The 1969 Texas vs. Arkansas football game, sometimes referred to as the "Game of the Century", was a college football game played on December 6 in which No. 1 Texas visited No. 2 Arkansas at Razorback Stadium in Fayetteville, Arkansas. The Longhorns came back from a deficit after three quarters to win
President Richard Nixon attended the game and established it as a national championship game by announcing he would award the winning team a presidential plaque declaring them "the number-one college football team in college football's one-hundredth year."
With a Nielsen rating of 52.1 (a 74 share), this was and remains as of 2023, the highest TV rating in American football history, college or professional.
Buildup
The relative parity which had existed within the Southwest Conference ended with the arrival of Darrell Royal and Frank Broyles at their respective schools, with either Texas or Arkansas winning or sharing the SWC crown eight out of the ten years leading up to the game (the exceptions were 1966 and 1967, when SMU and Texas A&M, respectively, won the titles). Both Texas and Arkansas had won one national championship in the 1960s, and the schools developed a rivalry after Arkansas defeated in consecutive years top-ranked Texas teams in 1964 and 1965. In 1968 Texas, which tied its first game vs. Houston and lost its second to Texas Tech, handed Arkansas their only loss of the year.
The 1969 season marked the centennial of college football, and this game decided the Southwest Conference championship and its berth in the Cotton Bowl. ABC television executive Beano Cook had arranged for Texas and Arkansas to play the final game of the regular season, moving their usual October date to the first weekend in December. ABC Sports executive Roone Arledge persuaded Arkansas coach Frank Broyles to move the game with a promise that President Richard Nixon would attend, and ABC would televise Arkansas' season opener in 1970 against Stanford (and its star quarterback, Jim Plunkett). Broyles even talked Arkansas officials into installing AstroTurf at Razorback Stadium. Kick off was scheduled for 12:20 p.m. CST, because the stadium in Fayetteville did not have lights at the time. There were early discussions of moving the game to an evening start at War Memorial Stadium in Little Rock, where Arkansas played two or three home games per season, but ABC did not consider the lights at Little Rock to be sufficient (the practice of renting portable light standards for late afternoon and evening kickoffs did not begin until the 1980s).
For a long while, it looked as though the game would be a meeting of national title also-rans. Ohio State was dominating the Big Ten and the chances of the game having an impact on the national championship appeared remote. However, as the Longhorns took a Saturday off to prepare for their upcoming game on Thanksgiving Day with Texas A&M, Michigan and its upstart coach Bo Schembechler upset the Buckeyes 24–12 in Ann Arbor. Texas and Arkansas moved up to the top of the polls, and the move to December made the game the focus of the entire American sporting public, gaining a television rating of a 52.1 share, meaning more than half the TV sets in use in the country were tuned to this game.
Game day took on an eerie feeling. Evangelist Billy Graham attended to give the pregame prayer. The night before, a steady, cold rain fell in Fayetteville and an icy fog hovered over the stadium as the crowd awaited the arrival of President Nixon, who would award a plaque symbolic of the National Championship to the winner. Due to the lack of a suitable airport in northwest Arkansas to land Air Force One (Fayetteville's Drake Field was far too small, and Northwest Arkansas Regional Airport did not open until 1998), Air Force One landed at Fort Smith Regional Airport, and Marine One flew from Fort Smith to Fayetteville and landed on the practice fields just east of Razorback Stadium shortly after kickoff.
The teams
In the 100th year of college football, it truly was the "Game of the Century." In a game between unbeatens played at Arkansas' Razorback Stadium in Fayetteville, the Longhorns were ranked Number 1 in the country, having won 18 straight games. The Arkansas Razorbacks were ranked Number 2, having won 15 straight since their last loss to Texas in Austin a year ago. The Texas wishbone attack, then still a novelty, was an offensive juggernaut that averaged over 44 points per game coming into the contest. Arkansas led the nation in scoring defense, yielding only 6.8 points per game. In addition, both the Razorback pro-style passing offense and the Texas defense were ranked in the top ten nationally.