Duke Carlisle, the quarterback who steered the Texas Longhorns to their first national championship, died Friday in Lockhart after a long fight with lung cancer. He was 84.
Born Emmett Augustus Carlisle III in Kaufman in 1941 and raised in Athens, he was named for his father and grandfather but went by Duke.
At Athens High, he starred in several sports and, as a junior, carried his team to the state quarterfinals. He then committed to Darrell Royal at Texas, where he became one of only four Longhorn quarterbacks to win a national title.
Carlisle never made All-American or first-team All-Southwest Conference. His reputation was built in the moments that decided seasons.
As a senior in 1963, he started every game and finished 10-0, beating a top-ranked Oklahoma team along the way and closing the year against Navy.
He also played defense, lining up at safety, and during that perfect season picked off a pass against Baylor that helped keep the Longhorns unbeaten. An academic All-American, he was the kind of player Royal could trust on either side of the ball.
The defining afternoon came on New Year’s Day 1964 in the Cotton Bowl. Texas faced Navy and Heisman Trophy winner Roger Staubach.
Carlisle threw for 234 yards and two touchdowns, then a Cotton Bowl record, and was named the game’s most valuable player in a 28-6 victory that delivered the program’s first national championship. It was the first of four titles in Longhorn history.
Texas won again in 1969 and 1970, and once more in 2005.
Professional football came calling. He was drafted by the Green Bay Packers of the NFL and the Kansas City Chiefs of the AFL, but he never appeared in a pro game.
Instead he worked as an investment banker in New York, then moved into the oil business and settled in Mississippi before later years in Texas.
Family remembered a man who did not trade on the Cotton Bowl. Rich Terry, his son-in-law, told the Houston Chronicle that Carlisle was humble and self-effacing, someone who never pushed himself forward and never took himself too seriously. “He was such an invert and just a good guy,” Terry said.
Carlisle was preceded in death by his parents, Eloise and Emmett Carlisle Jr. He is survived by his wife of 62 years, Emily Alford Carlisle; daughters Kathy Carlisle Asher and Eloise Carlisle Terry; and his brother Todd Carlisle.
For Texas fans, the name still belongs to that January afternoon in Dallas, when a quiet senior from Athens outplayed the Heisman winner and gave the Longhorns their first championship.
