Download or read book Horns Hogs and Nixon Coming written by Terry Frei and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2007-11-01 with total page 368 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.
Download or read book Fan in Chief written by Nicholas Evan Sarantakes and published by University Press of Kansas. This book was released on 2019-10-24 with total page 368 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Some presidents throw out baseball’s first pitch of the season. Some post picks for college basketball’s March Madness. One might tweet about a football player kneeling. President Richard M. Nixon phoned Miami Dolphins coach Don Shula to suggest plays for the Super Bowl. He hosted players in the 1969 Major League All-Star game for a party deemed the strangest since the mob scene during Andrew Jackson's inauguration. He attended a Washington Redskins practice to boost moral; altered the NFL’s policy for televising home games; introduced the practice of calling teams after Super Bowl or World Series wins. The list goes on, but the point is clear: Richard Nixon was the nation’s first sports super fan to occupy the Oval Office. And this, Nicholas Evan Sarantakes suggests, may explain why Nixon, so despised for all his faults and failings, was nonetheless also widely loved by the American public. In Fan in Chief Sarantakes sets out to show how Richard Nixon’s passion for sports, more than policy positions or partisan politics, engaged the American people—and how Nixon used this passion to his political advantage. Fan in Chief takes place in the realm of political theater, a theater in which the president’s role was perfectly genuine. A true fan, Nixon exposed core elements of his personality, character, and values in the world of sports; through sport he could connect and communicate with the character and values of his fellow Americans. Fan in Chief is thus a story of both personality and politics; but more than that, it is an in-depth exploration of what Richard Nixon’s love of sport can tell us about the man and his times.
Download or read book Ruled by Race written by Grif Stockley and published by University of Arkansas Press. This book was released on 2012-07 with total page 578 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the Civil War to Reconstruction, the Redeemer period, Jim Crow, and the modern civil rights era to the present, Ruled by Race describes the ways that race has been at the center of much of the state’s formation and image since its founding. Grif Stockley uses the work of published and unpublished historians and exhaustive primary source materials along with stories from authors as diverse as Maya Angelou and E. Lynn Harris to bring to life the voices of those who have both studied and lived the racial experience in Arkansas.
Download or read book Playing Piano in a Brothel written by Terry Frei and published by Taylor Trade Publications. This book was released on 2010-09-16 with total page 345 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: As he did in his acclaimed '77: Denver, the Broncos, and a Coming of Age and his earlier nonfiction works, Terry Frei combines reporting, historical research, memoir, and opinion, discussing his varied experiences and the diverse characters-including John and Jack Elway, plus 2010 Pro Football Hall of Fame inductees Jerry Rice and Emmitt Smith-he has encountered in covering Colorado, national, and international sports since he was a green sportswriter in the era of '77. Those diverse figures include Olympic heroes, Hall of Famers, world boxing champions, and other marquee athletes. He also displays his knack for narrative and inquisitive journalism, introducing readers to intriguing figures and taking them behind the scenes of some very high-profile events and settings. All this follows a blunt and unsparing assessment of the modern newspaper and sports journalism.
Download or read book March 1939 written by Terry Frei and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2014-02-06 with total page 261 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In 1939, the Oregon Webfoots, coached by the visionary Howard Hobson, stormed through the first NCAA basketball tournament, which was viewed as a risky coast-to-coast undertaking and perhaps only a one-year experiment. Seventy-five years later, following the tournament’s evolution into a national obsession, the first champions are still celebrated as “The Tall Firs.” They indeed had astounding height along the front line, but with a pair of racehorse guards who had grown up across the street from each other in a historic Oregon fishing town, they also played a revolutionarily fast-paced game. Author Terry Frei’s track record as a narrative historian in such books as the acclaimed Horns, Hogs, and Nixon Coming, plus a personal connection as an Oregon native whose father coached football at the University of Oregon for seventeen seasons, makes him uniquely qualified to tell this story of the first tournament and the first champions, in the context of their times. Plus, Frei long has been a fan of Clair Bee, the Long Island University coach who later in life wrote the Chip Hilton Sports Series books, mesmerizing young readers who didn’t know the backstory told here. In 1939, the Bee-coached LIU Blackbirds won the NCAA tournament’s rival, the national invitation tournament in New York—then in only its second year, and still under the conflict-of-interest sponsorship of the Metropolitan Basketball Writers Association. Frei assesses both tournaments and, given the myths advanced for many years, his conclusions in many cases are surprising. Both events unfolded in a turbulent month when it was becoming increasingly apparent that Hitler's belligerence would draw Europe and perhaps the world into another war . . . soon. Amid heated debates over the extent to which America should become involved in Europe's affairs this time, the men playing in both tournaments wondered if they might be called on to serve and fight. Of course, as some of the Webfoots would demonstrate in especially notable fashion, the answer was yes. It was a March before the Madness.
