Paul Raymond "Shorty" Des Jardien (August 24, 1893 – March 7, 1956) was an American football, baseball and basketball player. He played for the University of Chicago where he was selected as the first-team All-American center in both 1913 and 1914 and also pitched a no-hitter for the baseball team. He was inducted into the College Football Hall of Fame in 1955.
Des Jardien was born in Coffeyville, Kansas, and moved to Chicago, Illinois as a child. He attended Chicago's Wendell Phillips Academy High School before enrolling at the University of Chicago.
Des Jardien enrolled at the University of Chicago in 1911 and played on the Chicago Maroons' football, baseball, basketball, and track & field teams. He earned 12 varsity letters, played on Western Conference championship teams in both football and baseball, and became known as one of the best all-around athletes ever produced by the University of Chicago. While attending the University of Chicago, Des Jardien was 6 feet, 5 inches tall, and weighed 190 pounds. His teammates called him "Shorty."
Des Jardien gained his greatest fame playing at the center position for Amos Alonzo Stagg's Chicago Maroons football teams from 1912 to 1914. Des Jardien played at the center position on both offense and defense, was considered "the mainstay of his team on defense," and was also known for his ability as a long punter. During Des Jardien's three years as Chicago's center, the Maroons compiled a record of 17-3-1, including an undefeated 7-0 record and Western Conference championship in 1913.
After his sophomore year in 1912, Des Jardien was selected as a first-team All-Western player. Stagg praised Des Jardien as a "spectacular" player and "as flashy a center as I have seen in many years." [8] In naming Des Jardien to his All-Western team in 1912, E.C. Patterson in Collier's wrote: "Des Jardien is not great of bulk, at least not horizontally. He is tall and rangy and remarkably active. His usefulness is accentuated when it is seen that some of Coach Stagg's forward pass tricks center around him."
In his junior and senior years of 1913 and 1914, Des Jardien was selected as a first-team All-American. He was also chosen by his teammates as the captain of the 1914 football team. In 1914, Walter Camp wrote about Des Jardien: "He is the best center in the country — steady, reliable, absolutely dependable for his share of line work on attack, and a power on defense."
In September 1916, Des Jardien was hired as the football coach at Oberlin College.
Des Jardien served in the United States Army during World War I. In the fall of 1917, Des Jardien played on an Army football team at Fort Sheridan that included a number of former All-Americans including Albert Benbrook, Ernest Allmendinger, James B. Craig and Dolly Gray. In 1918, he was placed in charge of a German prison camp in Paris.
After retiring from athletics, Des Jardien worked as a manufacturing executive in Los Angeles, California. He was inducted into the College Football Hall of Fame in July 1955. He died at his home in Monrovia, California in 1956 from a cerebral thrombosis. He was buried at the Forest Lawn Cemetery. In 2006, Des Jardien was posthumously inducted into the University of Chicago Hall of Fame.
Taken from Wikipedia