This story appeared in the 87th Goodyear Cotton Bowl Classic Official Game Program

A recent funeral in Texas brought together several college football luminaries to celebrate the life of a Cotton Bowl Classic legend that changed the direction of the sport and left an unmatched legacy on Dallas-Fort Worth's annual New Year's Day bowl game. Former Texas fullback Steve Worster, a two-time national champion and two-time Cotton Bowl Classic leading rusher, was laid to rest at the age of 73 in August 2022.
 
Teammates and college football historians will forever remember "Big Woo" as the driving force behind Texas' Wishbone offense that carried the Longhorns to consecutive national championships in 1969 and 1970.
 
The triple-option attack propelled Texas to a Southwest Conference-record six consecutive championships under legendary head coach Darrell Royal, each of them capped by a berth in the Classic. At one point, the Longhorns won a school-record 30 consecutive games while lined up in the 'Bone, a winning streak eclipsed by only two schools from major conferences since the advent of two-platoon football: Miami (34 games, 2000-02) and Nebraska (32 games, 1967-72).
 
"We started tearing people up. They didn't know how to defend the Wishbone," Worster recalled in an ESPN.com story published in 2018 to celebrate the 50th anniversary of its creation. "They didn't know what to do, and we loved it."
 
THE METHOD BEHIND THE MADNESS
The Wishbone attack, a run-heavy approach that required a powerful fullback and a savvy quarterback who made good decisions on the fly, eventually morphed into the offense of choice for a combined eight national championship teams at Texas, Alabama, and Oklahoma between 1969 and 1985. It served as a devastating force throughout college football for most of a generation. Today, its defining concept of equal distribution to multiple playmakers in open space is the foundation of the popular spread – or Air Raid – offenses that rely on option routes by receivers to move the ball.
 
But it all started with the Wishbone, thanks to some creative doodling on a yellow pad by Longhorns' offensive coordinator Emory Bellard in the summer of 1968. Bellard married the option principles of the Veer formation with a full-house backfield. He moved up the fullback one step in front of the other halfbacks to create proper spacing for blocking schemes. The overhead "Y" look of the formation gave the Wishbone its name, courtesy of then-Houston Post columnist Mickey Herskowitz who opined that the Longhorns appeared to be forming a "turkey wishbone" before each snap.
 
Lined up under center, the quarterback took the snap and had three choices: hand off to the fullback on a dive play, keep the ball around end, or pitch it to a trailing halfback who had another halfback in front as the lead blocker. The same basic plays could be run to either side. Success depended on the quarterback's ability to make quick, accurate decisions based on how defensive linemen reacted.
 
The offense also required a hard-nosed fullback who took a pounding on every play, whether he had the ball or whether he was simply a decoy. The rugged Worster (6-foot, 209 pounds), a three-year starter on Texas teams that finished a combined 30-2-1 from 1968-70, was the prototype player for that role.
 
THE WORSTER BUNCH
At Worster's funeral, Bill Zapalac, a linebacker on those legendary Texas teams, recalled that his late teammate was such a high-profile signee that Royal always referred to the 1967 signing class as the "Worster Bunch" and teammates embraced the nickname. A "Worster Bunch" T-shirt was prominently displayed at the funeral.
 
"Our freshman class was named the "Worster Bunch.' That's how we're known. That's my favorite memory," Zapalac told reporters who covered the funeral. Fellow teammate Bill Atessis, a standout defensive tackle, recalled that his relationship with Worster dated back to their high school days when both players talked about wanting to win a national championship at Texas.
 
"Sure enough, that's what happened," Atessis said.
 
Actually, it happened twice. Both players were stars on the Longhorns' 1969 and 1970 title teams. Texas' dominance during that stretch began with a nine-game winning streak to close the 1968 season. After an 0-1-1 start to the Wishbone era, Bellard made some technical tweaks to the formation and moved quarterback James Street into the starting lineup. The Longhorns never lost again, capping the season with a 36-13 rout of Tennessee in the 33^rd Classic on Jan. 1, 1969.
 
Worster ran for a game-high 85 yards, scored one touchdown, and averaged a whopping 8.5 yards per carry.
 
With 14 starters returning, including three of the four backfield starters (Street, Worster, and halfback Ted Koy) that ran roughshod over Tennessee, Texas began the 1969 season with lofty expectations. Jim Bertelsen replaced the departed Chris Gilbert at one halfback spot, and Billy Dale made significant contributions in a relief role.
 
By the time the top-ranked Longhorns met No. 2 Arkansas on Dec. 6 in a game dubbed "The Big Shootout" to cap the centennial season of college football, Texas was averaging 44.3 points per game and winning by an average of 35 points each week in its newfangled Wishbone formation. After a hard-fought 15-14 victory over Arkansas, the Longhorns headed back to the Cotton Bowl Classic to face ninth-ranked Notre Dame, which ended its self-induced 44-year bowl ban to be a part of the post-season.
 
