Jim Brown

Jim Brown in November 2007
No. 32
Running back / Fullback
Personal information
Date of birth: (1936-02-17) February 17, 1936 (age 77)
Place of birth: St. Simons, Georgia
Height: 6 ft 2 in (1.88 m) Weight: 232 lb (105 kg)
Career information
High school: Manhasset High School
College: Syracuse
NFL Draft: 1957 / Round: 1 / Pick: 6
Debuted in 1957 for the Cleveland Browns
Last played in 1965 for the Cleveland Browns
Career history
Cleveland Browns (1957–1965)
Career highlights and awards
NFL champion (1964)[1] Rated No. 2 NFL Player of all-time by NFL.com as of 2009 season Pro Football Hall of Fame (1971) 9× Pro Bowl selection (1957, 1958, 1959, 1960, 1961, 1962, 1963, 1964, 1965) 8× First-Team All-Pro selection (1957, 1958, 1959, 1960, 1961, 1963, 1964, 1965) Second-Team All-Pro selection (1962) 8× NFL Rushing champion (1957, 1958, 1959, 1960, 1961, 1963, 1964, 1965) NFL 75th Anniversary All-Time Team NFL 1960s All-Decade Team 3× NFL MVP (1957, 1958, 1965) 3× UPI NFL MVP (1958, 1963, 1965) 3× Pro Bowl MVP (1961, 1962, 1965) Lacrosse Hall of Fame
Career NFL statistics as of 1965
Rushing yards 12,312 Rushing average 5.2 Rushing TDs 106 Receptions 262 Receiving yards 2,499 Receiving TDs 20 Stats at NFL.com
Pro Football Hall of Fame
College Football Hall of Fame

James Nathaniel "Jim" Brown (born February 17, 1936) is an American former professional football player and actor. He is best known for his exceptional and record-setting nine-year career as a running back for the NFL Cleveland Browns from 1957 to 1965. In 2002, he was named by Sporting News as the greatest professional football player ever.^[2] He is widely considered to be one of the greatest professional athletes the U.S. has ever produced.^[3]

Early life [edit]

James Nathaniel Brown was born to Theresa (a housekeeper) and Swinton Brown (a professional boxer).^[4]

At Manhasset Secondary School, Brown earned 13 letters playing football, lacrosse, baseball, basketball and running track.^[5] According to the New York Times:

Mr. Brown credits his self-reliance to having grown up on St. Simons's island, an all-black community off the coast of Georgia where he was raised by his grandmother and where racism did not affect him directly. At the age of 8 he moved to Manhasset, N.Y., where his mother worked as a domestic. It was at Manhasset High School that he became a football star and athletic legend.^[5]

He 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.^[6]

College sports career [edit]

As a sophomore at Syracuse University, Brown was the second leading rusher on the team. As a junior, he rushed for 666 yards (5.2 per carry). In his senior year, Brown was a unanimous first-team All-American. He finished 5th in the Heisman Trophy voting, and set school records for highest rush average (6.2) and most rushing touchdowns (6). He ran for 986 yards—third most in the country despite Syracuse playing only eight games—and scored 14 touchdowns. In the regular-season finale, a 61–7 rout of Colgate, he rushed for 197 yards, scored six touchdowns and kicked seven extra points for 43 points (another school record). Then in the Cotton Bowl, he rushed for 132 yards, scored three touchdowns and kicked three extra points. But a blocked extra point after Syracuse's third touchdown was the difference as TCU won 28–27.^[7]

Brown is a member of The Pigskin Club of Washington, D.C. National Intercollegiate All-American Football Players Honor Roll.^{[citation needed]}

Perhaps more impressive was his success as a multi-sport athlete. In addition to his football accomplishments, he excelled in basketball, track, and especially lacrosse. As a sophomore, he was the second leading scorer for the basketball team (15 ppg), and earned a letter on the track team. His junior year, he averaged 11.3 points in basketball, and was named a second-team All-American in lacrosse. His senior year, he was named a first-team All-American in lacrosse (43 goals in 10 games to rank second in scoring nationally).^[8]

Professional football career [edit]

