No one can blame former Texas football coach David McWilliams and swimming coach Jill Sterkel if they didn't want to come back to Texas.
Both experienced the highest of highs as Longhorn athletes who became head coaches at their alma mater. And both ended their coaching careers on low notes, with McWilliams resigning after a 5-6 season and the popular Sterkel being dismissed after leading the women's swimming team to 13 top-10 finishes, including second place in 1994.
Yet both proudly work for the Longhorns to this day - now as part of the T-Association.
"I've been here so long it's in my blood," McWilliams said. "I just didn't want to leave. I thought the best thing I could do would be to stay on and provide support for the next head coach."
McWilliams was head coach at Texas from 1987 to 1991, going 31-26 in those five years. He was a two-way starter on the football team from 1961 to 1963, playing center and defensive tackle. He went on to coach at Abilene High School from 1966 to 1969, and was an assistant at Texas from 1970 to 1985, serving his last three seasons as the defensive coordinator.
He took over as head coach at Texas Tech in 1986, leading the team to a 7-4 record in his only season as coach. After one year at Tech he took the Texas job.
McWilliams led the team's "Shock the Nation" campaign in 1990, guiding them to a 10-1 regular season record before losing 46-3 to Miami in the Cotton Bowl. He resigned after going 5-6 in his final year.
"We lost some key seniors from the '90 team, but I didn't think that there would be that big of a drop off," McWilliams said. "At that point, I realized that I probably wouldn't be able to turn things around the next year, nor any time soon. That's when I decided it was within the best interest of the University for me to step down."
McWilliams worked in fundraising before taking over the T-Association. In the end, McWilliams' decision to stay at Texas in an administrative role, rather than leave for another coaching job, may have ended up saving his life, he said.
In 1996, McWilliams was diagnosed with colon cancer.
"You talk about impact coaches, well, my football coach from junior high, Bill
Anderson, told us that if you ever find blood in your pee-pee or your doo-doo then you need to tell someone," McWilliams said. "When I looked down and saw blood, that was the first thing that came to my mind. If I was still coaching, I would have probably ignored it, because I wouldn't have had the time to get it checked out. Fortunately, since I wasn't in coaching, I had the time to get it checked out and decided to do so. Thankfully we caught it early. God has a plan for everything, and everything happens for a reason."
Sterkel won four Olympic medals, starting when she was 15. She then went on to swim at Texas and took over as head coach in the 1992-1993 season. During one stretch of her career at Texas, Sterkel led the team to seven consecutive conference championships.
Her co-head coach Mike Walker took a leave of absence in Sterkel's final season. Sterkel was reassigned in spring 2006 to coordinate the women's letterwinners for the T-Association.
"It kind of had a lot to do with burnout from coaching," Sterkel said. "My final year was very stressful with the situation I was in. Chris [Plonsky] called me into her office and asked me what I really wanted to do. I loved UT, and I love Austin, and I wanted to stay. I was very fortunate to get the opportunity I have now. If I would have gone anywhere else after coaching at Texas, then it would have been a big drop-off for me, because I was already at the best job in the country."
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