Hall of Fame
How good was Webb City High School football player Mark Smith?
"Mark Smith is the best two-way player I've seen in high school football, and I've been in this business for (now 39) years," former Cardinals coach Jerry Kill said in 2015 when the Webb City football program was inducted into the Missouri Sports Hall of Fame. "I've never seen anyone play as hard as that kid on both sides of the ball. Nobody."
Mark, a 1992 Webb City graduate, played two years for Kill and was the sophomore quarterback on the Cardinals' first football state championship team in 1989.
"When I was in high school, I thought I was going to be a basketball player," Mark said. "We had a really good AAU basketball team, and we traveled around and played a bunch. Coach Kill came into town, and he's the one who really got me excited about playing football again.
"I thought I was going to play fullback because I liked John Riggins. But he said, 'No, we wanted you to play quarterback.' OK. So I didn't play quarterback until I was a freshman in high school."
Mark wasn't the only person Coach Kill had to win over.
"When I was a freshman, my mom (Judy) didn't want me to play varsity football," Mark said. "So, Coach Kill had to go there with his plan. He did it the right way. He brought me up (to varsity) after my first game with freshmen and started having me practice with the high schoolers and made me earn my way. He played me more on defense. I never really started as a freshman but I played quite a bit.
"It was the best year ever. I would play freshmen, then I would play jayvee, and then I would play varsity. It's like all I was doing was playing football games. I thought this is awesome. I didn't have to practice hardly at all, just play games."
After an all-state career at Webb City, Mark signed to play linebacker for the Arkansas Razorbacks, who were preparing for their first year in the Southeastern Conference. His career with the Hogs certainly had an inauspicious start.
"I got redshirted my true freshman year and ended up having surgery on my foot before I ever got started," he said. "Jack Crowe was the head coach, and we lost the first game to The Citadel, and they fired him.
"I had just had surgery on my foot, and I'm sitting there ... OK, what have I gotten myself into. They let go of Coach Crowe and I didn't know if I was going to heal up. So, I went through a few coaches. Coach Joe Kines took over as the interim, and then Danny Ford came in and was there the rest of the time."
In the fourth game of the 1993 season, Mark made his first start for the Razorbacks in their road game against Mississippi, and he became a mainstay in the lineup.
He currently ranks 16th on the Razorbacks' career list with 305 total tackles -- 167 solo, 138 assisted.
He signed as a free agent with the Kansas City Chiefs and spent the 1997 season on the practice squad.
"My son was born the next year," Mark said. "I went through training camp and got all the way to the last cuts. They were going to bring me back to the practice squad, and I was ready for a new adventure. I had a lot of wear and tear on the body. I was ready to go do something different."
Mark worked at Missouri Southern as an assistant football coach and in the kinesiology department from 1999-2003. After that he worked for Takeda Pharmaceuticals from 2003-11 and Novo Nordisk, Inc., from 2011-20.
The last three years he has worked for Dexcom as a territory business manager for CGM diabetes device.
Mark met his wife Kamber on his recruiting trip to Arkansas where she was a member of the dance team. They've been married 28 years and have two children, Tate (25) and Talyn (22).
