Time & Perspective Quote by Darrell Royal

Royal's line sounds almost anti-ambition until you remember who is saying it: a coach whose job is to live in the high-glare, high-volatility economy of Saturdays. "I never have planned a whole lot of future" isn't a shrug; it's a strategy for surviving a profession where a "five-year plan" can be erased by one fourth-quarter collapse, one injury report, one donor revolt. The blunt grammar does part of the work. No poetry, no varnish, just the clipped cadence of a man who has watched certainty get punished.

The subtext is a quiet rebuke to the mythology of total control. Coaching culture sells mastery: the genius playbook, the perfectly engineered program, the dynasty built on pure will. Royal offers a less cinematic truth: you earn the right to tomorrow by handling today. "One day at a time" is the slogan of recovery culture, and it fits here for the same reason. The job rewards obsession and can eat you alive; narrowing the horizon is how you keep panic from becoming policy.

Context matters, too. Royal built Texas into a national power, meaning he wasn't speaking from failure or complacency. It's the pragmatism of someone who has already seen the mountaintop and understands how thin the air is up there. The intent isn't to dismiss the future but to refuse its tyranny: focus on the practice field, the next rep, the next decision. In a world addicted to forecasts, it's a disciplined kind of humility.