Rex Bumgardner

Who was Rex Bumgardner?

Rex Keith Bumgardner was a halfback in the All-America Football Conference and National Football League for the Buffalo Bills and the Cleveland Browns in the late 1940s and early 1950s.

Bumgardner grew up in West Virginia and helped lead his high school basketball team to a state championship in 1941. He attended West Virginia University following a stint in the military during World War II, playing on the school's football team in 1946 and 1947. He then started his professional career with the Bills of the AAFC, where he remained for two seasons before joining the Browns in 1950. Cleveland won the NFL championship game that year, aided by a diving touchdown catch by Bumgardner late in the fourth quarter.

Bumgardner stayed with the Browns until 1953, when the team sold him to the Baltimore Colts. He retired after the Colts cut him and went back to West Virginia, where he worked as a sheriff and U.S. marshal for several decades. He died in 1998.