Clark was dismissed from Michigan after he was accused of physically assaulting his girlfriend in a hotel room in Sandusky, Ohio, during the Wolverines bye week. He spent two days in jail.
In a time when the NFL is trying to revamp its image following the Ray Rice domestic assault, it’s curious that Clark would even receive an invite to the combine. But Clark said NFL scouts told him they were willing to overlook his transgression.
“Domestic violence is a big issue. I’m not sugar coating it,” Clark said. “It’s a huge issue nowadays in our society. Just talking with the teams I did talk to, they let me know that it’s going to handle itself. But they love me as a football player. They love me as a person. They look at it like I made a mistake. I look at it like a mistake that I can’t ever make again. Not just domestic violence. I can’t close the door too hard. That’s how I look at it.”
The police report detailing the altercation states that hotel guests complained that it sounded like "a head was being bounced off the wall." The report also states other guests claimed small children ran from Clark's hotel room yelling, "Frank is killing our sister."
Not exactly the poster child for the NOMORE.org-championing NFL.
But Clark spent his interviews at the combine making sure NFL execs and the media knew the altercation wasn’t all on him.
"I don't want to get into too much detail — the detail, I did get into with NFL teams," Clark said Friday at the NFL combine in Indianapolis. "But basically what went on, we were in the room. The person involved, you let something basically get out of hand and took something farther than it was planned. You look at a phone nowadays, these phones get a lot of people in trouble. I'm not saying I'm a womanizer or anything of that nature. I'm just saying it was a conversation between me and one of my friends, and the woman involved, she took it to another level that it shouldn't have been taken to.
"That's fine. I'm not throwing her under the bus. I'm not saying she did anything wrong. I'm just saying a lot of things that happened in that room that night could have been avoided."
The police report stated that Clark had blood on his nose and was missing skin from it when he came out to speak with police. Eyewitness details vary about the condition of the woman. One hotel guest said her friend "observed the female laying on the ground, unconscious, only wearing a t-shirt."
The victim’s brother said he came out of the bathroom to see Clark punching his sister and that he "grabbed her by the throat, picked her up off the ground, and slamming her to the ground while also landing on top of her."
Perkins Township police officer Martin Curran told MLive.com that when police entered the room, they found a broken lamp and the victim had “a large welt on the left side of her cheek, and blood near the left side of her temple area."
The victim told police the two argued, she bit his nose and he punched her in the face. Police said there was a noticeable smell of alcohol on Clark while the victim had been given a Breathalyzer and result was .000 percent.
Clark also told police he thought the victim might be pregnant.
Clark said he been involved in regular counseling and claimed that if he hadn’t made the trip to Sandusky, Ohio, during the Wolverines bye week, the entire situation could have been avoided.
"I put myself in a position where I shouldn't have been anyway," said Clark, who claimed he had bad vibes about the trip from the beginning. "When I say I put myself in a position I shouldn't have been in, it could have all been avoided if I just said, 'No, I don't want to go to Sandusky.' Or, 'No, I don't want to go to the water park.'”
Clark, who didn’t have to be at his Friday hearing in Sandusky Municipal Court, said he thanked God for his invite to the combine and cried when he received it. Now, he said, it’s up to him to try to get teams to believe he’s not a bad person.
"It's hard because you can say, 'Well, I didn't do anything.' I could plead not guilty all I want," Clark said. "But at the end of the day, when you look at domestic violence, you don't look at a 270-pound man. You go, 'Did she hit him, or did he hit her?' You don't look at it that way. You look at domestic violence, you automatically assume the man had something to do with it. That's usually how the world goes today. That's how society is set up now.
“I accept full responsibility for everything that happened. I’m going to continue to learn from it and grow from it. In the future, hopefully, one of these teams will give me a shot.”
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Graham Watson is the editor of Dr. Saturday on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email her at dr.saturday@ymail.com or follow her on Twitter! Follow @YahooDrSaturday
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From Dr. Saturday - NCAAF - Yahoo Sports - Does Frank Clark's future hinge on the NFL's change in culture?
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