IMHO, the best athlete ever passed away today.

https://www.espn.com/nfl/story/_/id/37685864/all-great-running-back-jim-brown-dies-87

worcester wrote:https://www.espn.com/nfl/story/_/id/37685864/all-great-running-back-jim-brown-dies-87

He was a great athlete turned activist. And then….something happened. I soon began to think he fell on his head and lost his marbles.
Here lately, everything he fought for over the years suddenly became everything he was against.
Anyway..rest well sir.

I hesitate to consider what I'll be thinking when I'm 87.

GET OFF MY LAWN!

worcester wrote:I hesitate to consider what I'll be thinking when I'm 87.

GET OFF MY LAWN!

Right! We should be so lucky! :>)

Greatest football player ever, I believe.

Certainly in the conversation for greatest athlete.

At the age of eight, he moved to Manhasset, New York, on Long Island, where his mother worked as a domestic. It was at Manhasset High School that he became a football star and athletic legend.

Brown averaged a then-Long Island record 38 points per game for his basketball team. That record was later broken by future Boston Red Sox star Carl Yastrzemski of Bridgehampton.

I remember reading about his past football and lacross abilities in NEWSDAY, Long Island's newspapter as I grew older and he was playing football for Syracuse. He was a legend in Manhasset and Nassau County.

112288

Jim Brown is, still to this day, #11 in NFL career rushing yards.  He played only 9 seasons, 1957-1965, and is still #11.  Imagine that.  He was an All-Pro every year he played, including his rookie season.

He ran for 12, 312 yards.  He did this in only 118 games because the most number of games in any season he played in was 14 and not the 16 they play now, and he played in every game in every season he played.  That's a 104 yards/game average.  If the NFL played 16 games/season then like they do now Jim Brown would have played in 144 games.  At 104 yards per game that's a total of 14,976 yards, and good for #5; ahead of Adrian Peterson and behind #4 Barry Sanders (15,269, 153 games, 99.8 yards/game).  For comparison the #1 all-time NFL rusher, Emmitt Smith, ran for 18,355 yards but he did that in 226 games.  That's 81 yards/game.  I don't like to compare eras but the players were MUCH bigger in Emmitt's time, even bigger now, the quality of the equipment was much better and the state of sports injury treatment and surgeries were much better too.  We have seen that in basketball as well.  34 year old Danilo Gallinari suffers an ACL tear in August 2022 and is expected to be back for the 2023-2024 season.  Go back 25 years, which is the amount of time between Jim Brown's retirement from football and Emmitt Smith's rookie season, to 1997 and try to imagine a professional basketball player coming back from an ACL surgery.  Ever, much less in just one year when they're already almost at retirement age anyway.


NFL champion (1964)
3× NFL Most Valuable Player (1957, 1958, 1965)
NFL Rookie of the Year (1957)
8× First-team All-Pro (1957–1961, 1963–1965)
Second-team All-Pro (1962)
9× Pro Bowl (1957–1965)
8× NFL rushing yards leader (1957–1961, 1963–1965)
5× NFL rushing touchdowns leader (1957–1959, 1963, 1965)
NFL scoring leader (1958)
NFL 1960s All-Decade Team
NFL 50th Anniversary All-Time Team
NFL 75th Anniversary All-Time Team
NFL 100th Anniversary All-Time Team
Bert Bell Award (1963)
Cleveland Browns Ring of Honor
Cleveland Browns No. 32 retired
Unanimous All-American (1956)
Third-team All-American (1955)
Syracuse Orange No. 44 retired
CFB150 Greatest college football player ever (2020)
Career NFL statistics
Rushing yards: 12,312
Rushing average: 5.2
Rushing touchdowns: 106
Receptions: 262
Receiving yards: 2,499
Receiving touchdowns: 20

Richard Pryor credited Jim Brown for saving his life.  Many others can make that claim too because that's what Jim Brown dedicated his post-football life to doing.




And how many of us have watched (and re-watched, and re-re-watched) The Dirty Dozen just to see Jim Brown run just one more time?




Sleep well, sir, you've lived a life worth living.


Bob


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Well said, Bob. Well said.