Maurice Gordon Clarke (May 2, 1877 – June 5, 1944) was an

American football American football (referred to simply as football in the United States and Canada), also known as gridiron, is a team sport played by two teams of eleven players on a rectangular field with goalposts at each end. The offense, the team wi ...

and

baseball Baseball is a bat-and-ball sport played between two teams of nine players each, taking turns batting and fielding. The game occurs over the course of several plays, with each play generally beginning when a player on the fielding t ...

player and coach. The

Omaha, Nebraska Omaha ( ) is the largest city in the U.S. state of Nebraska and the county seat of Douglas County. Omaha is in the Midwestern United States on the Missouri River, about north of the mouth of the Platte River. The nation's 39th-largest ...

native served as head football coach at the

University of Texas at Austin The University of Texas at Austin (UT Austin, UT, or Texas) is a public research university in Austin, Texas. It was founded in 1883 and is the oldest institution in the University of Texas System. With 40,916 undergraduate students, 11,075 ...

in 1899, at Western Reserve University—now a part of

Case Western Reserve University Case Western Reserve University (CWRU) is a private research university in Cleveland, Ohio. Case Western Reserve was established in 1967, when Western Reserve University, founded in 1826 and named for its location in the Connecticut Western Reser ...

—in 1900, and at Washington University in St. Louis, compiling a career

college football College football (french: Football universitaire) refers to gridiron football played by teams of student athletes. It was through college football play that American football in the United States, American football rules first gained populari ...

record of 15–8–3. He was also the head baseball coach at Texas in the spring of 1900, tallying a mark of 14–2–1. Clarke was a graduate of the

University of Chicago The University of Chicago (UChicago, Chicago, U of C, or UChi) is a private research university in Chicago, Illinois. Its main campus is located in Chicago's Hyde Park neighborhood. The University of Chicago is consistently ranked among the b ...

and played

quarterback The quarterback (commonly abbreviated "QB"), colloquially known as the "signal caller", is a position in gridiron football. Quarterbacks are members of the offensive platoon and mostly line up directly behind the offensive line. In modern Am ...

for the

Chicago Maroons The Chicago Maroons are the intercollegiate sports teams of the University of Chicago. They are named after the color maroon. Team colors are maroon and gray, and the Phoenix is their mascot. They now compete in the NCAA Division III, mostly as ...

from 1896 to 1898 teams under

Amos Alonzo Stagg Amos Alonzo Stagg (August 16, 1862 – March 17, 1965) was an American athlete and college coach in multiple sports, primarily American football. He served as the head football coach at the International YMCA Training School (now called Springfiel ...

. He also lettered in baseball at Chicago.

Personal life

Clarke was born May 2, 1877, in

Bellevue, Nebraska Bellevue (French for "beautiful view"; previously named Belleview) is a suburban city in Sarpy County, Nebraska, United States. It is part of the Omaha–Council Bluffs metropolitan area, and had a population of 64,176 as of the 2020 Census, mak ...

, to Henry T. Clarke Sr. and Martha A. Fielding Clarke, and had many siblings, including player, coach Henry T. Clarke Jr. Clarke later went into the oil business in Okmulgee, Oklahoma. He died there on June 5, 1944.

Head coaching record

Football

Baseball

References

External links

* 1877 births 1944 deaths Year of death missing 19th-century players of American football American football halfbacks American football quarterbacks Case Western Spartans football coaches Chicago Maroons baseball players Chicago Maroons football players Texas Longhorns baseball coaches Texas Longhorns football coaches Washington University Bears football coaches People from Bellevue, Nebraska Sportspeople from Omaha, Nebraska Coaches of American football from Nebraska Players of American football from Nebraska Baseball coaches from Nebraska {{1890s-collegefootball-coach-stub