Professional Football Career
Clark was 6.0 ft (1.83 m) tall and weighed 175-185 lb (79–84 kg) when he began his professional football career as a quarterback, kicker and punter with the short-lived Portsmouth Spartans in Ohio in 1931. The Spartans had only sixteen players on their roster, not unusual at the time. He left pro football after two seasons to coach the Colorado School of Mines Orediggers in 1933, a long-time rival of his alma mater. The Spartans moved to Detroit as a result of the Great Depression, and became the Lions. Clark returned to the Lions in 1934, where he was a triple-option threat on offense through the 1938 season. He was a six-time All-Pro and three-time league scoring leader, and led the Lions to a 26-7 victory over the New York Giants in the 1935 NFL championship game. A popular photograph of Clark from the Detroit News was published in Life magazine. Clark was a player-coach in 1937 and 1938, giving him a career-high and league-high salary of $7200. He retired as a player and became the head coach of the Cleveland Rams from 1939 through 1942. Clark served in the US Army during World War II, and as Athletic Director at the University of Detroit after the war.
In 1944, he coached the Seattle Bombers in the short-lived American Football League of the Pacific Coast during its only season.
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Famous quotes containing the words professional, football and/or career:
“In European thought in general, as contrasted with American, vigor, life and originality have a kind of easy, professional utterance. American—on the other hand, is expressed in an eager amateurish way. A European gives a sense of scope, of survey, of consideration. An American is strained, sensational. One is artistic gold; the other is bullion.”
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“Like the old soldier of the ballad, I now close my military career and just fade away, an old soldier who tried to do his duty as God gave him the light to see that duty. Goodbye.”
—Douglas MacArthur (1880–1964)