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Simon and Schuster Hardback (2002)

It sold out, now is out of print, and is considered a collectable.  

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Taylor Trade obtained the paperback rights and published its edition in 2004. It has remained in print ever since. After shifting of Rowman and Littlefield imprints, HHNC now is now officially listed in the Globe Pequot catalog. (You will be tested on this.)

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A Simon and Schuster paperback edition was released February 16, 2016.

 

 

Amazon (Taylor Trade paperback)
 Simon and Schuster (Simon and Schuster paperback)
Amazon (Kindle) 
 Barnes & Noble (Taylor Trade paperback) 
 Barnes & Noble (Simon and Schuster paperback)
Barnes & Noble (e-boolk)   
 Bookshop.org (Taylor Trade paperback)
  

NOTE: The Taylor Trade paperback's Afterword has been briefly updated to include post-publication events. The Simon and Schuster paperback edition sticks to the original Simon and Schuster hardback text.     
 


Since Simon and Schuster published the hardback edition of Horns, Hogs, and Nixon Coming in 2002, it never has been out of print. Paperback editions are available from two publishers -- Simon and Schuster and Taylor Trade.  
 
Here are my reflections at the 20th anniversary of the book's release. It always will be my first. If only I knew then what I know now ... 
 
-- T.F. 
 
 
Terry Frei has written the screenplay adaptation.  
For screen rights and screenplay inquiries, click here. 

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SI cover: James Street on his long touchdown run on first play of fourth quarter.
If you go in any Arkansas bar and announce, "Boschetti 
was clipped!", a Razorback fan will buy you your first beer. 
 
 
 
 


 
"...a superb blending of sports, history, and politics." -- Si Dunn, Dallas Morning News 
 

 
 
From the 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 Texas safety Freddie Steinmark, who 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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Freddie Steinmark and Terry Frei as Wheat Ridge Farmers 

 

"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, The Denver Post


"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


"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

 


"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 
 
"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'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


 President Richard Nixon sat in the Razorback Stadium stands at the Big Shootout. Among his group were Arkansas Governor Winthrop Rockefeller; Arkansas U.S. Senators John McClellan and J. William Fulbright; and Congressmen (and close friends) John Paul Hammerschmidt of Arkansas and George H.W. Bush. Fulbright, one of the Senate's leading anti-Vietnam War voices and chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, had been a football star, student body president and also the university president at Arkansas before going into politics. 

 

Tied to Frei's research for Horns, Hogs, and Nixon Coming was a treasured chain of communication with Bush, the World War II flyer and 41st U.S. president; and a chance to travel to Harrison, Arkansas, to meet Hammerschmidt -- interviewed on the phone for the book -- in person and deliver the John Paul Hammerschmidt Lecture at North Arkansas College. Hammerschmidt also had been a World War II pilot, flying "The Hump" in the China-Burma-India Theater. 

 

 

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.

 

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 and Bill Clinton in the White House, 1997 

 

Bill Clinton was in England when the Texas-Arkansas 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. 

 

Through a spokesman, Clinton declined Terry Frei's interview request. Yet the former president 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."


 
Excerpts:
 

 

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Left: Ex-Texas defensive tackle Greg Ploetz in 2004

Center and right: When Jerry Frei-coached Oregon Ducks faced Longhorns in Austin in 1971, Ploetz was featured in the program. 

 

The Greg Ploetz

CTE Saga

 

One of the figures in Horns, Hogs, and Nixon Coming was Texas defensive tackle Greg Ploetz. An art teacher and coach, Greg began displaying signs of brain injury and dementia and his wife, Deb, at one point brought him to Colorado to be able to use marijuana based products in his treatment. He died in 2015 and Deb sued the NCAA in a potentially landmark case.

 

Terry Frei wrote many pieces about Ploetz's struggle and death, and the antipathy for football that led Deb to file the lawsuit.

  

August 30, 2019: Year after lawsuit settlement, Deb Ploetz still at war with football 

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April 2018: Subpoenaed and deposed in Ploetz vs. NCAA 

 

January 17, 2017: Deb Ploetz files suit against NCAA 

 

Dec. 20, 2015: Greg Ploetz found to have Stage 4 CTE

 

May 14, 2015: Greg Ploetz dies at age 66 

 

Jan. 19, 2015: Deb Ploetz's battle with football 

 

Jan. 19,  2015: A plan to get UT players' signatures on a Greg Ploetz painting 

 

Oct. 28, 2014: Greg Ploetz teammate Julius Whittier files class action suit against NCAA 

 

May 31, 2014: Greg Ploetz brought to Colorado for marijuana-product treatment 

 

 

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Neutral keynote speaker Terry Frei signs copy of Horns, Hogs, and Nixon Coming at

2004 joint reunion of the '69 Longhorns and Razorbacks.  

 

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Greg Ploetz is at left and Terry Frei is second from right in this shot from the 2004 joint reunion.

Also pictured are Benton County Judge John Scott, Arkansas kicker Bill McClard,

and at right, Longhorns rover Mike Campbell.  

 

 

 Arkansas Fight (SBNation) interview with Terry Frei at 40th anniverary

of Big Shootout (2009), Part One


Arkansas Fight (SBNation) interview with Terry Frei at 40th anniversary

of Big Shootout (2009), Part Two

 

Terry Frei's 2005 newspaper column on his fellow Wheat Ridge High School alumnus, Freddie Joe Steinmark:

 

 

Steinmark lives on in memories

 

 

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." Stevinson 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."

 

 

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At the 2004 joint reunion of the Longhorns and Razorbacks,
where Terry Frei was the neutral keynote speaker. The Longview Boys:
Arkansas defensive tackle Terry Don Phillips
and Texas quarterback James Street. 

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Texas tackle Bob McKay, Texas fullback Steve Worster,
Arkansas defensive end Bruce James, Texas tackle Bobby Wuensch,
Arkansas receiver Chuck Dicus.


 
 
Horns and Hogs during book interview period, 2001 
 
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Arkansas quarterback Bill Montgomery 
 
 

 

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Texas tackle Bob McKay 

 

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Arkansas linebacker Mike Boschetti (as in "Boschetti was clipped!") 

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Texas halfback Ted Koy 
 
 

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Arkansas tackle Mike Kelson 

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Texas kicker Happy Feller 
 
 

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Arkansas fullback Bruce Maxwell 

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Texas linebacker Scott Henderson 

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Arkansas receiver Chuck Dicus 

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Texas linebacker Bill Zapalac 

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Arkansas receiver Jon Rees 

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Arkansas halfback Bill Burnett 

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Texas tight end Randy Peschel 

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Arkansas safety Dennis Berner 

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Arkansas guard Jerry Dossey 

 

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Vietnam vet, UofA student, antiwar leader Don Donner 

 

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Arkansas kicker Bill McClard 

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Arkansas coach Frank Broyles