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email: terry@terryfrei.com
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Simon and Schuster published the Horns, Hogs, and Nixon Coming
hardback in 2002. The hardback is out of print and considered collectable. Taylor
Trade issued the trade paperback in 2004 (cover pictured above). It includes a new epilogue and updates. Texas and Arkansas canceled a scheduled 2009 renewal of the rivalry, but there will be considerable
and renewed interest in the '69 game as the 40th anniversary approaches. It trumps pro football's "The Greatest
Game Ever Played" because so much beyond football was involved in the amazing confluence of political, social
and sporting issues tied to this single contest -- much of it unearthed by Terry Frei in his research. From the hardback book jacket:
On December 6, 1969, the Texas Longhorns and Arkansas Razorbacks
met in what many consider the Game of the Century. In the centennial season of college football, both teams were undefeated;
both featured devastating and innovative offenses; both boasted cerebral, stingy defenses; and both were coached by superior
tacticians and stirring motivators, Texas's Darrell Royal and Arkansas's Frank Broyles. On that day in Fayetteville, the poll-leading
Horns and second-ranked Hogs battled for the Southwest Conference title -- and President Nixon was coming to present his own
national championship plaque to the winners.
Even if it had been just a game, it would still have been memorable
today. The bitter rivals played a game for the ages before a frenzied, hog-callin' crowd that included not only an enthralled
President Nixon -- a noted football fan -- but also Texas congressman George Bush. And the game turned, improbably, on an
outrageously daring fourth-down pass.
But it wasn't just a game, because nothing was so simple in December 1969.
In Horns, Hogs, & Nixon Coming, Terry Frei deftly weaves the social, political, and athletic trends together for an unforgettable
look at one of the landmark college sporting events of all time.
The week leading up to the showdown saw black
student groups at Arkansas, still marginalized and targets of virulent abuse, protesting and seeking to end the use of the
song "Dixie" to celebrate Razorback touchdowns; students were determined to rush the field during the game if the
band struck up the tune. As the United States remained mired in the Vietnam War, sign-wielding demonstrators (including war
veterans) took up their positions outside the stadium -- in full view of the president. That same week, Rhodes Scholar Bill
Clinton penned a letter to the head of the ROTC program at the University of Arkansas, thanking the colonel for shielding
him from induction into the military earlier in the year.
Finally, this game was the last major sporting event
that featured two exclusively white teams. Slowly, inevitably, integration would come to the end zones and hash marks of the
South, and though no one knew it at the time, the Texas vs. Arkansas clash truly was Dixie's Last Stand.
Drawing
from comprehensive research and interviews with coaches, players, protesters, professors, and politicians, Frei stitches together
an intimate, electric narrative about two great teams -- including one player who, it would become clear only later, was displaying
monumental courage just to make it onto the field -- facing off in the waning days of the era they defined. Gripping, nimble,
and clear-eyed, Horns, Hogs, & Nixon Coming is the final word on the last of how it was.
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A "superb blending of sports, history, and politics."
--Si Dunn, Dallas Morning
News
"Frei's often humorous telling is much more than a rehash of the game. . . (It) also serves as a larger
history of the social and political climate surrounding the competition. (The book) is a delightful, well-researched chronicle
of a turbulent era."
-- Larry Little, Library Journal
"A great story, well-told, with more delicious
details than a linebacker could handle."
--David Hendricks, San Antonio Express-News
"In some spots,
a reader may laugh out loud. There also may be some tears, especially in regard to courageous Texas defensive back Freddie
Steinmark, who six days after playing in the Big Shootout had his left leg amputated because of a cancerous bone tumor and
died in 1971. . .
"Frei does a masterful job of weaving in the historical significance of the turbulent times, including
Vietnam protests, the military draft lottery and the civil rights movement that were so much a part of campus life in that
era. It's political football at its best."
-- Bob Holt, Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
"Some of us
codgers on the scene thought we knew all facets of The Great Shootout. But now, 33 years after that climatic Arkansas-Texas
game, comes a most intriguing account on whys and wherefores and backgrounds and personality quirks, warts and all, and political
implications (Vietnam protests) and whatever. (That climatic week just happened to be the time when Bill Clinton got his ROTC
draft deferment from an UofArkansas official, whose daughter was dating a Razorback player, etc.) Title is 'Horns, Hogs and
Nixon Coming' and it's by Terry Frei, who must have worn out a dozen tape recorders in the process."
-- Blackie
Sherrod, Dallas Morning News
"It was a bit like stumbling upon a family history as written by a distant cousin
. . . But much to the dismay of our most cherished prejudice, an outsider, a furriner, a Coloradan for gosh sakes, has seen
things we couldn't. Like a Tocquevillian sportswriter in a new world, Terry Frei does the unexpected, if not the impossible:
He makes 'thatdamngame'--and all the cultural, political, and social issues swirling around it like so much red-and-white
confetti--seem new again, relevant again."
