The Greatest Days in College Football History: Richard Nixon Becomes The Gridiron Star He Always Wanted to Be

I was the only out-front, openly hostile Peace Freak; the only one wearing old Levis and a ski jacket, the only one (no, there was one other) who’d smoked grass on Nixon’s big Greyhound press bus, and certainly the only one who habitually referred to the candidate as “the Dingbat.”

So I still had to credit the bastard for having the balls to choose me — out of the fiften or twenty straight/heavy press types who’d been pleading for two or three weeks for even a five-minute interview — as the one who should share the back seat with him on this Final Ride through New Hampshire.

But there was, of course, a catch. I had to agree to talk about nothing except football.

-Hunter S. Thompson on his love of football earning him one-on-one interview time with Pres. Richard Nixon, Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail ‘72

Political tensions ran high in 1969. Richard Nixon was sworn in as the 37th President of the United States in January of that year, winner of a contentious election ran against the backdrops of the Vietnam war and the Civil Rights Movement.

College campuses were epicenters of public protest to these issues, particularly during the 1969-70 academic year. May 1970 marked the nationwide Student Strike and the shooting of unarmed protestors at Kent State University.

The introductory excerpt to this article comes from Hunter Thompson’s chronicles of the presidential race two years later, but provides some illuminating context for the 1969 college football season: Richard Nixon loved him some football.

Nixon’s gridiron exploits while in office include his calling in a play to Dolphins coach Don Shula in 1971 — famously resulting in a 13-yard loss — and the hours of tapes he recorded in the Oval Office including a tirade about NFL TV blackout rules.

via The Washington Post and catalogued by Nicholas Evan Sarantakes.

It’s remarkable that one of Nixon’s gripes 50 years ago remains a frustration of football fan a half-century later — and it’s a gripe on which anyone who loves the sport can agree, regardless of political stripe.

Football, in this sense, provides common ground; an avenue to set aside differences and come together for a shared passion. That Hunter S. Thompson was one of the most outspoken anti-Nixonian scribes in political press, yet piqued the president’s interest with his shared knowledge of football enough that Nixon offered up one-on-one interview time, underscores this quality of the game.

But at the same time, sports are not nor have they ever been wholly apolitical. And in the case of Richard Nixon’s love for football, what was perhaps the president’s most famous foray onto the gridiron during his tenure in the White House — which came at the culmination of the 1969 college season in a game between Arkansas and Texas — was calculated political maneuvering.

More on that in a moment. Without the events of Nov. 22, 1969, there is perhaps no presidential input made on a certain Southwest Conference game two weeks later — and thus, college football isn’t the cultural launching pad for a political movement that defined the next half-century and beyond.