Any discussion of the greatest player in NFL history is incomplete without Jim Brown’s name included.
Brown, whose name is still synonymous with greatness at the running back position more than 50 years after his last NFL game, died Thursday at his home in Los Angeles, his wife. he told the Associated Press and the Cleveland Browns confirmed. He was 87 years old.
Brown had a nearly flawless NFL career. He played nine seasons with the Cleveland Browns and led the league in hitting eight times. He was a Pro Bowler all nine seasons and a first-team All-Pro eight times. Before abruptly retiring in 1966, he had the most rushing yards and touchdowns in NFL history. He was inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 1971.
Brown’s legacy included the advancement of civil rights
Brown was more than a football player. He was a civil rights activist, organizing the famous “Ali Summit” of 1967 which included Muhammad Ali, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and Bill Russell. said the New York Times“the moment itself would be remembered as the first and last time so many African-American athletes at this level came together to support a controversial cause.”
Brown founded the Black Economic Union in the 1960s as a way to help African-American-owned businesses. Brown also founded the Amer-I-Can Foundation in the 1980s in an attempt to stop gang violence in Southern California. He often spoke on a wide range of social issues, including education reform, and continued to speak well into his 80s. Brown criticized black athletes like Michael Jordan and Tiger Woods for not doing more to enact social change.
Brown’s legacy went far beyond football. (Photo by Nick Cammett/Diamond Images/Getty Images)
“They are the beneficiaries of our struggle,” Brown said of modern black athletes 2002 Sports Illustrated interview. “But they don’t recognize it because they’re inundated with agents, managers, lawyers and [team] owners who don’t want them to do anything but play ball and hopefully stay out of trouble and just be physical freaks of the wild without [awareness] of the power of decision”.
Brown was involved in politics into his 80s. He campaigned for Barack Obama, but later expressed disappointment with Obama’s time in office. Brown offered public support for Donald Trump after his 2016 presidential election, saying Trump “really talks about helping black people.”
“When he went through what he went through to become president, he got my admiration,” Brown he told CNN. “No one gave him a chance.”
Like many things about Brown, his political views were complicated. Brown, who was a key figure in the civil rights movement in the 1960s, spoke out against Colin Kaepernick and others kneeling during the national anthem to draw attention to social injustice.
“He’s always had this strain of conservatism in his politics that black people don’t get ahead through the politics of protest, but through the politics of making as much money as possible and trying to get out of the capitalist system as much as they can for the purpose of building economic self-sufficiency,” author Dave Zirin, who wrote a biography of Brown in 2018, he told NPR. “And protest is an impediment to that in Jim Brown’s mind. And that’s always been his policy.”
Movie star career
Brown was an actor, too. His sudden retirement was after a movie.
In 1966, Brown was filming “The Dirty Dozen” in London, and there were production delays due to bad weather. When Browns owner Art Modell threatened to suspend Brown if he showed up late to training camp, Brown informed Modell that he was retiring at age 30.
In Brown’s final NFL season, he rushed for 1,544 yards and 17 touchdowns, leading the league in both categories. However, he was content to leave in his prime. Brown appeared in 55 films or TV shows as an actor, according to his IMDB page.
The most notable moment of Brown’s acting career may have come in the 1969 film “100 Rifles,” when he and Raquel Welch had what is cited as the film’s first interracial love scene. conventional film
Brown and issues of violence against women
Brown was also a starter due to off-field issues. He had a number of legal issues, most of which involved allegations of violence against women. According to the Los Angeles Times, Brown was charged in five cases of violence against women, including one in which he was accused of throwing a woman from a second-floor balcony. Those charges were dropped when the woman refused to name Brown as her attacker.
Brown was not convicted in any of these cases until he was sentenced to six months in prison for smashing his wife’s windshield in 1999.
Superior athlete from lacrosse to soccer
Brown began his rise to fame as a standout athlete at Syracuse. Not only was he an All-American runner, he also starred in basketball, lacrosse and track. He averaged 13.1 points in two seasons with the Syracuse basketball team. He was so good at lacrosse, he’s in the National Lacrosse Hall of Fame and some argue he’s one of the greatest lacrosse players ever.
Cleveland took Brown with the sixth pick in the 1957 NFL Draft. He was an immediate star, leading the NFL in rushing yards and touchdowns as a rookie, winning the Associated Press Most Outstanding Player award in his first year . He also won MVP (renamed MVP in 1961) in 1958. Brown also won MVP in his final NFL season, 1965.
Brown was bigger than almost any running back before him, with good speed to match. At 6-foot-2, 232 pounds, he was almost as big as some of the best offensive linemen of his era, with more power and speed than defenders who would try to bring him down. He finished his career with 5.2 yards per carry. Among retired players, only Marion Motley’s 5.7 yards per carry average is better. Brown’s 12,312 rushing yards was the NFL record until Walter Payton broke it in 1984. Brown owned the NFL record with 126 total touchdowns until 1994, when Jerry Rice scored his 127th touchdown .
Brown still holds some records that may never fall. He has eight career titles. No other player in NFL history has more than four. He rushed for 104.3 yards per game and is the only player in NFL history to average over 100.
NFL records, and football in general, are only part of Brown’s legacy. More than 50 years after his sudden retirement, we have yet to see a runner like him.