Brown was taken in the first round of the 1956 draft by the Cleveland Browns.^[9] He departed as the NFL record holder for both single-season (1,863 in 1963) and career rushing (12,312 yards), as well as the all-time leader in rushing touchdowns (106), total touchdowns (126), and all-purpose yards (15,549). He was the first player ever to reach the 100-rushing-touchdowns milestone, and only a few others have done so since, despite the league's expansion to a 16-game season in 1978 (Brown's first four seasons were only 12 games, and his last five were 14 games). Brown's record of scoring 100 touchdowns in only 93 games stood until LaDainian Tomlinson did it in 89 games during the 2006 season. Brown holds the record for total seasons leading the NFL in all-purpose yards (5: 1958–1961, 1964), and is the only rusher in NFL history to average over 100 yards per game for a career. Brown was also a superb receiver out of the backfield, catching 262 passes for 2,499 yards and 20 touchdowns. Every season he played, Brown was voted into the Pro Bowl, and he left the league in style by scoring three touchdowns in his final Pro Bowl game. Perhaps the most amazing feat is that Jim Brown accomplished these records despite never playing past 29 years of age. Brown's 6 games with at least 4 touchdowns remains an NFL record. LaDainian Tomlinson and Marshall Faulk both have five games with 4 touchdowns.

Brown led the league in rushing a record eight times.

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.

—John Mackey, 1999

Brown's 1,863 rushing yards in the 1963 season remain a Cleveland franchise record. It is currently the oldest franchise record for rushing yards out of all 32 NFL teams. While others have compiled more prodigious statistics, when viewing Brown's standing in the game his style of running must be considered along with statistical measures. He was very difficult to tackle (shown by his leading 5.2 yards per carry), often requiring more than one person to bring him down.^[10]

Brown retired after eight seasons as opposed to the all time rushing leader Emmit Smith's fourteen and remains the National Football league's ninth all-time leading rusher. Brown is still the Cleveland Browns all-time leading rusher.

Acting career [edit]

Brown began an acting career before the 1964 season, playing a Buffalo Soldier in a western action film called Rio Conchos.^[11] The film premiered at Cleveland's Hippodrome theater on October 23, with Brown and many of his teammates in attendance. The reaction was lukewarm. Brown, one reviewer said, was a serviceable actor, but the movie's overcooked plotting and implausibility amounted to "a vigorous melodrama for the unsqueamish."^[12]

In early 1966 Brown, who had grown debonair and aloof as he rocketed to fame, was shooting for his second film in London.^[13] The Dirty Dozen cast Brown as Robert Jefferson, a convict sent to France during World War II to assassinate German officers meeting at a castle near Rennes in Brittany before the D-Day invasion. Production delays due to bad weather meant he would miss at least the first part of training camp on the campus of Hiram College, which annoyed Modell, who threatened to fine Brown $1,500 for every week of camp he missed.^[14] Brown, who had previously said that 1966 would be his last season, announced his retirement instead.^[11] At the end of his nine-year career, Brown held records for most rushing yards in a game, a season and a career. He also owned the record for all-purpose yards in a career and best average per carry for a running back at 5.22 yards, a mark that still stands.^[15]

Jim Brown at an autograph signing in 2004.

Brown went on to play a villain in a 1967 episode of I Spy called "Cops and Robbers", and appeared in the 1970 movie ...tick...tick...tick..., as well as in numerous other features. Biographer Mike Freeman credits Brown with becoming “the first black action star”, thanks to roles like the Marine captain he portrayed in the hit 1968 film Ice Station Zebra.^[16]

In 1969, Brown starred in 100 Rifles with Burt Reynolds and Raquel Welch. The film was one of the first to feature an interracial love scene. Raquel Welch reflects on the scene in Spike Lee's Jim Brown: All-American. Brown acted with Fred Williamson in films such as 1972's Black Gunn, 1974's Three the Hard Way, 1975's Take a Hard Ride, 1982's One Down, Two to Go, 1996's Original Gangstas and 2002's On the Edge. He also guest-starred in a handful of television episodes of various programs with Williamson. In 1998, he provided the voice of Butch Meathook in Small Soldiers. Perhaps Brown's most memorable roles were as Robert Jefferson in The Dirty Dozen, and in Keenen Ivory Wayans' 1988 comedy I'm Gonna Git You Sucka. Brown also acted in 1987's The Running Man, an adaptation of a Stephen King story, as Fireball. He played a coach in Any Given Sunday and also appeared in Sucker Free City and Mars Attacks!. Brown appeared in some TV shows including Knight Rider in the season 3 premiere episode Knight of the Drones. Brown appeared alongside football hero Joe Namath on The A-Team episode "Quarterback Sneak".^[17]

Personal life [edit]

According to a DNA analysis, Brown is descended from ancestors who lived in what is the present day nation of Nigeria. ^[18]

Filmography [edit]

Other post-football activities [edit]

Brown served as a color analyst on NFL telecasts for CBS in 1977–78.