Download or read book Olympic Affair written by Terry Frei and published by Taylor Trade Publications. This book was released on 2012 with total page 337 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Glenn Morris, Colorado farm boy turned "world's greatest athlete" confessed on his deathbed that he should have stayed with Leni. The Leni--Leni Riefenstahl--legendary filmmaker and darling of Hitler's Third Reich. They met at the 1936 Berlin Olympics, where Leni filmed Olympia, and began a steamy love affair that was the subject of speculation and
Download or read book The Games Presidents Play written by John Sayle Watterson and published by Johns Hopkins University Press+ORM. This book was released on 2006-10-27 with total page 608 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This look at the connections between sportsmanship and statesmanship “introduces an intriguing way of evaluating presidential fitness for office” (Richmond Times-Dispatch). Whether throwing out the first pitch of the baseball season, fishing for trout, or cheating at golf, American presidents through history have had connections to the world of sports in many ways. This book explores how various commanders-in-chief worked and played—and how their athletic activities reflected their political identities. The author considers George Washington, whose athleticism contributed to his success on the battlefield and perhaps to the birth of the republic. He moves into the nineteenth century, when frontier sports were part of the formative years of Jackson, Lincoln, and Cleveland. With twentieth-century presidents—most notably the hyperactive, headline-grabbing Teddy Roosevelt—he shows how the growth of mass media and transportation transformed presidential sports into both a form of recreation and a means of establishing a positive image. Exploring everything from FDR’s fight to restore his polio-ravaged body to Eisenhower’s obsessive love affair with golf to Nixon’s enthusiasm for football, this book uses sports to open a window onto the presidency and the nation’s culture, as well as the strengths, weaknesses, and personalities of America’s leaders. “Watterson’s history rises above trivia in its attention to the political ramifications of presidents’ sports while also being a consistently entertaining trove of lore and, as the author puts it, ‘just weird stuff,’ such as John Q. Adams granting an interview while skinny-dipping. A wry and perceptive work.” —Booklist “An enjoyable study of politics and culture.” —Publishers Weekly “Will appeal to history buffs and sports fans alike.” —Library Journal
Download or read book The Alcalde written by and published by . This book was released on 2002-11 with total page 104 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: As the magazine of the Texas Exes, The Alcalde has united alumni and friends of The University of Texas at Austin for nearly 100 years. The Alcalde serves as an intellectual crossroads where UT's luminaries - artists, engineers, executives, musicians, attorneys, journalists, lawmakers, and professors among them - meet bimonthly to exchange ideas. Its pages also offer a place for Texas Exes to swap stories and share memories of Austin and their alma mater. The magazine's unique name is Spanish for "mayor" or "chief magistrate"; the nickname of the governor who signed UT into existence was "The Old Alcalde."
Download or read book Season of Saturdays written by Michael Weinreb and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2015-08-11 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Presents a cultural history that highlights the key moments, games, personalities, and scandals of American college football, tracing how it grew from a rugby offshoot to a part of the country's national identity.
Download or read book Combat by Trial written by Nancy Miller Saunders and published by iUniverse. This book was released on 2008 with total page 610 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Nancy Miller Saunders once lived in sheltered academe. But that all changed when she joined a group of filmmakers to document demonstrations by Vietnam Veterans Against the War. Soon, she found herself being hounded just as much as the veterans themselves. She focused on her role as an investigator, recording the stories of a number of veterans and their families. In Combat by Trial, she allows them to speak in their own voices through interviews and personal writings while also telling her own story. You will be entranced by stories of Saunders' connection to two of the spies that the FBI sent to infiltrate the VVAW. How Saunders worked with VVAW defense attorneys in the fabricated case against the Gainesville 8. How laws such as the Patriot Act and Military Commissions Act are once again stripping citizens of their rights. And much more! Historians, journalists and students will all enjoy Combat by Trial: An Odyssey with 20th Century Winter Soldiers, a cautionary tale that shows that history does indeed repeat itself.
