NFL
By: Greg Rector
Jim Brown has passed away at age 87. I wasn’t old enough to have seen him play live, but I have seen and heard plenty of him playing for the Cleveland Browns. Jim Brown was an absolutely magnificent football player, however, he’s well known for his career off the field as much as his football career.
There’s Jim Brown front and center at the famous ” Cleveland Summitt” when Jim Brown and others met to discuss the Muhammad Ali controversy of when the greatest boxer of our lives was taken down by his refusal to serve in the Vietnam War.
Jim Brown was born in St. Simon’s Island Georgia (February 17, 1936 – May 18, 2023) and he passed away today in Los Angeles.
Jim Brown The Football Player
Every season of his storied career Jim Brown was an AP NFL Most Valuable Player winner three seasons in a row. For eight of his nine seasons in the NFL Jim Brown led the NFL in rushing yards. His career was simply the most magnificent of any running back in NFL history. This was back in the good old days of the running backs who dominated the game of football.
His career though began at the University of Syracuse where Jim Brown was an All-American who finished 5th in the Heisman Trophy as a senior. Not only considered a great football player Jim Brown was an absolute legend in lacrosse the Premier Lacrosse League has had the Jim Brown Award for their league MVP for many years as well.
When it comes to his football career though that’s where Jim Brown shone through at a level never seen before at the NFL and hasn’t been since he retired in 1965. The football gods granted Jim Brown strength, endurance, and most importantly the innate ability to gain yardage after contact. As a rookie in 1957, he set the new standard for yardage in a game with 237 yards against the Rams.
1958 was an even more amazing season than his rookie season as he rushed for 1,527 yards in a 12-game season. Jim Brown scored 17 TDs eight more than the next best player in the league that season Raymond Berry the Baltimore Colts wide receiver. In 1963 Jim Brown set the record for rushing yardage in a season with 1,863 yards in a 14-game season. That’s still the rushing record for the Cleveland Browns and is the oldest rushing record for all 32 teams in the NFL. He was the first running back to score over 100 TDs in NFL history as well.
When he left football after the 1965 season he had rushed for 12,312 yards rushing which was the record for many years. This was long before Barry Sanders and Emmitt Smith played 16-game seasons. The career of Jim Brown was simply the most magnificent career of any running back.
He told me, “Make sure when anyone tackles you he remembers how much it hurts.” He lived by that philosophy and I always followed that advice.
Post Football Career
After ending his career with the Cleveland Browns, Jim Brown went on to star in movies. His second movie was “The Dirty Dozen” an epic war movie to say the least. It was while making that movie that Jim Brown retired from the NFL in 1966.
Jim Brown would also star in 100 Rifles where he had a love scene with Raquel Welch one of the first Hollywood movies to have such a scene and it was controversial, to say the least.
Jim Brown also started in 1988, Brown founded the Amer I Can Program. He currently works with juveniles caught up in the gang scene in Los Angeles and Cleveland through this Amer-I-Can program. It is a life-management skills organization that operates in inner cities and prisons.
Jim Brown to me goes down as my first running back that I will always list ahead of the others in terms of football. As a man off the field, he had his issues as well but those are for a different time and place. Today I honor Jim Brown the football player who was and still to me the greatest Cleveland Browns player ever. Jim Brown defined toughness as a running back for me and millions of us who saw him play football.