In 1983, seventeen years after retiring from professional football, Brown mused about coming out of retirement to play for the Los Angeles Raiders when it appeared that Pittsburgh Steelers running back Franco Harris would break his all-time rushing record. Brown disliked Harris' style of running, criticizing the Steeler running back's tendency to run out of bounds, a marked contrast to Brown's approach of fighting for every yard and taking on the oncoming tackler. Eventually, Walter Payton of the Chicago Bears broke the record on October 7, 1984, with Brown having ended thoughts of a comeback. Harris himself, who retired after the 1984 season after playing eight games with the Seattle Seahawks, fell short of Brown's mark. Another Steeler running back, Jerome Bettis (whose running style more resembled Brown's), would later surpass Brown.

Brown's autobiography was published in 1989 by Zebra Books. It was titled Out of Bounds and was co-written with Steve Delsohn. He was a subject of the book Jim: The Author's Self-Centered Memoir of the Great Jim Brown, by James Toback.

In 1993, Brown was hired as a color commentator for the Ultimate Fighting Championship, a role he occupied for the first six pay-per-view events.

In 1988 Brown founded the Amer-I-Can Program. He currently works with kids caught up in the gang scene in Los Angeles and Cleveland through this Amer-I-Can program.^[19] It is a life management skills organization that operates in inner cities and prisons.

Brown was convicted of misdemeanor vandalism in 1999 for damaging the automobile of his wife, Monique. Rather than participate in domestic violence counseling, community service, and probation, Brown chose instead to serve several months in jail, because, he said, "The conditions of my sentence were ridiculous.”^[20][21]

In 2002, film director Spike Lee released the film Jim Brown: All-American; a retrospective on Brown's professional career and personal life.

In 2008, Brown initiated a lawsuit against Sony and EA Sports for using his likeness in the Madden NFL video game series. He claimed that he "never signed away any rights that would allow his likeness to be used".^[22]

As of 2008, Brown was serving as an Executive Advisor to the Cleveland Browns, assisting to build relationships with the team's players and to further enhance the NFL’s wide range of sponsored programs through the team's player programs department.^[23]

Football accolades [edit]

Brown's memorable professional career led to his induction into the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 1971, while The Sporting News selected him as the greatest football player of all time. Brown's football talents at Syracuse garnered him a berth in the College Football Hall of Fame. Brown also earned a spot in the Lacrosse Hall of Fame, giving him a rare triple crown of sorts as well as being one of the few athletes to be a Hall of Fame member in more than one sport.

Brown’s claim to the title of greatest running back of all time is supported by statistics. In 118 career games, Brown averaged 104.3 yards per game and 5.2 yards per carry. None of the NFL’s career rushing leaders come close to these spectacular totals. For example, Walter Payton averaged only 88 yards per game during his career with a 4.4 yards-per-carry average. Emmitt Smith averaged only 81.2 yards per game with a 4.2 yards-per-carry average.^[24] And Brown has famously said, on the subject: "When running backs get in a room together, they don't argue about who is the best".

The only top ten all-time rusher who even approaches Brown’s totals, Barry Sanders, posted a career average of 99.8 yards per game and 5.0 yards per carry. However, Barry Sanders’ father, William, was frequently quoted as saying that Jim Brown was “the best I’ve ever seen.”^[25]

On November 4, 2010, Brown was chosen by NFL Network's NFL Films production The Top 100: NFL's Greatest Players as the second greatest player in NFL history.

See also [edit]

• Most consecutive starts by a fullback

Further reading [edit]

• Jim Brown; Myron Cope (1964). Off My Chest. Doubleday. p. 230.  (autobiography)
• Jim Brown; Steve Delsohn (1989). Out of Bounds. Zebra Books. p. 230.  (autobiography)
• Freeman, Mike (2006). Jim Brown: The Fierce Life of an American Hero. Harper Collins World. p. 230. 
• Toback, James (1971, 2009). Jim: The Author's Self-Centered Memoir on the Great Jim Brown. DOUBLEDAY and COMPANY, INC. (1971) & Rat Press (Mar 3, 2009). p. 230.  (autobiography)
• In 2002, film director Spike Lee released the film Jim Brown: All-American; a retrospective on Brown's professional career and personal life.

References [edit]

Bibliography [edit]

External links [edit]

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Jim Brown

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Jim Brown

• Jim Brown at the Internet Movie Database
• Jim Brown at AllRovi
• OrangeHoops Profile on Jim Brown
• Jim Brown at Yahoo movies
• National Lacrosse Hall of Fame profile