I finished a coffee table book this week that focuses on Arkansas’ football history. It is called “Footsteps Have Trod: 125 Seasons of Arkansas Football.” The title is a line from the UA alma mater. The book is available for $10 off via a pre-sale now. It ships before Christmas. You can find more details at this link: https://www.pediment.com/products/foots … _125_years
Chuck Barrett wrote a nice foreword that talks about his experience at the 1975 Texas A&M game and his memory of seeing the photo of Teddy Barnes’ touchdown catch in the newspaper the next day. That picture is in the book. So are pictures from other great moments - The Powder River Play, The Miracle on Markham, The Big Shootout, the overtime marathons, the 1981 Texas game, the 1999 Tennessee game, the 2007 LSU game, etc.
There are some short stories about people and games, but this book is about the pictures. I first pitched this in February 2017 and spent several months going through our archives to find some good oldies. My favorite memory is spending three days going through cabinets full of old Arkansas Gazette photos in Little Rock. It was hard to get work done because I was so mesmerized by some of the shots. A lot of those proofs had writing on the back, probably from Orville, with details about the photo or directions how to use it in the newspaper.
What I like about this book is that there are pictures you might have only seen once, in the newspaper decades ago. These are not the photos you see in the media guide every year, although there might be a couple in the oldest chapter. The photos give a different vantage point of memorable plays. The table of contents picture is Darren McFadden’s 80-yard touchdown against LSU in 2006, taken from directly in front of him.
The cover is a beautiful black and white photo of John Barnhill and an unidentified player from a 1949 game in Little Rock. Barnhill is wearing a nice coat and top hat, and the player has a black eye and no facemask - all of which you never see anymore.
There are some great staged shots of players and teams from the first 50 years, but the photo quality, especially game photos, begins to pick up in the 1950s.
I wrote most of the stories over a 15-day span after I got home from Omaha at the end of June. Between the book and the CWS, I think I probably worked more than 400 hours over a 31-day span from mid-June to mid-July - an exhausting time period, but worth it in retrospect. I was pleased with our coverage from Omaha and I was happy when I saw the final proof for this book earlier this week.
I hope you will consider purchasing this book.