Clark's twisted tale takes a curious turn

ROB KEYS
ARKANSAS DEMOCRAT-GAZETTE

Maybe Zak Clark's recently discovered sore shoulder -- which miraculously was healed on Saturday -- was a result of him being jerked around for more than a year now.
For those who don't know, Clark is a freshman quarterback at Arkansas and a Fayetteville native. He is the oldest son of Doug and Carol Clark. Doug is an assistant baseball coach at Arkansas, and has been for the past 20 years.
Predictably, Zak grew up to be a fine baseball player. A slick-fielding, hard-hitting shortstop, he was a two-time all-state performer.
Clark also turned out to be one heckuva quarterback. He passed for a school-record 6,177 yards at Fayetteville High School, including a senior season that saw him rack up 2,360 yards and 21 touchdowns.
Clark also once threw for 492 yards in a playoff loss to El Dorado, then a state record.
Despite his football success, some thought Clark would choose to play baseball in college. Instead, Clark decided to try to play both.
In reality, baseball took a back seat. Clark spent the summer after his senior year of high school getting ready to battle for Arkansas' backup quarterback position, behind Clint Stoerner.
This wasn't something Clark did unprompted. With fellow freshmen Robby Hampton and Gary Brashears as the only other logical candidates to back up Stoerner, Arkansas coaches told Clark he would have a chance to prove himself.
This is where the jerking around starts.
Except the jerking didn't happen on the football field.
Late in the summer of 1999, Arkansas Coach Houston Nutt asked Clark to give up his scholarship and enroll as a part-time student because of a numbers crunch.
Forget asking him to redshirt, Nutt asked him to enroll part-time -- in other words, not practice or play at all. No scholarship. No nothing.
In return for being deemed "a state hero," Clark was told he would go on scholarship at the beginning of the spring semester.
Never happened.
Sure, Clark got to go through Cotton Bowl workouts and spring practice, but he didn't get his scholarship until before this season.
More jerking around.
Once he finally became an official scholarship quarterback, Clark was told he likely would redshirt, as Hampton and Brashears figured to battle for the starting job, with the loser serving as the backup and Jared McBride as the third-teamer.
Never happened.
When Brashears bolted for Tulsa during two-a-days, Clark suddenly found coaches telling him he would have a shot at earning the No. 2 job.
Anyone who saw Arkansas' season-opener against Southwest Missouri State could have reasonably surmised that Clark was the No. 2 quarterback.
Yes, McBride was the first guy to relieve Hampton, but Clark got significantly more snaps.
Over the Razorbacks' next two games, neither Clark nor McBride got snaps. The games were just too close.
In a blowout loss to Georgia, Clark was conspicuously absent. In last week's laugher over Louisiana-Monroe, Clark again was conspicuously absent.
That's when word of his sore shoulder and redshirting came to the forefront.
Besides being a bunch of -- pardon the pun -- hogwash, this new strategy was nothing but more jerking around of Clark.
Why?
Because we were told Clark might not actually redshirt. If Hampton was injured, Nutt said McBride likely would finish out the game, but that Clark then would be prepared to play out any remaining games that Hampton can't play.
That all changed Saturday when Clark opened the second half as Arkansas' quarterback -- jerked again, this time onto the field in an attempt to rescue a floundering team.
Seems like a strange way to treat a hometown guy who just so happens to have the best arm on the team and a seemingly ceaseless desire to be a Razorback, especially coming from a guy who claims he was jerked around by Lou Holtz.

This article was published on Sunday, October 15, 2000

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