![]() ![]() He is in both the pro and college football halls of fame, and the lacrosse hall as well. By the time he graduated from Syracuse, he had accumulated 10 varsity letters - three each in football and lacrosse, and two each in basketball and track - and was an All-American in lacrosse as well as football. Olympic trials in the decathlon, the 10-event competition considered by many as the truest test of athleticism.Īlthough that finish qualified him for the Olympics, he skipped the Melbourne Games to concentrate on football, the sport offering him the most lucrative future. In 1956, even though he was only slightly familiar with some of the events, Brown finished fifth at the U.S. In track and field, they let him play with a discus, a 16-pound shot and a javelin. “Oh, my goodness,” he sputtered, “they let him play with a stick!” One spring day in the mid-1950s, Lefty James, Cornell’s football coach, took in a Syracuse-Cornell lacrosse game and was surprised to see Brown, the All-American running back, leading the Syracuse team. As a sophomore at Syracuse, he was the second-leading scorer on the basketball team, competed in track and field and continued to cultivate his love for lacrosse, which he preferred to football. At Manhasset High School on Long Island, N.Y., he also played lacrosse, baseball, basketball and water polo, and ran track. You just didn’t know if you were going to get a big collision or be grabbing at his shoelaces.”Īnd, said John Mackey - who, like Brown, played his college football at Syracuse and then went on to a 10-year career as a tight end for the Baltimore Colts and San Diego Chargers - “He told me, ‘Make sure when anyone tackles you he remembers how much it hurts.’”įootball, though, was just one of the athletic things Brown did well. He was so good at setting you up, then making you miss. ![]() “Obviously, arm tackles were not going to slow him down, but he was so elusive. “Jim Brown was a combination of speed and power like nobody who has ever played the game,” Dick LeBeau, a Hall of Fame defensive back with the Detroit Lions and later one of the longest-serving coaches in league history, told Sports Illustrated 50 years after Brown had walked away from the game. If he couldn’t run past a defender, he’d try to run over him - and often did. At 6 feet 2 and 232 pounds, he was a speedster who loved contact. More impressive than his numbers, though, was his style. He was an excellent receiver out of the backfield, catching 262 passes for 2,499 yards and 20 touchdowns, and he returned kickoffs for an additional 628 yards. No other running back has even cracked 100 yards.īrown didn’t just run from scrimmage, though. And Brown’s per-game record of 104.3 yards rushing appears as unassailable now as it did then. Today’s pros play a 17-game regular-season schedule. Those marks have long since been broken, but when Brown was playing, the NFL season was 12 games for his first four seasons, then 14 for the next five. icon as one of the NFL’s greatest players, an activist, an actor, an icon, but he also had difficulties in society and was not worshipped by all. It’s all about Frankie, Louise, Charlie and Max who love playing football.Sports Commentary: For all his accomplishments, NFL legend Jim Brown leaves a highly flawed legacy One of the things we’re excited about is Frankie’s Magic Football – a series of books written by the football legend Frank Lampard! The World Cup has arrived! And we’re getting truly in the spirit by looking at loads of cool football videos, books and stories.
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