TURNER, Clyde Douglas ("Bulldog")

(b. 10 March 1919 in Plains, Texas; d. 20 October 1998 in Gatesville, Texas), college and professional football player, considered to be the best center and linebacker of the 1940s.

Turner was the son of a traditional West Texas cowboy and a homemaker. In 1932 Turner and his family moved to Sweetwater, Texas, where he attended Newman High School and saw his first game of organized football. Turner took to the game immediately, especially since the alternative to football practice was picking cotton.

Sweetwater had a tradition of producing gridiron talent. The Pro Football Hall of Fame quarterback Sammy Baugh had played high-school ball there a few years before Turner, and his example encouraged Turner to further his career. After graduating from Newman High in 1936, Turner enrolled in Hardin-Simmons University in Abilene, Texas, where he received the nickname "Bulldog." Because he had graduated from high school at the age of sixteen, Turner was younger than most of the school's other players. To impress the coaching staff, Turner and another new recruit, A. J. Roy, decided to give each other menacing nicknames. They weren't needed; both players made the team on their own merits.

Turner played center on offense and linebacker on defense at Hardin-Simmons. He won Little All-America honors his senior year. Hardin-Simmons played well enough to earn berths in the first two Sun Bowls, tying New Mexico State in 1936 and beating the University of Texas at El Paso in 1937. The coach Frank Kimbrough gave Turner a lot of credit for helping the Hardin-Simmons football team gain national attention.

Besides playing football, Turner spent his college years studying journalism. While still in school he married Gladys; they later had two daughters. After earning his B.A. in 1940, he became an immediate bone of contention in the National Football League (NFL) draft. George Richards, the owner of the Detroit Lions, wanted his coach to choose Turner in the first round of the draft. Richards fired the coach when he chose Doyle Nave instead, and then tried to convince Turner to tell the other league teams he was not interested in playing professional football. Richards planned to pay Turner to do nothing for a year, and then draft him in 1941. Hiding players in this way was against the NFL rules. Richards wound up losing his franchise, and the Chicago Bears wound up with Turner.

With the Bears, Turner immediately became a starter at center and a linebacker. At six feet, two inches tall and 235 pounds, he had ample size to play the line and the speed to cover receivers in pass defense. Bears fans considered Turner to be one of the cornerstones of their football success in the 1940s. During his first four seasons, the Bears played in the championship game four times, winning three. Among their championship victories were a 73–0 defeat of the Washington Redskins in 1940, and a 37–9 victory over the New York Giants in 1941. For much of Turner's early career, the Bears dominated professional football.

Turner became noted for his pass interceptions. In 1942 he was one of the few linebackers ever to lead the league in that category, with eight interceptions. He used his speed in other ways, too. In one game, when a number of Bears were thrown out for fighting, Turner was shifted to half-back. On his only carry from scrimmage, he ran forty-eight yards for a touchdown.

Following the 1944 season Turner entered the U.S. Army Air Corps. In 1945 he played football for the Second Air Force team in Colorado Springs, Colorado. Because the pilots there had to log a certain number of hours of flying time each month, Turner was twice able to get flights to Bears games, where he played, despite being in the military. Following the end of World War II, Turner returned to the Bears. Esteemed for his blocking, he wrote the book Playing the Line (1948). Turner continued to play through 1952, spending his last year as a player-coach and taking most of the snaps as an offensive tackle.

Turner finished his career with sixteen pass interceptions and six years on the All-Pro team. He said his favorite play was a twisting, ninety-six-yard interception return of a Sammy Baugh pass, but he was better known for his clutch play in big games. Turner intercepted four passes in five championship games, and reportedly never made a bad snap from center.

Following his playing career, Turner went into football coaching. He was an assistant at Baylor University in Waco, Texas, in 1953, and also coached the Chicago Bears between 1954 and 1958. In 1962 Turner was named as the head coach of the New York Titans in the American Football League. His major achievement that year was keeping the team together. The Titans owner declared bankruptcy during the season, and the franchise had to be taken over by the league. Turner finished with a 5–9 record.

In addition to coaching, Turner owned a small ranch outside Gatesville, Texas. He raised cattle, sheep, and goats, and his wife was a noted dog breeder. By the end of his life, Turner grew to resent his nickname. While he once was proud to tell reporters that no one called him Clyde except his wife, and that was when she was mad, as a man in his seventies he found the name "Bulldog" inappropriate. He died in Gatesville from lung cancer and is buried in Greenbriar Cemetery, Coryell County, Texas.

Turner was inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 1966, and is remembered as one of the foremost offensive linemen and linebackers of the 1940s. He was a vital cog in the great Chicago Bears teams of that era, and one of the few offensive linemen skilled enough to escape that position's relative anonymity.

Extensive interviews with Turner appear in Myron Cope, The Game That Was: An Illustrated Account of the Tumultuous Early Days of Pro Football (1970). He is the subject of a brief biography in Richard Kaplan, Great Linebackers of the NFL (1970). See also Richard Whittingham, The Chicago Bears: An Illustrated History (1979). Obituaries are in the Chicago Tribune (31 Oct. 1998), and New York Times (2 Nov. 1998).

Harold W. Aurand, Jr.