Dec. 6 rolls around every year with a promise to write nothing more about a certain sporting event on that date in 1969.
And, with the 50th anniversary comes another broken promise. The power is too great, the memories too fresh, the forces too large surrounding the 1969 Arkansas-Texas football game to dismiss it casually.
Someone asked Kitty Carlisle, a regular panelist on the television game show "To Tell the Truth," how often she thought about her late husband, playwright Moss Hart. Carlisle, surviving Hart by 46 years and living into her 90s, replied, "Only about 10,000 times a day." Razorback fans who died a little on 12-6-69 know that feeling.
That December Saturday is a page marker in my life. In other news that day, Leotis Martin knocked out ex-heavyweight boxing champion Sonny Liston in Sweden and the Rolling Stones played their infamous Altamont Free Concert in California. Liston would be dead within a year, causes unknown, and brothers Albert and David Maysles chronicled Altamont in the 1970 movie "Gimme Shelter," which depicts the fatal stabbing of 18-year-old audience member Meredith Hunter.
Other memories of that day have faded, but not the final score of The Big Shootout: Texas 15, Arkansas 14.
In 1994, before the game's 25th anniversary, I chatted by phone with James Street, the '69 Texas quarterback and about whom one thinks instinctively when rehashing events of that foggy, misty afternoon (it snowed that night) in Fayetteville. The game would be remembered, Street said, for its national importance (No. 1 vs. No. 2 in the polls, Texas on top) and that the president of the United States attended.
Richard Nixon, who played some football at California's Whittier College and might have been happy wearing a press credential that day, was there to present a trophy to the winning team. The Razorbacks led 7-0 when Nixon, arriving late by helicopter from Fort Smith, and fellow VIPs were seated in the west grandstand.
Street was, if anything, too modest, discounting his own role. The late Dan Jenkins, writing for Sports Illustrated, captured the moment and the game's hero properly: "James Street made no All-America teams that season, but later that day, in the Texas locker room, he shook hands with the president of the United States."
Street's sheer determination not to lose swung this virtual Super Bowl in the centennial year of college football in Texas' favor. Gallantry was needed because Arkansas had stopped the Longhorns, in the words of an Arkansas writer years later, "unthinkably dead for three quarters."
Street, whom Texas coach Darrell Royal pulled off the bench in 1968 to operate something new called the Wishbone offense, went 20-0 in two years as a UT starter. He made three plays in the fourth quarter against Arkansas in '69 that made him a Longhorn legend up there with Tommy Nobis, Heisman Trophy winners Earl Campbell and Ricky Williams, plus Vince Young.
Street scrambled for a touchdown on the first play of the fourth quarter (Arkansas people still say the Longhorns got by with a clipping penalty) and added a two-point conversion that Royal deemed necessary at the time.
Arkansas could have, should have put it away on its next possession but did not. Bill Montgomery, often magnificent in this game, underthrew favorite receiver Chuck Davis on the goal line; Danny Lester, breaking on the ball, intercepted in the end zone. What could have been 21-8 or, with the reliable Bill McClard kicking, 17-8 remained 14-8, Texas getting a stay of execution.
Arkansas, with a six-man defensive front, forced bad plays from the Texas offense all day, even into the fourth quarter. Texas pushed it out to near midfield and, on fourth-and-4 with less than five minutes left, Royal considered his options.
Interviewed 25 years later, Royal said he ruled out punting in fear that Texas would never regain possession. A running play or short pass might prolong the drive, but even then, Royal considered the clock the Longhorns' enemy and that time might expire before his team could score the needed touchdown.
Normally conservative, Royal went for broke and his team raked in all the chips. Street was ordered to throw long but to tight end Randy Peschel, not wide receiver Cotton Speyrer, the quarterback's favorite target. Street thought Royal called the wrong play, surely intending the pass go to Speyrer, but was overruled. What's more, Peschel was the only UT receiver in the pattern. What were the chances?
John Madden, a Super Bowl-winning coach who became America's favorite football analyst, likes to say, "Don't worry if the horse is blind, just load the wagon." Darrell's postgame reaction that day was similar: "Sometimes you just have to suck it up and pick a number."
Street, a two-time All-American pitcher for Texas' baseball team, made a perfect pass. Peschel, getting behind a cornerback and a safety, pulled it in 44 yards downfield. Jim Bertelsen scored in two plays, Happy Feller kicked the Longhorns ahead and linebacker Tom Campbell, son of Royal's longtime defensive coordinator, intercepted Montgomery on the sideline to wrap it up.
Texas 15, Arkansas 14.
Frank Broyles, the losing coach, claimed never to watch the game film. Royal, sympathizing with his best friend in coaching, said, "If it had been me, I'm not sure I would have either."
Street said in 1994 about good friend Montgomery, a fellow Texan: "With a little luck, Bill could have been leading the Arkansas delegation to the White House" as college football's national champion.
Attending the game with family members, I remember nothing about the drive back to Glenwood. The first distinct memory upon leaving Fayetteville is my dad's immediate reaction back home: "We should have won."
Kicking that around for 50 years, I am not so sure he was right.
Arkansas played well enough to win, at least for three quarters. Texas was No. 1 for a reason, though, and in that fourth quarter, the '69 Longhorns revealed qualities they had not had to show another opponent. And, by the narrowest of margins, Texas won the greatest football game in Southwest Conference history.
The Arkansas-Texas game of 1969 influenced my decision to become a sportswriter. Along with the 1971 fight between Muhammad Ali and Joe Frazier, the Big Shootout is the seminal sporting event of my lifetime. (Denver sportswriter Terry Frei's novel "Horns, Hogs and Nixon's Coming" is required reading for anyone impassioned, as Frei and I are, about this game.)
Some of the leading cast members are gone -- Royal, Broyles, Street, Lester and, above all, little Freddie Steinmark, a Texas safety who would soon lose a leg to cancer. Street left us in 2013, nine years after I congratulated the hero of The Big Shootout before another Arkansas-Texas game.
"You broke a lot of hearts that day," I said as we shook hands outside Razorback Stadium. And, like that song by Don Williams about lost love says, some broken hearts never mend.
Sports on 12/06/2019