…for some football?! Sunday is the big – okay, “Super” – game. Who will you be rooting for?

You may be aware that President Ford played college football for the University of Michigan, but did you know that he was offered the opportunity to play professionally?  In December 1934, Ford was invited to play in the East-West Shrine Game in San Francisco on New Year’s Day, 1935.  Ford accepted and played fifty-eight of the sixty minutes, impressing many of the professional football scouts there that day – one of whom was none other than head coach and co-founder of the Green Bay Packers, Curly Lambeau.  In February, Lambeau followed up with the following offer:

Ford would go on to receive a similar offer from the Detroit Lions, but ultimately turned them both down in favor of going to Yale Law School.  (Had President Ford accepted Lambeau’s offer, he would have been a part of Green Bay’s 1936 NFL championship team!)  As President, Ford visited Green Bay and helped dedicate the team’s Hall of Fame.  Bart Starr, the Packers’ Hall of Fame quarterback, presented Ford with this football signed by the 1975 team.

Feel free to bring this nugget of Presidential trivia with you to your Super Bowl watch party this weekend!

Author: Brooke Clement