It's Thank Goodness For Goodson In Texas

Things were in chaos last Thursday around the Austin home of Texas football Coach Fred Akers. The problem was that when two of Akers' children, Lesli and Stacey, came home after school they saw their dad's Cadillac still in the driveway. Normally at this time of day it would be parked outside his office. Inside, the coffeepot was still plugged in—the one thing Akers does do around the house is unplug the coffee—and there were their father's car keys lying on the kitchen counter.

The girls immediately assumed that Akers had been kidnapped on the eve of the Texas-Oklahoma game—sort of like the Navy goat. "This is awful," wailed 12-year-old Stacey. "They can't play the game without him." At which time Fred's wife, Diane, arrived home from a tennis match, listened to the hysteria and said, "Have you checked the closets?" A search ensued, but Fred was no closet case. The pool bottom also was empty.

As it turned out, Akers had got locked out of the house in the morning while all his family was gone, and he had been forced to call one of his assistants to come after him. Later, at dinner, a spirited discussion transpired between Diane and Fred over the circumstances of the coach being locked out and whose responsibility it is to see that he has his keys with him when he walks out the door.

But if Akers was short of keys on Thursday, he found all he needed by Saturday as his unbeaten Longhorns, AP's No. 4-ranked team, unlocked all the secrets of No. 3-ranked Oklahoma. The final score was 16-7, and the victory marked the second time in Akers' three years as Texas coach that the 'Horns have won in one of the liveliest rivalries in college football. "Folks don't take this game real serious down here," says one fan, "but they will kill for it." More significantly, the victory thrust Texas into serious contention for the national championship.

Up in Norman earlier in the week, Sooner Coach Barry Switzer had analyzed the game. "The difference almost always is who has the best defense," he said. "And if it all should come down to kicking, we'll lose. See, there's this funny thing about football. The best team usually wins."

As a prophet, Switzer gets an A-plus. The seasoned Texas defense—yearning to be recognized as the nation's toughest—demonstrated its mettle by limiting the heretofore high-powered Oklahoma offense, which had averaged 442 yards in its first four games, to only 158 yards, including a depressing 30 passing. In the process, the Longhorns shut down Billy Sims; the 1978 Heisman Trophy winner gained only 73 yards in 20 tries, the fewest for him in 14 games dating back to September 1978.

The Texas defensive tackles—255-pound Steve McMichael and 255-pound Bill Acker, both from tiny (pop: 2,804) Freer, Texas—played absolutely brilliantly. "All we had to do was tackle," said McMichael, who was in on 10 tackles and forced one turnover. "When the ball moved, we moved. It was all pretty simple." Indeed, the Texas coaching staff had simplified its defensive plan for this game in hope of encouraging more basic, hard-nosed, lights-out football. After the game, in which he had a hand in seven tackles and made a key fumble recovery, Acker said, "They rely on blocking us tackles, and they didn't do it." Through it all, Texas Strong Safety Ricky Churchman was his usual ornery self, putting big hits on Sims that repeatedly let the air out of the Sooner star. Asked if he thought his performance had cost him the 1979 Heisman, Sims said, "I don't care. I have one already. We still have a chance to win the Big Eight title...that's what matters."

With the previously rampaging Sooners, who had scored 182 points in winning four of four before meeting Texas, being held in check, the game's pivotal point came when Oklahoma field-goal kicker John Hoge missed a 37-yard attempt in the third quarter that would have brought the sooners back to a 10-10 tie and very likely replenished their spirits. This was precisely the kind of failure Switzer had feared. Meanwhile, Texas field-goal kicker John Goodson was having extraordinary success. Goodson walked on last season and asked Akers, who was looking for a successor to the nonpareil Russell Erxleben, if he could try out Upon seeing Goodson kick, Akers was horrified—first, to find that he was a soccer-style booter and, second, to discover that he was another of the barefoot boys, two things football coaches understand not at all. But after Goodson showed his stuff, Akers was impressed and told him he could stay around. Fortunate, that, for in four games Goodson has succeeded on 12 of 15 field-goal attempts to lead the nation. He was 3 for 3 against Oklahoma. A familiar phrase from Akers these days is "Thank goodness for Goodson."

How was Goodson able to come into the Texas-Oklahoma game and perform so well when he had never placekicked in college before this year?

"I'm not a nervous person."