two games. The Cougars scored 71 points against Cincinnati in October and 77 on Idaho in November and on Nov. 23, against a Tulsa team ravaged by a recent flu outbreak, scored a modern-day record hundred points in a 100-6 victory at the Astrodome.

That team finished 6-2-2, with losses to Oklahoma State and at Florida State and a 10-10 tie on the road with No. 7 Georgia, and was ranked No. 20 in the final coaches poll, their third straight Top 20 finish in that poll, and No. 18 by the Associated Press. Gipson was selected second-team All-America by the Associated Press.

The Cougars led the nation in scoring at 42.5 points per game, in rushing offense for the third consecutive year at 361.7 yards per game and in total offense for the third straight year at 562 yards per game.

As for the wishbone, Texas would further refine the offense in 1969-70, twice leading the nation in rushing and winning back-to-back national championships (1969 consensus, 1970 coaches) while building a 30-game victory streak.

Royal continued to use the offense until his retirement following the 1976 season, rolling up six consecutive Southwest Conference titles from 1968 through 1973. He would again face Yeoman and the Cougars in that final season, losing 30-0 at Memorial Stadium in a game that in some ways represents one of the most lasting legacies of the 1968 season opener.

In 1971, after years of lobbying, the University of Houston was granted membership in the Southwest Conference, beginning with the 1975-76 basketball season. Among the Cougars' biggest boosters for membership were Royal, who also was the Longhorns' athletic director, and J. Nels Thompson, the school's influential faculty athletics representative.

"People make politics," said Corby Robertson. "My dad had been coming to Austin to games for three years and got to know Darrell, so the fact that Houston ended up in the conference wasn't a big surprise."

"It (the 1968 Texas game) elevated us," said Ken Bailey, the quarterback turned attorney. "We had played teams from the SEC and Big Ten, but as far as within the boundaries of Texas, we hadn't had much opportunity.

"The chance for acceptance by the biggest, most prestigious school meant a lot to the University of Houston."

Yeoman, who retired after the 1986 season but remains a presence at UH, at age 90 meeting with his former players for a monthly lunch, puts it more succinctly.

"Coach, when you play Texas, and when you play well against them, people start looking at you differently," he said.

The schools would once again go their separate ways after the 1995 season with the demise of the Southwest Conference, but old ties endure between the Cougars and Longhorns who took the field 50 years ago.

Bailey and Perrin, who just wrapped up a brief stint as Texas' athletic director, married sorority sisters at Texas and were law partners for a decade. Bailey also has a longtime friendship with Robertson that includes verbal jousts about who got the better of whom in 1968.

"We ran a quarterback sweep on the first play of the game, and that is the first time I ever met Corby Robertson, on about the 36-yard line," Bailey said. "My version is that I ran over him, and his version is that he didn't think I was going to get up.

"The most important thing I got out of that game was the relationships with Mike and Corby and Bill Bradley and Chris Gilbert and others. We became friends after that game, and we remain close friends."

Fifty years on, it's still a draw.