Synopses & Reviews
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.
Review
"Frei does a fine job of building up to the big game through interviews with players and coaches. He also takes a close look at the end of the era, as the last two all-white teams competed for college football's big prize, with the Vietnam War, the draft and the civil rights movement as a backdrop." Steve Goode, Hartford Courant
Review
"Maybe the most evocative college football book of the season is Horns, Hogs, and Nixon Coming, about the epic 1969 game between unbeaten Arkansas and Texas that brought Southern pride, Vietnam war protests, the attendance of a sitting president (Richard Nixon) and a future one (George Bush) into one amazing mix." Ron Rapoport, Chicago Sun-Times
Review
"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
Review
"The book isn't simply about the game but about the turbulent times in which it existed two all-white teams playing in the South against a backdrop of protests against the Vietnam War. It's a compelling story and Frei tells it very well in a dramatic, impressive and carefully researched book." Ron Bellamy, Eugene Register-Guard
Synopsis
Includes bibliographical references (p. 321-322) and index.
About the Author
Terry Frei is a reporter/columnist for The Denver Post and for ESPN.com. He was raised in Eugene, Oregon, where his father, Jerry, coached football at the University of Oregon for 17 years including five years as the Ducks' coach. Terry is a graduate of the University of Colorado. He worked at The Denver Post and The Oregonian in Portland before joining The Sporting News in 1993. His TSN cover stories included pieces on Jerry Rice, Emmitt Smith, Thurman Thomas and Shaquille O'Neal. He rejoined The Denver Post in 1995, and also began writing columns for ESPN.com in 2000. Although of late his newspaper and ESPN.com focus often has been the National Hockey League, which he has covered off and on for 25 years, he remains a versatile writer with eclectic interests. He is working on his next book.
Table of Contents
Acknowledgments
Prologue
One: Coach Broyles
Two: Shift!
Three: Coach Royal
Four: Slick and Company
Five: The Colonel, the Tailback, the Rhoes Scholar, and the Disillusioned Vet
Six: Texas Razorbacks
Seven: ...and Nixon Coming
Eight: The Good Die Young
Nine: Dixie's Last Stand
Ten: Loose-Cannon Captains
Eleven: Coaches' Sons
Twelve: Hogs Up Front
Thirteen: Horns Up Front
Fourteen: Happy Thanksgiving
Fifteen: New York, New York, and Points Elsewhere
Sixteen: Defensing the Wishbone
Seventeen: Defensing the Razorbacks
Eighteen: Draft Lottery and the View From Oxford
Nineteen: Tormoil and Tragedy
Twenty: Horns Getting Ready
Twenty-one: Hogs Getting Ready
Twenty-two: The President Has Landed
Twenty-three: Flagged!
Twenty-four: Back and Forth
Twenty-five: Going for Broke
Twenty-six: Right 53 Veer Pass
Twenty-seven: To the Finish
Twenty-eight: Presidential Addresses
Twenty-nine: All Quiet
Thirty: Agony
Thirty-one: Ecstacy
Thirty-two: Courage
Thirty-three: Bourbon Street
Thirty-four: Requiem
Thirty-five: Horns Revisited
Thirty-six: Hogs Revisited
Afterword
Sources and Credits
Bibliography
Rosters and 1969 results
Index