to Wisconsin, where he played football for the Badgers in 1946 and 1947, and graduated in 1948. Coaching career Early coaching positions Journeying to Oregon at the recommendation of a fellow pilot, Don Garbarino, Frei quickly became a popular high school football coach at Grant High School in Portland. He was an assistant to Ted Ogdahl, who himself earned a Silver Star for wartime service in the Pacific fighting, as the Generals—with future Oregon Duck and NFL quarterback George Shaw starring—won the Oregon state championship in 1949. Frei became head coach at Lincoln High School in 1950, then line coach at Willamette University in Salem in 1952. Oregon Frei joined the popular, respected, and successful Len Casanova's football staff at the University of Oregon in Eugene as freshman coach in 1955 and became offensive line coach the next year. When Casanova became athletic director, Frei was named UO's 25th head coach in January 1967, the first year at the new Autzen Stadium, north of campus. The previous venue, Hayward Field, was a track and field shrine, but woefully inadequate and a recruiting handicap for football in Casanova's final seasons. Recovering from a 2-8 start in 1967, Frei's teams had a 22–29–2 record for his five seasons as head coach. His 1970 team defeated both UCLA and USC, plus then-unbeaten and highly-ranked Air Force late in the season, and finished in a tie for second in the Pacific-8 Conference in an era when only the league champion (Stanford in 1970) went to a bowl game (through 1974), the Rose Bowl. Frei was named UPI's national coach of the week twice that season, following the wins over USC and Air Force. Frei himself was known to be conservative, but his philosophy was that especially because he had flown in combat when younger than many of his players and had been forced to grow up fast; he wasn't going to try to control his young players' lives, dictate their hairstyles, or attempt to censor their political views away from the field. He steadfastly refused to call his players "kids," and some made fun of or never understood his unvarying references to them as "young men." His positive impact on his players during turbulent times was long-lasting. In a pattern that would continue for most of his NFL coaching and administrative career, his official Oregon coaching biography published in media guides and programs made