A Near Look At The Texas Longhorns

It is a member of the Big 12 Conference. In Division I-A of NCAA the team has won the nationwide championships four times. A number (129) of their players have been honored with the distinction of All-American player. Twice a team member was awarded the Heisman Trophy. They have also had 19 inductions into two Halls of Fame; fifteen for the College football hall of fame and 4 for the NFL Hall of Fame. As of 2009, the all-time record of the team is third as far as number of wins is concerned. Their over-all record shows 845-318-33, a percentage winning of .720. Among its other distinctions are appearing second most frequently in bowl games, securing 8th place for games played, having been ranked in the top polls 8.5 times out of every ten rankings, finishing in top ten of 2 prestigious polls more than 33 % of the time and finishing in top 25 in nearly half of the polls. It was in 1893 that the first University of Texas football team was deployed against the Dallas football club, then reputedly the best in the state. After the long and dusty skirmish, the Texans had managed a surprising upset of 18-16.

The team's first coach was R. D. Wentworth who started out with a formidable play. He defeated the first six teams with a sweeping over-all score of 191-0. However, the team lost to Missouri by 28 points to their 0 points. Under Wentworth Texas scored a number of shutout victories, defeating Texas A&M in 1894 (38-0) and Arkansas in the same year (54-0). In 1900 they defeated Oklahoma (28-2). The over-all record for the team for this period was a spectacular 207-57-12.

Under the Texas Intercollegiate Athletic Association it bagged two victories in 1913 and 1914. The next year, the team joined the Southwest Conference and in 1920 grabbed the title for that conference. The team has won, all in all, 32 conference championships, the last three being in 1996, 2005 and 2009 when they had joined the Big 12 Conference. In all but the 1970 win they grabbed the succeeding Bowl event. To its credit, the team has a total of 32 conference wins. They were all won while affiliated with the Big 12 Conference. They also took four national championships for 1963, 1969, 1970 and 2005. A glance at a record of their coaches from 1941 to 2009 shows all of them having more wins than losses. The team or some of its members have been honored by various awards. These include Heisman Trophy for Most Outstanding Player, the Chic Harley Award for College Football Player of the Year, the Maxwell Award for Best Football Player, the AP Player of the Year for Most Outstanding Player and the Walter Camp Award for Player of the Year.