“TCU is like a cockroach” (UT football coach Darrell K. Royal)

In 2007, the University of Texas put Texas Christian University back on its football schedule and the old “cockroach quote” surfaced. In 1961, TCU upset #1-ranked Texas 6-0. In 1962, UT coach Darrell K. Royal compared the TCU situation to a cockroach: “It’s not so much what he gets into and carries away but what he falls into and messes up.”
   
 
Wikipedia: Darrell K. Royal
Darrell K Royal (July 6, 1924 – November 7, 2012) was an American football player and coach. He served as the head coach at Mississippi State University (1954–1955), the University of Washington (1956), and the University of Texas at Austin (1957–1976), compiling a career college football record of 184–60–5. In his 20 seasons at Texas, Royal’s teams won three national championships (1963, 1969, 1970), 11 Southwest Conference titles, and amassed a record of 167–47–5. He won more games than any other coach in Texas Longhorns football history. Royal also coached the Edmonton Eskimos of the Canadian Football League for one season in 1953. Royal never had a losing season as a head coach for his entire career. He played football at the University of Oklahoma from 1946 to 1949. Royal was inducted into the College Football Hall of Fame as a coach in 1983. Darrell K Royal – Texas Memorial Stadium in Austin, Texas, where the Longhorns play their home games, was renamed in his honor in 1996.
     
7 February 1962, Port Arthur (TX) News, pg. 9, col. 1:
Commenting on the fratricidal tendencies of the Southwest Conference football wars, Royal reflected “history proves that the lowest team in the conference can rise up and defeat the leader. It has happened time and time again and that’s why I really wasn’t too surprised when we got beat by TCU last season. Of course, I was disappointed, but not surprised.
 
“THAT situation is kind of like the cockroach,” he quipped, “it’s not so much what he gets into and carries away but what he falls into and messes up.”
 
Time magazine
When in Doubt, Punt
Friday, Nov. 22, 1963
Coach Darrell Royal, 39, of the University of Texas is the kind of man who looks both ways before crossing a oneway street. The forward pass, he insists, is strictly for masochists. “When you throw the ball, four things can happen —and only one of them is good.” The best offense, he says, is a good defense: “If the other team can’t score on you, you can’t lose. You can tie, but you can’t lose.” Royal’s Longhorns content themselves with grinding out bite-sized chunks of yardage, and to make sure that they don’t try anything foolish, he calls a fair number of plays from the bench. When in doubt, he punts. “If we can kick the ball from our 30 to their 10,” he says, “that’s six first downs in one play.”
 
The only regular-season game Royal’s infantrymen have lost in three years was an 0-6 squeaker to Texas Christian in 1961. “T.C.U. is like a cockroach,” Royal complained then. “It isn’t what he eats or carries off, but what he falls into and messes up.”
 
Austin American-Statesman (September 8, 2007)
EVERY COCKROACH HAS ITS DAY
The most famous of the 81 meetings between Texas and TCU came in 1961, when the Longhorns boasted a No. 1 ranking. The Horned Frogs recorded the only score of the game, a flea-flicker TD pass, for the 6-0 upset. The victory by the presky Frogs prompted Texas coach Darrell Royal to refer to them as “coackroaches.” “It’s not so much what they eat and carry off,” Royal said. “It’s what they get into and mess up.”