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The death of Ken Clark, one of Nebraska’s top running backs of all time, has been confirmed. Clark, 46, died of a heart attack Saturday in Minneapolis, according to his cousin, Stephanie Clark. Tom Osborne, Clark’s
head coach and now Nebraska’s Athletic Director Emeritus, issued a
statement through media relations this afternoon. “Ken Clark was an
outstanding player for our football team, and he was a very consistent
and durable running back,” Osborne said, adding that Clark led the team
in rushing in both 1988 and 1989, and ran for more than 3,000 yards in
his career, while averaging better than six yards per carry. “Ken was
quiet, but he became a very strong leader on our football team,” Osborne
said. “He was very tough physically and mentally. Ken graduated from
Nebraska after his playing days were over and spent much of his life
working with young people. He will certainly be missed and remembered by
all who were associated with him.”
Clark was featured on the cover of Nebraska’s 1989 Media Guide (above)
as a Heisman Trophy candidate, meaning, of course, that even those of
us who have never met or been associated with Clark still knew of him.
Personally speaking, his name is still etched in the minds of some
friends of mine who live in Kansas City – friends who graduated from
Missouri, Kansas State, Oregon State and Eastern Michigan and were
seeing their first game ever inside Memorial Stadium. Clark made that
game an extraordinary experience.
We bought six tickets in the North Stadium
for college football’s showdown of the week – No. 7 Nebraska hosting No.
10 Oklahoma State, led by Barry Sanders, the leading Heisman Trophy
candidate at the time and still one of Rex Burkhead’s
foremost role models. Most national attention for this mid-October
blockbuster focused on Sanders. On the drive to Lincoln, my buddies
asked who Nebraska’s top running back was, and when they didn’t
recognize the name, they indicated they wanted Nebraska to win that day
but they also wanted to see Sanders post some serious numbers to make
the game more memorable.
Clark Outperformed Heisman Winner Sanders
Both wishes came true, but no one could have guessed that in his first year as Nebraska’s starting running back, Ken Clark
would out-rush Barry Sanders, who went on to win the 1988 Heisman
Trophy. Before we describe more details in the highest scoring game in
Memorial Stadium history, please pause and take the next 45 seconds to
hit Kent Pavelka’s call on
Nebraska’s first offensive play in that unforgettable 63-42 Husker win
over the Cowboys. Clark dazzled everyone with a 73-yard touchdown run
that was so remarkable – and I’m not kidding here – that Pavelka
described Clark taking a hand-off from Steve Taylor and
going so far left that he was at the 30, 32, 33 and 35-yard lines
before ending up in the opposite end zone. The film shows Clark
disappearing into multiple defenders before re-emerging and taking it
all the way to the house. The play will remind you of Tommie Frazier’s signature touchdown run in the 1996 Fiesta Bowl win over Florida. Check it out on this OSU YouTube game video.
“Touchdown! Touchdown! Touchdown!” Pavelka shouted. “Holy cow! Unbelieveable!”
Indeed. On Nebraska’s first play from
scrimmage in that historic game, Clark broke three tackles at the point
of attack and then pushed the first button on a scoreboard that became a
pinball machine. It was Clark’s most magical moment in a mystical game
that still seems more like a fairy tale than a Top Ten showdown. Pavelka
found the right words within a second of that shocking beginning. “Ken
Clark does his Oklahoma State Barry Sanders imitation!” he said.
The good news is, that imitation kept going
and going and going, and Clark’s electrifying touchdown lit the fuse. I
couldn’t resist watching the entire first quarter of one of Nebraska’s
craziest games ever - a game the Huskers elected to play in the
afternoon instead of at night on television. Clark had three touchdowns
in the game’s first 18 minutes and 18 seconds. Thanks to a 35-0 first
quarter and Clark’s quick touchdown in the first three minutes of the
second quarter, college football’s Showdown of the Week looked like it
might become the Rout of the Season. We all looked at a scoreboard that
read Home 42 Visitors 0. “Where’s Barry Sanders?” one of my buddies
joked. “Is he hurt?”
Less than three minutes later, Sanders scored
a touchdown and two minutes after that, he scored another one. Sanders
then scored two more second half TDs to keep the winning margin
respectable. The only other game in Nebraska history to duplicate the
105 combined points in that 63-42 game was the Huskers’ 77-28 win over
Arizona State seven years later.
Clark Was All-World Against Oklahoma State
Let the record show that on a special autumn
afternoon a quarter century ago, Ken Clark did more than imitate Barry
Sanders, the nation’s leading rusher who went on to become perhaps the
best running back in NFL history. Clark outperformed Sanders, who scored
four touchdowns that day, but most were makeup scores in a game that
got away from the Cowboys in the first 15 minutes. Sanders rushed for
185 yards on 35 carries. Clark rushed for 256 yards on 27 carries and
scored three touchdowns that put the heat on early. In three years
against Oklahoma State, Clark was all-world, rushing for 422 yards,
averaging 7.4 yards a carry and scoring seven touchdowns.
Clark’s 3,037-yard three-year rushing total puts him No. 7 on the Huskers’ career rushing chart. He trails Mike Rozier, Ahman Green, Eric Crouch, Roy Helu Jr., Rex Burkhead and Calvin Jones. The rest of the top 10 is I.M. Hipp, Lawrence Phillips and Dahrran Diedrick.
Talk about special company. If you don’t know as much about Clark as
you remember from the others, there’s a good reason for that. Clark, it
appears, was every bit as elusive with the media as he was for opposing
defenses.
To drive that point home, I suggest you read Mike Babcock’s phone call to Clark nearly
25 years ago to understand why Nebraska football’s foremost historian
decided to write about Clark’s general disdain for reporters and the
attention that came with his success. “He wasn’t looking for the
limelight,” Husker All-American Broderick Thomas told
Babcock this morning. “A ball under his arm was his favorite thing .. a
fine running back. Good guy, quiet; that was Ken. Most people would say
he was very quiet.”
Perhaps that’s why Ken Clark, like Barry Sanders, let his vision and his legs do all the talking.
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