Core teams from a lifetime of fandom

The matchup between Texas and Arkansas reminds fans of their core teams, especially the 1969 Longhorns

I wrote recently about my core games in Austin at DKR, but the matchup versus Arkansas on Saturday also has me thinking about what teams I’ve rooted for in the past that are core to who I am. The 2003 Spurs, the 2005 Longhorns, the 2014 Spurs, the Longhorn baseball team of 2021. Those teams are rooted into my life like they’re deep driven stakes. The memory of them attaches me to my love of sports and what it can represent: community, fortitude, redemption, the pursuit of greatness. Meanwhile, the memory of the 2016 Longhorns or the Spurs the year of the Kawhi Leonard drama make me wonder what the hell I’m doing with my time and I’m tempted to punt my laptop across the room. I digress. Why has a seemingly random November game between the Longhorns and Arkansas brought these thoughts to mind? It’s because of my mother and how those two logos meeting on the field in Fayetteville take her back to her own core team at a pivotal point in her life. Like most only children, who are English Literature majors to boot, she’s known to tell a long story filled with prefaces, qualifiers and appendixes and I can’t how many times I heard about a game between the Horns and Hogs as a kid. Every time she told it (even though it took a while for her to get the whole thing out), it was obvious she was right there again, watching it all happen like it was in crystal clear color.

She is one of the most unhinged football fans I’ve ever met in the sense that she always thinks she is the issue for whatever is going wrong with Texas. An example before we get back to the main idea: in 2011, during the last Big 12 game with the Aggies, she refused to watch and stayed upstairs playing a CD-ROM version of Scrabble on her computer that she had owned since 1995. She came down the stairs a few times to quickly glance at the TV before firing off a tirade that included a few expletives—something along the lines of, “If these damn Aggies win, I won’t survive.” But the reason she’s the way she is—and, in turn, I’m the way I am (with my Dad’s help)—is because of the 1969 Longhorns. It’s her core team and, for that matter, a lot of other people’s too.

My mom lost her own mother at a young age, and her father wasn’t in the picture—at least not in a good way—after that. But she had a support network of aunts, uncles, and cousins that raised her in her hometown near Corpus Christi. She worked her ass off in school and then got to UT, being one of the few members of her immediate family to get to college, especially in a big city like Austin. Beyond the loneliness and culture shock of her first fall in Austin, which was the 1969 season, she accidentally lived at a Jewish dorm (despite being a Methodist/Church of Christ hybrid from Sinton), and then it burned down in the middle of the night. Her family in South Texas was aging, and even when she wanted to go back home, she couldn’t. She had to make it work in Austin, and she found strength through Darrell Royal, James Street, and Freddie Steinmark’s incredible run to the National Championship.

Knowing how she gets during big games now, I cannot imagine what it was like to watch The Big Shootout with her around a small TV all those years ago. I know she would have blamed herself if Peschel had dropped Street’s prayer on 53 Veer Pass. But the Longhorns won, and Texas had a perfect season that defined a generation of Longhorn Football and multiple generations of fans. Freddie Steinmark’s sheer will to later support his teammates at the Cotton Bowl after a cancer diagnosis and leg amputation became a core memory and inspiration to her. Through connecting over that team, she found a group of friends that she’s still close with to this day. Though it’s 55 years later, and the stakes are smaller than the 1969 game, the meeting of the all-white Texas uniforms with the red of the Razorbacks on a field in Fayetteville will bring up something close to her, something she can feel to her core.

Here’s the Letter F in The Longhorn Alphabet: Texas Football A to Z. The illustrator and I loved the idea of a child holding a sports card that told Freddie Steinmark’s inspirational story. It’s a reminder that we need to keep passing these stories down to the next generation of loved ones.

Here’s another memory of the 1969 team and how it impacted our friend Bill McMeans:

1969 was the best of times and the worst of times for me personally. The 1969 Texas team was my only solace in a really crappy year. My dad died of a massive heart attack (I was 11), and he was deeply in debt and had no life insurance. We had to move from the small town I grew up in to suburban Houston, leaving our house for a small apartment. I had to give away my dog, which I had had since age six—a pup some buddies and I found in the woods with a litter of strays. Of course, I asked to keep the dog and named him Major after my dad’s childhood German Shepherd. My Major was definitely not a German Shepherd, but he was 85 pounds of Heinz 57 variety that never left my side except for my school time.

When the fall came around—new school, new kids, new living arrangements—the only constant was the Texas Longhorns. My dad was a huge Darrell Royal fan, and we listened to the games on the radio every Saturday going back to the early ’60s. It was the only time my mom could not interrupt for any reason. The few TV games were a treasure—even on a black-and-white TV that is smaller than my computer screen now. I lived to go to the school library early to read the Houston Post and Houston Chronicle for any hint of the Longhorns in the sports page. I’d carefully review the AP & UPI polls for voting totals. I loved Mondays because I could get the Sunday sports sections and look at the box scores and stats from around the nation. I really loved Saturdays in anticipation of listening to the games. The TV games? Wow—that was special. OU and the Big Shootout. My anxiety before the Arkansas game was at epic levels for an 11-year-old.

The one positive element of my life in 1969 came down to a game being played by people I had never met and who knew nothing of my existence. Even the President was going to be at this game. I had never been to Arkansas; I did not know anyone from Arkansas. I felt like I was buddies with every member of the Texas team and especially Coach Royal. I felt like I was on a first-name basis with Freddie, James, Ted, Cotton, Steve, Bob, Leo, Tom, Happy… and on and on. Coach Royal was a deity. His sayings were edicts that I held in esteem a bare half-notch below the Ten Commandments. Never Darrell to me—Coach Royal.

The game was really nerve-wracking. Trying to maintain a positive attitude was next to impossible. Of course, the Street 42-yard scramble, the two-point conversion, the completion to Peschel, the Koy touchdown and Happy Feller extra point, and the final epic Tom Campbell interception. Truly a cathartic miracle. Even while the tragedy of Freddie Steinmark was unfolding, the Notre Dame game was never in doubt for me for some reason. I knew the Horns would win. While the year had been a real personal disaster, the 1969 Longhorns were my own emotional support team. I will never be able to repay that debt I have to those boys. I’ve tried by attending 275 of the last 276 home games since my freshman year (1976).

To the 1969 Horns and Coach Royal: Thank you!
To the 2024 Horns: Be ready, honor the legacy that preceded you, and take care of business. I’m sure y’all will do your duty.

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Comment below who YOUR core teams are!

In case you missed it from this week, I also had the following…

1. For Inside Texas: Fallacies and Lessons Learned from 2021 Arkansas

2. For Inside Texas: The Leftovers: The Players from 2021 Who Have Stayed

3. For Inside Texas: God is not neutral, the defining games of UT vs Arky

4. DWWBYa Podcast with 1969 National Champion and Longhorn Legend Tom Campbell

5. My 2021 article “The Purists Will Have a Field Day” an oral history of the 1969 game.