Download or read book My Life The Early Years written by Bill Clinton and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2005-05-31 with total page 654 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: #1 New York Times Bestseller President Bill Clinton’s My Life is the strikingly candid portrait of a global leader who decided early in life to devote his intellectual and political gifts, and his extraordinary capacity for hard work, to serving the public. My Life: The Early Years (Volume I) shows us the progress of a remarkable American, who, through his own enormous energies and efforts - fueled by an impassioned interest int he political process - made the unlikely journey from his birth in hope Arkansas, to his election as the 42nd President of the United States. Also available - My Life: The Presential Years (Volume II)
Download or read book Remembrances in Black written by Charles F. Robinson II and published by University of Arkansas Press. This book was released on 2015-02-20 with total page 368 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: With the admittance in 1948 of Silas Hunt to the University of Arkansas Law School, the university became the first southern public institution of higher education to officially desegregate without being required to do so by court order. The process was difficult, but an important first step had been taken. Other students would follow in Silas Hunt's footsteps, and they along with the university would have to grapple with the situation. Remembrances in Black is an oral history that gathers the personal stories of African Americans who worked as faculty and staff and of students who studied at the state's flagship institution. These stories illustrate the anguish, struggle, and triumph of individuals who had their lives indelibly marked by their experiences at the school. Organized chronologically over sixty years, this book illustrates how people of color navigated both the evolving campus environment and that of the city of Fayetteville in their attempt to fulfill personal aspirations. Their stories demonstrate that the process of desegregation proved painfully slow to those who chose to challenge the forces of exclusion. Also, the remembrances question the extent to which desegregation has been fully realized.
Download or read book Football at Historically Black Colleges and Universities in Texas written by Robert C. Fink and published by Texas A&M University Press. This book was released on 2019-10-18 with total page 246 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “In Texas, football is king,” Rob Fink writes, “so it provides a prominent window on Texas culture.” In Football at Historically Black Colleges and Universities in Texas, Fink opens this window to afford readers an engaging view of not only the sport and its impact on African Americans in Texas, but also a better and more nuanced perception of the African American community, its aspirations, and its self-understandings from Reconstruction to the present. This book focuses on crucial themes of civil rights, personal and group identity, racial pride, and socio-cultural empowerment. Although others have examined specific institutions, time periods, and rivalries in black college football, this book is the first to feature a broad narrative encompassing an entire state. This wide field of play affords the opportunity to explore the motivations and contexts for establishing football teams at historically black colleges and universities; the institutional and community purposes served by athletic programs; and how these efforts changed over time in response to changes in sport, higher education, and society. Fink traces the rise of the sport at HBCUs in Texas and the ways it came to symbolize and focus the aspirations of the African American community. He chronicles its decline, ironically due in part to the gains of the civil rights movement and the subsequent integration of black athletes into previously white institutions. Finally, he shows how HBCUs in Texas have survived in the twenty-first century by concentrating on balanced athletic budgets and a carefully honed appeal to traditional rivalries and constituencies.
Download or read book Courage Beyond the Game written by Jim Dent and published by Macmillan. This book was released on 2011-08-16 with total page 350 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Jim Dent, the award-winning, New York Times bestselling author of The Junction Boys, returns with a powerful Texas story which transcends college football, displaying the courage and determination of one of the game's most valiant players. Freddie Steinmark was a small but scrappy young man when he arrived at the University of Texas in 1967. A tenacious competitor, Freddie became UT's star safety by the start of the 1969 season, but he'd also developed a crippling pain in his thigh. Freddie continued to play, helping the Longhorns to rip through opponents like pulpwood. His final game was for the 1969 national championship, when the Longhorns rallied to beat Arkansas in a legendary game that has become known as "the Game of the Century." Tragically, bone cancer took Freddie off the field when nothing else could. But nothing could extinguish his irrepressible spirit or keep him away from the game. Today, a photo of Freddie hangs in the tunnel at Darrell K. Royal-Texas Memorial Stadium, where players touch it before games en route to the field. With Courage Beyond the Game, a Brian's Song for college football, Jim Dent once again brings readers to cheers and tears with a truly American tale of bravery in the face of the worst odds.