--Kane Webb in a lead editorial, Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
"Everyone knows that football today is a far cry from what it was in the days of leather helmets and dropkicks, but
it takes a book like Terry Frei's 'Horns, Hogs, and Nixon Coming' to show how much the game has changed in just the last three
decades. Frei does so by chronicling what might have been the final game of the God-Family-Football era, before shoe companies,
superagents and TV networks turned the muddy old gridiron into a multigazillion-dollar business."
-- Charles Hirshberg,
Sports Illustrated
"The great sports books eventually aren't about the game or the scoreboard result, but
about the characters involved -- on the field, in the stands, outside the stadium, around the country -- and the times, (and)
appeal to more than just the sports fan. Frei's account of an important moment of Arkansas and Texas sports history is great
because of that and can mean something to the average readers off in Oregon or Connecticut."
--Jim Harris, Arkansas
Times, Little Rock
"Frei went to Wheat Ridge High School, which produced not only (Freddie) Steinmark, but
also Texas guard Bobby Mitchell, whose brother was killed in Vietnam. In part because his father then was the head football
coach at the University of Oregon, Frei possesses the football expertise, an uncanny ability to buttonhook diverse personal
anecdotes together and appreciation for history to best tell this remarkable tale."
--John Moore, theater critic,
The Denver Post
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President Richard Nixon in
the Razorback Stadium stands at the Big Shootout. At left in his row are Arkansas Congressman John Paul Hammerschmidt, also
a decorated World War II pilot; and Arkansas Governor Winthrop Rockefeller. Farther down the row, facing the camera, is a
very young-looking Texas Congressman, George Bush, who was (and still is) one of Hammerschmidt's close friends. If you look
real hard in the row behind them, you can spot the top of Henry Kissinger's head and his glasses. Both Hammerschmidt
and Bush contributed their memories of that day for Horns, Hogs, and Nixon Coming. HHNC
discussed the anti-war protest going on on the hill beyond the stadium, led by Vietnam veteran and Arkansas student Don
Donner, but noted that ABC ignored it.The politicians couldn't miss it. As HHNC also disclosed,
the traveling party didn't know it, but Arkansas' black students and sympathizers were prepared to storm and occupy the field
if the Arkansas band played the song "Dixie," up to then the unofficial athletic anthem at the school. In several protests and a mass visit to the university president's office, black students had made
clear their views on the matter, and the Student Senate ultimately voted the week before the game to recommend that the
band no longer play the song. One of the participants would have been Hiram McBeth, the little defensive back "appointed"
by the back student organization to integrate the football team, but who didn't suit up for the Big Shootout. Another
activist in the fight against "Dixie," law student Darrell Brown, had suffered light leg wound the night before the
game in a drive-by shooting. HHNC disclosed that Brown had gone out for the freshman football team in 1966 and
in some ways could be considered the first black player in Arkansas history; later, he was the defense attorney in Jim
Guy Tucker's Whitewater trial and questioned President Bill Clinton on videotape in the White House. So
there was much in the air besides football that day, and the book's subtitle -- ...Dixie's Last Stand -- could
and should be interpreted several ways, both involving the region and Southern sports being at a crossroads, and more simply,
the symbolic stand over the song itself.
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Terry
Frei with Bill Clinton in the White House. Clinton was
in England when the game was played, but that was the week he wrote what would turn out to be his notorious letter to Colonel
Holmes, the head of the Arkansas ROTC program. Clinton had drawn a high number in the draft lottery on December 1, and his
angst-filled letter to Holmes about pulling out of his commitment to take advanced ROTC in exchange for Holmes' earlier help
in quashing his induction notice was released and was an issue in the 1992 presidential campaign. At the time, Colonel Holmes
did not speak with the media beyond issuing an affidavit. However, Holmes did speak with Terry Frei in 2001 -- in part
because Arkansas star tailback Bill Burnett was dating his daughter in 1969, and later became his son-in-law. Over thirty
years later, Holmes still was angry. Clinton apparently
believes he was treated fairly in HHNC. (After all, his desire to avoid serving in Vietnam was not unique, and it
was a "bipartisan" phenomenon.) In his autobiography, My Life, he writes of sending his letter to Holmes.
Then he discusses renting a short-wave radio in England to be able to listen to the game.
Clinton wrote: "We had a few friends over who thought we had lost our minds as we whooped and
hollered through a football game so exciting it was billed as the Game of the Century. For a few hours, we were innocent again,
totally caught up in the contest. The game and its cultural contexts have been beautifully chronicled by Terry Frei in his
book Horns, Hogs and Nixon Coming."