Worster and the Longhorns secured the 1969 national title, 21-17, on Dale's go-ahead touchdown plunge with 1:08 remaining. Worster, once again, led all rushers with 155 yards and was selected as the Outstanding Offensive Player.
 
RAISING EYEBROWS
Royal, in turn, was besieged by rival coaches seeking insights about his revolutionary offense. During one conversation with Michigan State coach Duffy Daugherty, whose team was struggling after winning back-to-back national titles in 1965 and 1966, Royal famously told his friend: "Duffy, you don't want my offense. You want my fullback."
 
In a 1969 interview with Sports Illustrated, Royal described Worster as the prototype Wishbone fullback because he was "the kind of kid who just goes out and causes wrecks, straightens his headgear and walks back to the huddle quietly."
 
Worster and the Longhorns caused enough wrecks during an undefeated regular-season campaign in 1970 to claim another national title in the coaches' poll. Although a season-ending loss to Notre Dame in the Classic broke the Longhorns' 30-game winning streak in Worster's final college game, the Wishbone remained the talk of college football.
 
After conferring with Royal, Oklahoma coaches implemented the Wishbone midway through the 1970 season. A 2-2 start became a 7-4-1 finish, with the tie coming against Alabama, 24-24, at the Astro-Bluebonnet Bowl in Houston. OU's 349 rushing yards raised the eyebrow of Alabama coach Paul "Bear" Bryant.
 
When Royal opened spring drills in 1971, he found a surprise visitor – Bryant – sitting on the steps of the football building. The Crimson Tide head coach acknowledged he had been positioned there since 6 a.m., in hope of getting a Wishbone tutorial from Royal. The Texas coach complied and, in the years to come, both Alabama and Oklahoma took Wishbone success to an even higher level than Texas.
 
EIGHT NATIONAL CHAMPIONSHIPS
Each school won three national titles while running the offense, compared to the two championships posted by the Longhorns – the Wishbone pioneers – in 1969 and 1970. Bryant's Alabama teams ran the triple-option to national titles in 1973, 1978, and 1979. Oklahoma, under coach Barry Switzer, won titles out of the Wishbone in 1974, 1975, and 1985. In Switzer's estimation, the formation hummed when executed properly because offensive players always outnumbered defenders at the point of attack.
 
"It didn't matter what you did as a defense," said Switzer, who leaned on elusive freshman quarterback Jamelle Holieway to win his last title as a Wishbone team in 1985. "To stop every part of the triple option, you had to get the secondary involved in run support. And when you did that, we'd hit you over the top with a play-action pass."
 
Years later, coaches at Iowa Wesleyan studied the read-and-react aspect of the Wishbone and implemented an aerial version. Reliant upon receivers to execute precise routes knowing that the ball could be headed to them on any play – the same "equal distribution" concept that drove Wishbone halfbacks – the Air Raid offense crafted by Hal Mumme and Mike Leach has left its imprint on the modern game.
 
"If I didn't run the 'Air Raid,' I would run the Wishbone," said Leach, former Mississippi State head coach shortly before his untimely passing. "It's still a great offense. We studied Wishbone concepts while we developed the Air Raid, and there are a lot of similarities. Force the defense to make hard choices quickly. Get the ball to the guy in space and let him run. It's all about outnumbering guys at the point of attack."
 
That includes today's ever-popular run-pass option plays, or RPOs, that allow the quarterback to pass out of a called running play if that option seems better to the quarterback as the play unfolds. To many coaches, this is confirmation that football's best ideas never really die … they simply get recirculated.

A SOURCE OF INSPIRATION
A case in point: When the Wishbone offense was unveiled on Sept. 21, 1968, in a 20-20 tie between Texas and Houston, phones in West Fort Worth began buzzing. Since 1952, players at Monnig Junior High had used a similar formation – with a fullback a couple of steps in front of other running backs in a full-house backfield – under coach Spud Cason in what was called the "Monnig T." Cason initially used the formation to accommodate a slow-footed fullback but stuck with it when he noticed it provided superior blocking angles for success. In 21 seasons, Cason's teams won 13 city championships while lining up in the "Monnig T."
 
In 1970, Cason published a book called The Original High School Wishbone and received a mention in Sports Illustrated as a possible inspiration for Bellard, who had no knowledge of the situation at Monnig when he began moving around salt and pepper shakers on a cafeteria table in 1968 to illustrate what he expected his offensive players to do when they tried to bring his new formation to life.
 
The pivotal difference: while Monnig's players lined up in a similar formation, their plays were pre-determined in the huddle. At Texas, the quarterback made decisions on the fly – based on how the defense reacted – to make the triple-option hum. Asked once about Cason's influence on his offense, Bellard responded: "The key to the option is the triple option, not how you line up. I invented the Wishbone offense."
 
But that did not stop Royal, a friend of Cason's, from having a little fun. The two often spoke and exchanged letters. In one, Royal added this postscript: "Thanks for the offense."
 
More than a half-century later, it still is creating ripples throughout college football.