Ox Emerson

Ox Emerson

Date of birth:	December 18, 1907(1907-12-18)
Place of birth:	Douglass, TX
Date of death:	November 26, 1998(1998-11-26) (aged 90)
Career information
Position(s):	Guard
College:	Texas
Organizations
As player:
1931-1933 1934-1937 1938	Portsmouth Spartans Detroit Lions Brooklyn Dodgers
Career highlights and awards
Honors:	All-SWC Guard (1930) NFL 1930s All-Decade Team Texas Longhorn Hall of Honor Detroit Lions All-Time Team
Playing stats at DatabaseFootball.com

Gover Conner “Ox” Emerson (December 18, 1907 – November 26, 1998) was an American football player.

Born and raised in rural East Texas, Emerson played high school football at Orange High School. He later played starting left guard on the Texas Longhorns team of 1929 and 1930 under coach Clyde Littlefield. He garnered all-Southwest Conference honors in 1930. He expected to play for the Longhorns in the 1931 season and was to be the team captain but he had participated in two plays with the varsity in the 1928 Baylor game and was declared ineligible for the 1931 season.

He began his pro career with the Portsmouth Spartans in 1931 for a salary of $75 per game. In 1934 joined the Detroit Lions. With Emerson blocking and leading the way the 1936 Lions team set a rushing record of 2,885 yards in a twelve-game season that lasted 36 years. It was finally broken by the Miami Dolphins in 1972 in a fourteen-game season. Emerson retired in 1937 to become line coach under Potsy Clark for the Brooklyn Dodgers, but then briefly returned as player.

Finally retiring in 1939, Emerson returned to Detroit, working in the Personnel Department of the Ford Motor Company and coaching at Wayne State University. During World War II he served his country in the U.S. Navy in 1942 and attained the rank of Lieutenant Commander. He served on the Aircraft carrier USS Block Island which was sunk in the Atlantic by a German submarine. Transferred back to the United States, Emerson coached the Naval Air Station Corpus Christi team until his discharge.

He stayed in Corpus Christi coaching Alice High School and Del Mar Junior College until he was offered the freshman coaching position at the University of Texas at Austin in 1951. Emerson remained at Texas until the end of the 1956 football season and returned to high school coaching in the Austin, Texas area. In 1976 he retired from coaching and taught American History at St. Louis Catholic School until his final retirement in 1985.

Persondata
Name	Emerson, Ox
Alternative names
Short description
Date of birth	December 18, 1907
Place of birth	Douglass, TX
Date of death	November 26, 1998
Place of death