After Holmes died in 2005, Pulitzer Prize-winning editorial writer Paul
Greenberg of the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, no Clinton fan, quoted Frei's passages on Holmes and also
praised Horns, Hogs, and Nixon Coming as "one of the better - and most readable — books of social history
published in recent years."
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Thirty-eight years later... On December 6,
2007, the anniversary of the Big Shootout, Terry Frei was the speaker in the John Hammerschmidt Lecture Series in Harrison,
Arkansas. Above from left: '69 Arkansas All-America receiver Chuck Dicus, now the head of the Razorback Foundation;
Frei; and John Paul Hammerschmidt, who ended ups serving 13 terms in Congress. (Another amazing coincidence: As an incumbent,
he defeated Bill Clinton in Clinton's first try for public office.) After opening remarks by North Arkansas College president
Dr. Jeff Olson, Hammerschmidt introduced Frei. The Big Shootout remains widely remembered in Arkansas as a time marker
and a day when the Razorbacks were heroic, probably deserved to win, but ended up on the short end of the score.
Terry
Frei's 2005 newspaper column on his fellow Wheat Ridge High School alumnus, Freddie Joe Steinmark: Steinmark lives on in memories By Terry Frei
Denver Post Staff Columnist
In Houston's M.D. Anderson Hospital on Dec. 12, 1969, Denver
native and Texas Longhorns safety Freddie Joe Steinmark woke up after bone cancer surgery.
His mother, Gloria,
was there. On Friday, as she sat in the dining room of her Aurora home, she recalled the conversation.
"First
thing he said to me was, 'Did they take ...,"' Gloria said.
There was no need to finish the question. Surgeons
had removed Freddie Joe's cancer-riddled left leg.
"I said, 'Yes, Freddie,"' Gloria said.
"He
said, 'You know what I've been thinking?'
"I said, 'What have you been thinking?'
"He said,
'Do you think if I get good at that prosthesis and I can move around good, do you think Darrell Royal would let me be the
kicker?'
"I said, 'Freddie, you'll have to ask him."'
That was Freddie Joe. After coming out
of the fog and hearing that he would live the rest of his life without his left leg, his first words were tongue-in-cheek,
but made a serious point. Steinmark, a Denver Post Gold Helmet winner as a star athlete at Wheat Ridge High School, would
fight.
The operation came only six days after he played for the top-rated Longhorns in their celebrated Dec. 6,
1969, showdown with No. 2 Arkansas, the game at Razorback Stadium attended by President Richard Nixon and Texas Congressman
George Herbert Walker Bush, and passionately followed on short-wave radio in England by Rhodes Scholar and Arkansas fan Bill
Clinton.
In my 2002 book "Horns, Hogs, and Nixon Coming," I called Steinmark's play that day the most
courageous effort ever in a football game. I have gotten no arguments since.
Freddie's leg had been aching most
of the season. He played on a leg being eaten up by cancer, and doctors later told the Longhorns it was amazing the bone hadn't
snapped. Finally, after the game at Arkansas, he had it checked.
Three weeks after surgery, on Jan. 1, 1970, the
day Texas clinched its last bona fide national championship with a 21-17 victory over Notre Dame in the Cotton Bowl, Steinmark
was on the sideline among his teammates. His younger brother, Sammy, also was with him. His parents, Denver police officer
Freddie Gene and Gloria, and two sisters were in the Cotton Bowl stands. On crutches and one leg, wearing a football shoe
on his right foot, Freddie watched proudly, defiantly, and, significant given his plight, faithfully.
The Longhorns
presented their plucky safety with a game ball.
"He was so elated," Gloria recalled. "I really think
they wanted to win for Freddie, too."
I could nod at that, because I have spoken with dozens of his former
Longhorns teammates, including 1969 starting Texas guard Bobby Mitchell, the Dallas dentist who also went to Wheat Ridge.
It happened again and again: Reminiscing former football players laughed and smiled through their memories of their younger
days, and when the subject turned to Steinmark, a junior during that 1969 season, the words caught in their throats. The Longhorns
knew how to have a good time. While they did, Freddie was studying. Or in church.
"It makes you cry to think
about it now," said 1969 Texas tackle Bob McKay, who in more casual conversation might be the funniest man on the planet.
"He was the greatest kid in the world."
Gloria Steinmark and her family - including Sammy and daughters
Paula Kay "P.K." Stevenson and Gloria Gene "GiGi" Kunz, who all live in the Denver area - hope the Longhorns
end up with another national championship Wednesday.
"Absolutely," Gloria said. "You can't get over
those things. ... Oh, I'll cry. My tears come easy."
The modern Longhorns still touch a Steinmark plaque on
their way from the dressing room to the field in Austin. The stadium scoreboard is named after Steinmark. They are memorials.
