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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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