The 1941 Texas Longhorns football team was an

American football American football (referred to simply as football in the United States and Canada), also known as gridiron, is a team sport played by two teams of eleven players on a rectangular field with goalposts at each end. The offense, the team wi ...

team that represented the

University of Texas The University of Texas at Austin (UT Austin, UT, or Texas) is a public research university in Austin, Texas. It was founded in 1883 and is the oldest institution in the University of Texas System. With 40,916 undergraduate students, 11,075 ...

as a member of the

Southwest Conference The Southwest Conference (SWC) was an NCAA Division I college athletic conference in the United States that existed from 1914 to 1996. Composed primarily of schools from Texas, at various times the conference included schools from Oklahoma ...

during the

1941 college football season The 1941 college football regular season was the 73rd season of intercollegiate football in the United States. Competition included schools from the Big Ten Conference, the Pacific Coast Conference (PCC), the Southeastern Conference (SEC), the B ...

. In their fifth year under head coach Dana X. Bible, the Longhorns compiled an 8–1–1 record (4–1–1 against conference opponents), won the Southwest Conference championship, were ranked No. 4 in the final

AP Poll The Associated Press poll (AP poll) provides weekly rankings of the top 25 NCAA teams in one of three Division I college sports: football, men's basketball and women's basketball. The rankings are compiled by polling 62 sportswriters and broad ...

, and outscored its opponents by a total of 338 to 55. Four Longhorns were selected as first-team players on the

1941 All-Southwest Conference football team The 1941 All-Southwest Conference football team consists of American football players chosen by various organizations for All-Southwest Conference teams for the 1941 college football season. The selectors for the 1941 season included the Associate ...

: fullback

Pete Layden John Peter Layden, Jr. (December 30, 1919 – July 18, 1982) was an outfielder in Major League Baseball who played for the St. Louis Browns. He also played as quarterback, running back, cornerback, kick returner, punt returner, and punter for ...

, halfback

Jack Crain Jack Crain (January 7, 1920 – October 22, 1994) was a football player for the University of Texas at Austin who later served three terms in the Texas House of Representatives. He was named an All Southwest Conference player in 1939 and 194 ...

, end Malcolm Kutner, and guard Chal Daniel. Kutner was also selected by the

Associated Press The Associated Press (AP) is an American non-profit news agency headquartered in New York City. Founded in 1846, it operates as a cooperative, unincorporated association. It produces news reports that are distributed to its members, U.S. ne ...

International News Service The International News Service (INS) was a U.S.-based news agency (newswire) founded by newspaper publisher William Randolph Hearst in 1909.

and ''Collier's'' as a first-team All-American and was later inducted into the College Football Hall of Fame. On November 3, 1941, the Longhorns became the first

Texas Longhorns football The Texas Longhorns football program is the intercollegiate team representing the University of Texas at Austin (variously Texas or UT) in the sport of American football. The Longhorns compete in the NCAA Division I Football Bowl Subdivision ...

team to reach No. 1 in the

. They were recognized as

national champions National champions are corporations which are technically private businesses but due to governmental policy are ceded a dominant position in a national economy. In this system, these large organizations are expected not only to seek profit but als ...

Berryman QPRS Berryman QPRS, also known as the Berryman Quality Point Rating System is a mathematical rating system developed by Clyde P. Berryman to rate sports teams and competitors. The Berryman QPRS system considers strength of schedule, win–loss record, p ...

, James Howell, and the Williamson System.

Schedule

References

{{Texas Longhorns football navbox

Texas Texas (, ; Spanish: ''Texas'', ''Tejas'') is a state in the South Central region of the United States. At 268,596 square miles (695,662 km2), and with more than 29.1 million residents in 2020, it is the second-largest U.S. state by ...

Texas Longhorns football seasons