Download or read book Texas Caesar written by J. Brent Clark and published by Abbott Press. This book was released on 2015-09-25 with total page 161 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The iconic college football coaches of the twentieth century emerged after World War II, bringing with them a military bearing and a love of war without casualties. Coach Darrell Royals life reads like a Shakespearean tragedy, replete with victory, defeat, betrayal and sorrow. Bear Bryant of Alabama, Bud Wilkinson of Oklahoma and Darrell Royal of Texas. What they accomplished over their lifetimes as coaches could not have happened anywhere in the United States except the post-war South. From the advent of television in the mid-1950s through the desegregation of universities and athletic programs following the Civil Rights Act of 1964, Coach Royal led the conflicted life of a warrior, a father and a servant to the rich and powerful. Forbes Magazine has stated the UT-Austin athletic program is the most valuable in the country, worth an estimated 180 million dollars. The UT financial statement doesnt reveal how big money and political power overshadow the games and the young athletes who play them. In the beginning, there was sorrow and loneliness. Darrell Royals mother, Katy, died three months after he was born, in 1924, leaving him in the hands of an inattentive father of six children and a veritable string of evil stepmothers. Darrell found his father figure and mentor in Bud Wilkinson, the courtly head coach of the mighty Oklahoma Sooners. In Norman, Darrell emulated Bud and for the first time, knew glory as an All-American player with a fiercely competitive spirit. By the early 1960s, Royals job-hopping had landed him in Austin where the possibilities of gridiron glories remained unrealized. Royal was a perfect fit to change that. Television was bringing college football into the homes of Americans nationwide. Bryant, Wilkinson and Royal had an advantage. Each was telegenic, articulate and charismatic. The celebrity football coaches were earning their places in history by winning games but also by evolving into actors on a national stage. The fall of 1963 changed the lives of all Americans. Royals Longhorns, ranked number two in the Associated Press, defeated Oklahoma, ranked number one, and went on to an undefeated season and Texas first ever national championship. Scarcely a month later, also in Dallas, President Kennedy was assassinated. His successor was a Texan Lyndon Baines Johnson. Royals life was going to be influenced in ways he could scarcely imagine and certainly couldnt control. Texas has always been a provocative political environment. A Texas politician has to yell long and loud to get noticed in the vastness of the State. Since winners migrate to other winners, post-1963, Darrell and Edith Royal were on everyones A list for political and social events. The oligarchs who called the shots at UT also made it clear to Coach Royal. They didnt want any coloreds on their football team. While Royal coached the 1969 Longhorns to another national championship, the team regrettably was dubbed, the last lily white national championship team. Eventually, the tightrope Royal was being forced to walk began to wobble uncontrollably. It was the spring of 1974 before Royal finally landed a black student-athlete to whom he could point with pride. The young man was Earl Campbell, the Tyler Rose. Bryant, Wilkinson and Royal are gone now. There are statues and street names and even campus stadiums named after them. The game they knew and coached is gone as well. As a result, we are left with the historical perspective they gave us, punctuated by the agonizing undercurrents that changed the game and changed a nation.
Download or read book Freddie Steinmark written by Bower Yousse and published by University of Texas Press. This book was released on 2015-09-01 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Freddie Steinmark started at safety for the undefeated University of Texas Longhorns in 1969. In the thrilling “Game of the Century,” a come-from-behind victory against Arkansas that ensured Texas the national championship, Steinmark played with pain in his left leg. Two days later, X-rays revealed a bone tumor so large that it seemed a miracle Steinmark could walk, let alone play football. Within a week of the Arkansas game, his leg was amputated. A gritty, undersized player, Steinmark had quickly become a fan favorite at Texas. What he endured during the Longhorns’ memorable 1969 season, and what he encountered afterward, captivated not only Texans but the country at large. Americans watched closely as Steinmark confronted life’s ultimate challenge, and his openness during his battle against savage odds helped reframe the national conversation surrounding cancer and the ongoing race for a cure. Written with unfettered access to the Steinmark family and archives, Freddie Steinmark: Faith, Family, Football is the exploration of a brief but full life, one that began humbly but ended on a grand stage. It is a fitting tribute to a legendary Longhorn whose photograph, emblazoned with the word “Heart,” flashes on the Freddie Steinmark Scoreboard’s Jumbotron prior to each home football game in UT’s Darrell K Royal–Texas Memorial Stadium at Joe Jamail Field.
Download or read book Making Cancer History written by James S. Olson and published by JHU Press. This book was released on 2009-04-13 with total page 408 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The history of the M. D. Anderson Cancer Center vividly reveals how cancer treatment in America -- and our attitudes toward the disease -- has changed since the middle of the twentieth century. One of the preeminent cancer centers in the world, M. D. Anderson is also one of the first medical institutions devoted exclusively to caring for people with cancer and researching treatments and cures for the disease. Historian James S. Olson's narrative relates the story of the center's founding and of the surgeons, radiologists, radiotherapists, nurses, medical oncologists, scientists, administrators, and patients who built M. D. Anderson into the world-class institution it is today. Through interviews with M. D. Anderson's leaders and patients, Olson brings to life the struggle to understand and treat cancer in America. A cancer survivor who has himself been treated at the center, Olson imbues this history with humor, passion, and humanity. -- Helen Valier