Clark Shaughnessy

Sport: Coach

Induction Year: 1970

University: LoyolaTulane

Induction Year: 1970

To appreciate Clark Daniel Shaughnessy, the father of the modern T-formation, this is all you need to know: When the Tulane Athletic Association hired him to coach the Green Wave football team in 1915, the other applicant for the job was Knute Rockne.

Rockne wanted an annual salary of $2,200, and asked to have his interview pushed back a week because he was the track and field coach at Notre Dame and the Fighting Irish were scheduled to participate in the Drake Relays. Shaughnessy was so impressive in his interview that they hired him on the spot (for $1,875) and sent a telegram to South Bend: “Don’t come. Job filled.”

When a New Orleans millionaire offered Shaughnessy $175,000 to leave Tulane and coach Loyola (New Orleans) for 10 years, Shaughnessy wasted no time accepting the opportunity.

One year later, the paths of Shaughnessy and Rockne crossed again. Loyola played Notre Dame at South Bend. When Shaughnessy saw the size of the players on Rockne’s 133-man squad, he kept his team in the dressing room until just before game time. Then they gave the Fighting Irish all they could handle before bowing, 12-6.

“Never get me another warm-up game coached by that guy,” Rockne said later.

When Shaughnessy took over the Tulane football program at the age of 23, the grass on the Green Wave practice field was two feet high and the field was surrounded by a ramshackle wooden fence. The dilapidated bleachers might have seated 2,000 spectators. Gate receipts at his first game, collected by a team manager walking the sideline, amounted to $160.

In 1916, Shaughnessy persuaded Tulane and Newcomb College to declare a full holiday in which students of both institutions would work for one day and turn the earnings over to a grandstand fund. The project raised $10,000, but Shaughnessy later said getting the schools to declare the holiday was much more difficult than raising $300,000 for a new stadium (which became the Sugar Bowl) in 1925.

In the mid-1920s, Shaughnessy developed a Tulane powerhouse that shut out arch-rival LSU three years in a row and lost only three games in three seasons. Throughout his 31-year coaching career, Shaughnessy said the trio of Lester Lautenslaeger, Peggy Flournoy and Alfred “Brother” Brown on those Tulane teams was the first collection of backs he ever coached at one time. The 1925 team received a Rose Bowl bid, but Tulane officials declined because they felt their players were too small.

Long after Rockne’s death in a 1931 airplane crash, the legendary Notre Dame coach continued to influence Shaughnessy’s career. When Curley Byrd, president of the University of Maryland, was looking for a head football coach in 1942, he recalled that 12 years earlier Rockne told him that the best two coaches in the country were Shaughnessy and Bob Neyland of Tennessee. Byrd offered Shaughnessy a five-year contract.

Shaughnessy coached at the University of Chicago after he left New Orleans, and spent three seasons at Pittsburgh between stints at Maryland. Then he finished his coaching career in the National Football League, directing the Los Angeles Rams to a 53-27 rout of the Washington Redskins for the NFL’s Western Division Championship. In that season, he introduced the double spread formation to football.

His best player at Chicago was Jay Berwanger, winner of the first Heisman Trophy. Berwanger also was the No. 1 selection in the National Football League draft, but nobody had bothered to ask him if he was interested in playing pro football. (He wasn’t, and didn’t bother reporting.)

Born at St. Cloud, Minn., on March 6, 1882, Shaughnessy had never seen a football game when he enrolled at the University of Minnesota in 1908. He was refused a uniform when he first went out for the Minnesota team. One year later, he suited out for each game but didn’t get into any of them. By his senior year, however, he was alternating between defensive end, tackle and fullback – and was impressive at all three positions.

Spending much of his coaching career at schools that had inferior material, Shaughnessy’s record of 149 victories, 116 losses and 17 ties adds up to a modest winning percentage of .559. But his contributions to the game far outweigh many coaches who had more impressive numbers. His unbeaten 1940 Stanford team, quarterbacked by Frankie Albert, revolutionized the game with its T-formation magic, capping a perfect season with a 21-13 Rose Bowl victory over Nebraska.