Richard Wade Walton is a former

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

quarterback The quarterback (QB) is a position in gridiron football who are members of the offensive side of the ball and mostly line up directly behind the Lineman (football), offensive line. In modern American football, the quarterback is usually consider ...

. He was the starting quarterback of the

Texas Texas ( , ; or ) is the most populous U.S. state, state in the South Central United States, South Central region of the United States. It borders Louisiana to the east, Arkansas to the northeast, Oklahoma to the north, New Mexico to the we ...

Longhorns in early 1998. He was the backup quarterback for

James Brown James Joseph Brown (May 3, 1933 – December 25, 2006) was an American singer, songwriter, dancer, musician, and record producer. The central progenitor of funk music and a major figure of 20th-century music, he is referred to by Honorific nick ...

for three years before winning the starting job as a 5th year Senior. He started for the first two games in 1998 but broke his hand against UCLA and as a result lost his starting job to

Major Applewhite Major Lee Applewhite (born July 26, 1978) is an American college football coach and former player. He is the head football coach for the University of South Alabama, a position he has held since 2024. Prior to that he was the head coach at the Un ...

Longhorns career

Richard Walton was a coach's son, whose father Richard Lynn Walton had coached for Bay City High School where Richard played. He was the starting quarterback for Bay City for three years, earning All-American status as a senior. His first start for Texas was a 21–13 win over Baylor in 1995 where he replaced an injured James Brown, a win that helped Texas win the last

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 also included schools from Oklaho ...

championship. His second start, again in place of an injured James Brown, was in the 1997

UCLA The University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) is a public land-grant research university in Los Angeles, California, United States. Its academic roots were established in 1881 as a normal school then known as the southern branch of the C ...

game, which Texas lost 66-3 - the second worst loss in Texas history. He also saw considerable playing time in the 1996 Virginia game, 1996 Baylor game, 1997 Rutgers game and 1997 Colorado game, as Walton replaced an injured or struggling Brown. After winning the starting job in both spring practice and pre-season in 1998, he won his first game as the team's unquestioned leader, beating New Mexico 66–36. But in the second game of the season against UCLA, he broke his hand and was replaced by redshirt Freshman

. He was statistically among the best quarterbacks in the country at the time. The injury was only supposed to keep him out for 4–6 weeks, but Applewhite played well enough to keep the job all season. Once he recovered from his injury, Walton saw only occasional play. Walton, a 3.5 GPA student, graduated in 1998 with a degree in kinesiology and went to medical school at

McGovern Medical School The John P. and Kathrine G. McGovern Medical School, located in the Texas Medical Center in Houston, Texas, is the graduate medical school associated with the University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston (UTHealth Houston). Established ...

. He is currently a radiologist for M&S Radiology in San Antonio.

Records

*UT-Lowest Percentage of Passes Had Intercepted, season (1.6%) (50 attempts minimum), surpassed by Chance Mock in 2003 *UT-Lowest Percentage of Passes Had Intercepted, career (2.5%) (100 attempts minimum), surpassed by Chance Mock in 2004 *UT-Highest Completion Percentage, career (60.1%) (min 100 attempts), surpassed by

Vince Young Vincent Paul Young Jr. (born May 18, 1983) is an American former professional football player who was a quarterback for six seasons in the National Football League (NFL). Young was selected by the Tennessee Titans as the third overall pick in th ...

in 2005

References

External links

Career Statistics
{{DEFAULTSORT:Walton, Richard Living people American football quarterbacks Texas Longhorns football players Sportspeople from Bay City, Texas Players of American football from Texas Year of birth missing (living people)