Playing career in an August 1950 preseason NFL game. Owens played
college football at the
University of Oklahoma from 1946 to 1949, under head coach
Bud Wilkinson, where he was a teammate of
Darrell Royal, who, coincidentally, was the Huskies' head coach in
1956, then took the same post at
Texas, allowing Owens to come to Seattle. He played a year of pro football in
1950 for the
Baltimore Colts, a one-win squad worthy of mention as among the worst teams in NFL history.
Coaching career After his brief foray in professional football came to an end, Owens served as a college assistant coach for six years under
Bear Bryant at the
University of Kentucky and at
Texas A&M University. According to legend, after the 1956 season, when the
Washington Huskies were looking for a head coach, Bryant indicated to reporters that Owens "will make a great coach for somebody some day." In
1959 and
1960, he led Washington to back-to-back ten-win seasons and consecutive
Rose Bowl wins. He was awarded the
UPI Pacific Coast Coach of the Year for
1959 and
1960. He also coached the Huskies to the
1964 Rose Bowl. Owens concurrently served as the
athletic director at Washington from 1960 to 1969. He was elected to the
College Football Hall of Fame as a player in 1982. Owens'
1960 team was awarded the
national championship by the
Helms Athletic Foundation after defeating
Minnesota in the
1961 Rose Bowl. The Golden Gophers had already been awarded the
AP,
UPI, and
NFF national championships at the end of the regular season, as was customary at the time. Owens resigned as head coach of the Huskies following the 1974 season at the end of his last contract, a three-year deal at $33,000 per year. His later years at Washington were marred by accusations of
racism and the backlash that resulted from his actions and attitudes towards
black players. He was succeeded as head coach by
Don James, the head coach at
Kent State, who also led the Huskies for eighteen seasons. Owens later apologized for his actions as part of his acknowledgements as a statue of him was erected at Washington in
2003. Owens died at age 82 in 2009 at his home in
Bigfork, Montana. ==Head coaching record ==