Freddie Joe died June 6, 1971. He was 22.
Gloria, widowed in 2000, still has her son's Cotton Bowl game ball. Freddie
Gene labeled it, to keep it straight from all the other memorabilia from his son's life. Among the portraits of Freddie displayed
in the Steinmark home are one painted by former Texas and NFL star Tommy MacDonald and another drawn from the picture of Freddie
on the Cotton Bowl sideline used on the cover of "I Play to Win," Steinmark's inspiring 1971 book.
Gloria
said it still can be painful to talk about Freddie Joe. "That scar just never goes away," she said.
But
does he live on?
"Oh, absolutely," she said. She laughed and added, "I talk to him all the time."
Then she thought a little more about the son who never called her "Ma" or "Mom" - or anything but "Mother."
"You know," she said, "he was such a loving kid and humble, with such a good sense of humor. He and
I got along famously. He always had something good to say about everything and everybody. That was just him. ...
"When he was suffering so bad in the end, he was telling me something so nice about someone. I was leaning over the
bed and looking at him and I said, 'You know, Freddie Joe, you are such a good boy.' He said, 'Aw, Mother, I'm not good. Only
God's good."'
The Steinmarks are fervent Catholics. Freddie Gene and Gloria Marchetti met in the hallways
of Denver's North High, when Freddie Gene, the celebrated star high school athlete in the Denver of another era, mischievously
asked the shy sophomore girl, "Don't you ever speak?", and then gave her his letter sweater to wear. Faith was the
hallmark in Gloria's and Freddie Gene's household, and it was Freddie Joe's.
"I used to think it, but I know
not to say 'why' anymore," Gloria said. "I think he was so special, God wanted him."
Sample pictures from 2001 book interview sessions:
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| Arkansas linebacker Mike Boschetti |
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| Texas tight end Randy Peschel |
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| Arkansas quarterback Bill Montgomery |
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| Arkansas tackle Mike Kelson |
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Texas halfback Jim Bertelsen, on the
turf, scores the tying touchdown in the final minutes of the Big Shootout. Because Texas, which fell behind 14-0, went for -- and made -- a two-point conversion after its first
touchdown, this run pulled the Longhorns into a 14-14 tie. Happy
Feller's extra-point kick gave the Longhorns the one-point victory. While Horns, Hogs, and Nixon Coming places the game in the context of its times, it also is a painstaking
examination of The Big Shootout from a hard-core football perspective. Most of the starters for both teams are profiled,
the stories of the teams' 1969 season are detailed, and the strategic elements involved in the game are examined in depth. Primarily, Arkansas
came up with a defensive game plan that gave the Longhorns' previously unstoppable Wishbone fits and served as a blueprint
for what other teams used in eventually making that offense all but extinct. And the game itself unfolds as
a flawed, but thrilling showdown for the national championship that few could ever forget.
President Nixon presents his personal national championship plaque after
the game to Texas Coach Darrell Royal. Partially hidden is halfback Ted Koy and quarterback James Street is at the right.
Terry Frei was the speaker at the 2004
joint reunion of the Big Shootout teams in Fayetteville, in conjunction with the Texas-Arkansas game in Razorback Stadium. Pictured above at the reunion: Texas tackle Bob McKay, Texas fullback Steve Worster, Arkansas defensive
end Bruce James, Texas tackle Bobby Wuensch, and Arkansas receiver Chuck Dicus.
"The Longview Boys" at the joint 2004 reunion in Fayetteville. Terry Don Phillips,
left, was an Arkansas defensive tackle that day in Razorback Stadium. He now is the athletic director at Clemson. James
Street, right, was the Texas quarterback. They had been high school teammates in Longview, Texas, and when the game ended
with the Texas offense on the field, the first hands they shook were each others'.
At the 2004 reunion, from left: Texas defensive tackle Greg
Ploetz, Benton County Judge John Scott, Arkansas kicker Bill McClard, Terry Frei, Texas rover Mike Campbell.
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| Texas linebacker Scott Henderson |
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| Texas halfback Dr. Ted Koy |
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| Arkansas split end John Rees |
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| Texas linebacker Bill Zapalac |
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| Texas linebacker Julius Whittier |
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| Arkansas fullback Bruce Maxwell |
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| Arkansas safety Dennis Berner |
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| Arkansas flanker Chuck Dicus |
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| Arkansas guard Jerry Dossey |
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| Texas tackle Bob McKay |
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| Arkansas tailback Bill Burnett |
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| Arkansas kicker Bill McClard |
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| Arkansas Coach Frank Broyles |
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| Texas kicker Happy Feller |
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| Arkansas student/Vietnam Vet Don Donner |
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(Also Kindle)
