“The Greatest” turns 80 tomorrow.
Yes, Browns Pro Football Hall of Fame running back Jim Brown, unquestionably the greatest player at any position in the game’s history, will celebrate his 80th birthday on Wednesday. He was born Feb. 17, 1936 in St. Simons Island, Ga. but grew up in the New York City area. He now lives in Los Angeles with his wife, Monique.
For those who saw Brown play – and as such also witnessed black and white TV, Hula Hoops, cars with big fins and the American debut of the Beatles – it’s hard to believe that he is now just a decade away from being 90. That can’t be, can it?
Yes, it can, and it is.
It will be 50 years ago this summer, just as the Browns were getting to open their 1966 training camp, that Brown, in London to shoot a movie, contacted team owner Art Modell to inform him that he was retiring from football to pursue an acting career.
Brown was just 30 years old and at the top of his game, with probably at least four great years of football left in him, when he hung up his cleats. In his final season in 1965, as the Browns advanced to the NFL Championship Game for the second straight year, he led the league with 1,544 yards rushing and 17 touchdowns while averaging 5.3 yards per carry. In addition, he was second on the team with 34 receptions and four TD catches.
Taken in the first round, at No. 6 overall, in the 1957 NFL Draft out of Syracuse by the Browns, Brown played nine seasons, leading the league in rushing eight times. Despite playing in 12-game schedules for the first four years of his career, and 14-game regular seasons for the final five years, giving him many less games each year than today’s players, he went over 1,500 yards three times and over 1,400 yards on four occasions. His high-water mark came in 1963 when he gained 1,863 yards and averaged 6.4 yards per attempt. He topped the NFL in rushing TDs five times.
For his career, Brown rushed for 12,312 yards and 106 TDs and averaged 5.2 yards per carry. He didn’t just break all the rushing records that existed then, but rather he obliterated them. His numbers were so off-the-charts that they appeared as if they had been amassed in some video game instead of against some of the greatest defensive players in the game’s history.
One of those opponents, Philadelphia Eagles HOF linebacker Chuck Bednarik, aptly called Brown “the closest thing to Superman that’s ever been on a football field. He was bigger, stronger and faster than everybody he was playing against, and he was virtually indestructible.”
If you don’t believe it – if those staggering numbers aren’t quite staggering enough, and it’s hard to imagine that they wouldn’t be — then do the eye test and watch the old highlights of Brown as he runs over, past and through would-be tacklers. It’s as if he were some guy playing in the back yard with his little nieces and nephews.
Along with all that, as touched on a little earlier, Brown was a great pass receiver out of the backfield. His 262 career catches, the same as former wide receiver Dave Logan of the Kardiac Kids era, put him just out of the club’s top 10 list. He topped the Browns in receptions in 1962 with 47, including a team-leading five for TDs, and was second in catches on three other occasions. He had 20 TD grabs in his career, one more than wide receiver Brian Brennan (19) and four more than tight end Milt Morin (16).
The degree of a player’s greatness can be determined only by measuring his exploits against those athletes against whom he competed. Considering all that, then, Brown was so much better than his contemporaries that it’s hard to quantify it. No one has ever dominated as much as Brown did.
I have to laugh when some so-called experts don’t list Brown as even the best running back of all-time.
Really? What game are they watching? What numbers and/or criteria are they using?
They had better clean their glasses, or put new batteries in their calculators. Perhaps they need to understand that the NFL, and its predecessors. existed for almost as long in the pre-Super Bowl era as the league has since that game was first played following the 1966 season, just after Brown retired.
The only thing about Brown that can be debated is whether his birthday, Feb. 17, has the greatest star power, especially when it comes to sports, of any day in the calendar year. And even in that respect, Brown and his birthday seems to come out on top.
Also born on Feb. 17, in 1963, was Michael Jordan, who will turn 53 tomorrow. He is considered the greatest basketball of all-time, giving the date the top player in two different major sports.
Perhaps the only date that comes close is Dec. 30, on which both LeBron James and Tiger Woods were born, along with baseball’s Sandy Koufax, considered the greatest left-handed pitcher ever.
In case you’re interested, also born on Feb. 17 were Paris Hilton, Hal Holbrook, baseball broadcasting legend Red Barber, Larry the Cable Guy and actresses Denise Richards and Rene Russo.
Also born on Dec. 30 were music icon Bo Diddley, author Rudyard Kipling, TV personalities Matt Lauer and Meredith Vieira, actress Tracey Ullman, Monkees members Davey Jones and Michael Nesmith, and TV personality and former boxer Laila Ali.
In one final note, February must be the month for top-of-the-line athletes to have been born. Babe Ruth, the greatest baseball player ever, was born Feb. 6.
