In America, there’s no limit to what you can accomplish; if you can dream it, you can achieve it. This was certainly true for Leslie Lynch King Jr. Of course, by the time he started his freshman year at Michigan in 1931, he had changed his name to Gerald Rudolph Ford Jr. in honor of his adopted father. When he graduated from college, he faced a choice that might have been decided very differently today: to join the NFL or try for law school.
Despite the image of a clumsy oaf that Chevy Chase would later lampoon on “Saturday Night Live,” Ford was actually an accomplished athlete for most of his life. He grew up as a Boy Scout, later an Eagle Scout and was captain of the football team at Grand Rapids South High School. He was recruited by the Michigan Wolverines to play linebacker and center while he studied economics. His athleticism was on full display during his tenure at Michigan; the team won two national championships and Ford was an all-star player.
After he played in the 1935 East-West College All-Star game and the 1935 Chicago Tribune College All-Star football game against the Chicago Bears, the NFL took notice of Ford and his talent. He was offered starting positions for both the Detroit Lions and Green Bay Packers. These days, the only difficult decision there would be choosing which team to play for. The Lions’ current center, Frank Ragnow, earns $13.5 million per year. The Packers’ starting center, Josh Myers, signed a four-year, $5.58 million contract in 2021, his rookie season.
In the 1930s, however, things were very different. At the time, star running back Tony Latone’s contract with the Providence Steam Rollers offered him $125 for every daytime game and 60% of that for every “floodlight game” (equivalent to around $2,361 in 2024). By the 1940s, salaries had improved for players, as Edward McGroarty’s contract with the Packers shows him earning $150 per game, for 11 games (equivalent to more than $3,380 in today’s dollars). While that isn’t anything compared to what the NFL pays today, it was still a good salary, especially in the middle of the Great Depression.
In either case, Ford turned both teams down, opting instead to coach boxing and football at Yale where he hoped to attend law school, and eventually did. He graduated in 1941 and opened his own law firm in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Ford would join the Navy Reserve after the Dec. 7, 1941, attack on Pearl Harbor, spending most of World War II aboard the aircraft carrier USS Monterey. He came back to Michigan after the war and grew interested in politics, running for a seat in the House of Representatives. In 1948, he unseated longtime incumbent Bartel J. Jonkman with the goal of one day becoming speaker of the House. It wasn’t to be.
Ford would serve 12 terms representing Michigan’s 5th District but would never achieve his dream of becoming speaker. Instead, he would be elevated to vice president and then president of the United States when Richard Nixon suddenly resigned over the Watergate scandal in August 1974. He is the only president to never actually run for either office. If Ford had played football instead of attending law school, the history of the United States might have been very different.
Nixon’s 1972 running mate, Spiro Agnew, resigned from the office of vice president in October 1973. Ford was chosen to take the office under the terms of the 25th Amendment, because it was determined that no one in Congress had a cleaner history or more sparkling reputation. Ford was confirmed in December 1973. Had the search for a replacement taken longer, the speaker of the House, Democrat Carl Albert, would have ascended to the presidency when Nixon resigned — and would likely not have granted Nixon a pardon.
The Packers could have used Ford’s help in 1935; the team failed to make the playoffs for the fourth consecutive season. The 1935 Detroit Lions, however, fared just fine without Gerald Ford. They finished in first place in the NFL’s Western Conference and defeated the New York Giants 26-7 for their first league championship.
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