RIP Fred Akers -- Spent Two Years at Wyoming Before Replaced Darryl Royal at Texas

Fred Akers, who made his collegiate head coaching debut with the University of Wyoming and in his second and final year provided a step toward a return to respectability for a team that had been buried under the negative avalanche of the Black 14, died on Monday at his home in Horseshoe Bay, Tex.

Family members said Akers suffered from advanced stage dimentia, and had been removed from a care facility and returned home in the midst of the emergence of COVID-19.

Akers, a teammate of long-time Oklahoma coach Barry Switzer, attended Arkansas, but it was as a coach at Texas that he received acclaim. Originally a Longhorn assistant, Akers left after the 1974 season to become the head coach at Wyoming.

The Cowboys had fallen from one of the top in college football in the late 1960s to an afterthought in the aftermath of the Black 14, in which the 14 African Americas on the team were dissmissed prior to the sixth game of the 1969 season over their desire to wear arm bands as a form of protest against the Mormon Church during a game with BYU.

Akers had regained the confidence of the fans when in his second year the Cowboys rebounded from a 2-9 season to go 8-4 overall, 6-1 in the Western Athletic Conference, and tied for first place in the WAC. The honeymoon, however, was brief.

The Cowboys played in the Fiesta Bowl in 1976, but Akers and the bulk of his coaching staff resigned two weeks before the game, and headed to Austin to assume similar roles with the Longhorns.

Even though he had been an assistant to Darryl Royal at Texas, his hiring for the head coach job when Royal retired was not well received by Royal, who favored the job going to defensive coordinator Mike Campbell.

Akers did, however, enjoy success initially at Texas, twice winning Southwest Conference titles, but both times had the dream of a national championship disappear in bowl game losses. His 86-31-2 record as the Longhorns’ head coach made him the third most successful coach in Longhorn history. Only Royal (167 wins) and Mack Brown (158 wins) won more games as the Texas head coach than Akers.

His last two and a half seasons, however, saw the Longhorns compile an overall .500 record, leading to his dismissal after the 1986 season and eventually hiring for what turned into a four-year tenure as the head coach at Purdue, where he did not come close to the success he enjoyed at Texas.

He was let go by Purdue after four seasons in which the Boilmakers were a combined 12-31-1.