Wake Forest Athletics
Q&A With Desmond Clark
11/13/2013 12:00:00 AM | Football
Nov. 13, 2013
By Jenn Leser, WakeForestSports.com
During his time at Wake Forest [1995-1998], Desmond Clark had a remarkable impact on the Demon Deacon football program. The tight end was a two-time All-ACC second team member and a two-time team MVP. Clark finished his collegiate career as the all-time reception leader in the ACC with 216 receptions for 2,834 yards and 20 touchdowns. Clark's Wake Forest reception record was broken by current senior Michael Campanaro earlier this season on Oct. 19.
Clark was taken in the sixth round of the 1999 draft by the Denver Broncos, where he played from 1999-2001. The tight end signed with the Miami Dolphins in 2002, before joining the Chicago Bears in 2003, helping lead the team to the NFC Championship and the Super Bowl in 2006. Clark finished his NFL career with 323 receptions for a total of 3,591 yards and 27 touchdowns.
Since retiring from the NFL in 2010, Clark has worked in real estate and now owns his own medical device sales company, MSK88. Clark also spends his time working with his charity, 88 Wayz Youth Organization, which is designed to create a support system for young athletes.
How has your career been since leaving Wake Forest?
The first highlight was actually getting drafted by the Denver Broncos in 1999 in the sixth round, and that's how I got to play in the NFL. I guess the best highlight of my career was playing in the Super Bowl against the Indianapolis Colts after the 2006 football season.
What is your greatest Wake Forest memory?
We played against Northwestern and I caught a pass with 51 seconds to go to beat them, I think it was 1996. That was a pretty good moment in my career. Then beating them the next year in 1997, the year that they went to the Orange Bowl, those were two pretty big accomplishments. Also, my last year against Maryland, where I had the chance to break the all-time ACC reception record.
What are your thoughts on Michael Campanaro breaking your Wake Forest receptions record?
Whenever there's a record, there's just a benchmark for somebody else who's willing to put in the work, and have the right system and right players around him to help that individual to achieve that goal. When I was there, I didn't set out to break records, but when it became apparent that I could do some of those things, I just pushed harder.
What is the greatest lesson you learned at Wake Forest?
I guess that's kind of when I grew up and became a young man. Just getting into a different environment, learning how to be a man and finish what I started. The lessons you get, especially from playing football, with the discipline and having people depend on you, you actually have to come through or you're letting your whole team down. That translates into life, business wise, family wise, anything you do with a group of people, small or large. You have people depending on you. Those lessons that I learned at Wake by playing football, at school and through the connections that I made have been important to my life and taught me how to be a man. That's something that's irreplaceable.
What is the greatest honor you received while at Wake Forest?
It may just be getting the MVP of the football team my sophomore year and also my senior year. I didn't have too many academic achievements that were honors. I guess getting the MVP of the football team twice was probably the biggest honor I received at Wake.
Given the number of Demon Deacons in the NFL, what do you think that says about the strength of the Wake Forest football program?
This has been a trend over the past decade plus, where you're starting to see a whole lot more guys from Wake Forest in the NFL. I think when I got to the NFL, there were only a handful of us. Now you look around and you have guys sprinkled everywhere. I think that says that Wake Forest is a legitimate football program. We do turn out pretty good athletes in our program and it shows because we've taken a bigger percentage recently than we have in the past few decades.
Why did you choose to return to Wake Forest in 2008 to complete your degree?
When I left, I was only 12 credits short and I took four credits in my rookie year. After that, I kind of let it go for a while. When you're that close and all you have to do is cross the finish line, take one more step, you want to finish. Once I started looking at it, I got a call from my academic advisor and she kind of pushed and me said let's go ahead and get this done. I said you're right; I only have two more classes to take. I always had it in the back of my mind that I was going to finish. Once it was brought to my attention that, look, two more classes and you're done, I decided to get it done. I had kids at the time and I wanted them to see their dad as a college graduate also.
What has your life been like since retiring from the NFL in 2010?
Life has been good since I retired from football. I got into real estate for a while and now I own my own medical device sales company, MSK88. I'm still building that; I've been working on that for the past seven, eight months and everything has been great so far. As far as my charity [88 Wayz Youth Organization], that's something that I started while I was playing football and it's something that is near and dear to my heart because it took a lot of people to mentor me, encourage me and be there as a support system in order for me to get where I am today. I just wanted to do that on a larger scale for other kids that have that talent, have that ability, have that mental toughness and that mental aptitude to go places. A lot of times, a lot of these kids fall through the cracks because they don't have someone there to push them or someone there to encourage them or just someone there period. With my 88 Wayz Youth Organization, I wanted to set up a mentoring platform where people in general are there for our youth, and are there to encourage them and get them to the destination that they're trying to get to.
What do you miss most about Wake Forest?
It definitely has to be being around all my teammates, in the locker room, just acting like kids all the time. I miss the intramural basketball games. I was just talking to my wife about one of my professors, Mr. Durotoye. I couldn't even remember what subject he taught but I know that he was one of my favorite professors there. She's now back in college and she was talking about one of her professors, so I just remembered him being a good guy for me when I was at Wake Forest.
What advice would you give to a Wake Forest student?
I wish I would have had more of a focus when I was in college. I would tell college students, football players, athletes, it doesn't matter, kids that are 18-22 who are just trying to find their way, if at all possible to just get focused in on what you want to do. The less focus you have, the more time it's going to take for you once you hit the real world to try and figure out what it is that you want to do. I watched a couple of my teammates that were very focused on what they wanted to do and now you see those guys, they're vice-presidents of different divisions of different corporations. You knew they were going to be like that from the beginning because they had that focus and they were always working towards those types of goals. I would say just have that focus. Even if it's an athlete that wants to go pro and they have the ability to do that, focus. If that's what it's going to be, don't let anything take away from it and don't waste time on other things that are going to deter you from whatever that goal is.
