Role American football player Books I play to win Name Freddie Steinmark Positions Safety | Height 1.75 m | |
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Date of birth (1949-01-27)January 27, 1949 Date of death June 6, 1971(1971-06-06) (aged 22) Died June 6, 1971, Houston, Texas, United States | ||
Lhn all access freddie joe steinmark sept 5 2013
Freddie Steinmark (January 27, 1949 – June 6, 1971) was an American college football player. He played at the position of safety for the University of Texas Longhorns.
Contents
Football Career
Steinmark was a member of the 1969 Texas Longhorns football team, who won a national championship.
Two days after his performance on a painful left leg against the 1969 Arkansas Razorbacks football team in the "Game of the Century", played on December 6, 1969 and won by Texas, 15–14, x-rays revealed a bone tumor just above his left knee. A biopsy confirmed the tumor was malignant osteogenic sarcoma, and he was treated at the M.D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston. On December 12, 1969 his leg was amputated at the hip.
Twenty days later, he stood on the sideline with his team as Texas defeated Notre Dame in the 1970 Cotton Bowl Classic on New Year's Day. Steinmark's fight against cancer inspired the United States Congress to write the National Cancer Act of 1971 and President Richard Nixon to sign it into law, thus beginning the "War on Cancer".
Autobiography
In 1971, with the help of Dallas Times Herald sports editor, Blackie Sherrod, Steinmark wrote and published his autobiography I Play to Win. The book was published posthumously, almost 3 months after Steinmark's death. Steinmark is the subject of the 2015 movie My All American, and a coinciding biography Freddie Steinmark: Faith, Family, Football, published by the University of Texas Press (September 1, 2015). Steinmark died on June 6, 1971 at the University of Texas M. D. A
Legacy
In a pregame ceremony prior to UT's game with the University of Miami on September 23, 1972, the scoreboard at Darrell K Royal-Texas Memorial Stadium was dedicated to Freddie Steinmark. The current version of the Freddie Steinmark scoreboard, nicknamed Godzillatron, stands forty-seven-feet high.
On November 7, 2015, the UT Longhorns rededicated the scoreboard to Steinmark in a ceremony attended by the Steinmark family and many previous Longhorn players. The Longhorns wore throwback uniforms similar to those worn by the 1969 squad for their game against the Kansas Jayhawks, removing the "Texas" wordmark from the front of the jerseys, the TV numerals from the shoulder pads, and names from the back. The helmets featured the decal for college football's centennial, which was celebrated in 1969.