Sitting out an entire season

I think Bo Jackson was told by the Bucs to give up baseball, or he would not be allowed to play for them. He didn't want to give up baseball, and the rest is history.

Correct me if I'm wrong.

I think that was part of it, however no one wanted to play for Tampa back then. The were so bad it was legendary.

Jim Brown is probably the best pure football player I ever saw play the game. And the first football game I ever saw was in 1948. In the NFL he averaged over 100 rushing yards per game FOR HIS CAREER. And that was done against defenses that often had 5 defensive linemen and two linebackers. the 4-3 defense was introduced after he got into the league and was not the prevalent defense until about the final two or three years of his career.

Jim Brown is widely considered to be the best lacrosse player ever by people who follow lacrosse and know something about the game. I don't follow lacrosse and don't pretend to know anything about it. I'm just telling you what other people say.

Jim Brown was a starter on the Syracuse varsity basketball team for one of the years that he was at Syracuse.

Jim Brown was offered a bonus to sign a minor league baseball contract with the NY Yankees and the Detroit Tigers. He turned both of them down and said that baseball was only a game and not a sport in his mind.

The reason I recite all of this for you is to suggest that Jim Brown might have some credentials as "the best athlete of all time" - even though that argument will never be settled...

i agree and think he should be up there just as jim thorpe should be 2 with bo jackson and i agree that this discussion could never really have a definitive selection. i wasn't alive to fully appreciate what brown and thorpe did and that has something to do with my opinion of jackson being the top overall athlete. if anything he's the greatest athlete of my lifetime thus far.

skinsfan:

I had not thought of Jim Thorpe with regard to this discussion, Now that you bring up his name, he too has to be "in the mix".

Good call!

Wow, Sports. Your first game was in 1948? Was it the skins?

No, it was a college football game on Thanksgiving day between Penn and Cornell. Penn had this linebacker named Bednarik...

You may have heard of him because of his NFL career...

I was 5 years old at the time and froze my butt off that day because it was colder than a well digger's b*lls...

that kinda sucks that there r so few courses of action to play in the nfl especially since that's the only way most of the guys coming out of college can make a living.

Awesome, Sports. When did you get into the skins?

My wife moved to DC in 1969 because she had a job in this area. We spent a year "apart" and seeing each other on weekends because I was finishing up grad school. I moved here in 1970 and have been here ever since.

Obviously, I am a sports fan and if you live here and you are into NFL football, it is pretty obviousl where your interests and attention and focus will be.

Sports: I also moved to DC in 1969. (I was born three months earlier in NYC!) I agree: if you like football, and you're in the DC area, it's all skins. I have found that skins fans are very unlikely to switch alligiance when they move (but maybe this is true with most NFL teams). I've grown to like the Knicks, to tolerate the Rangers and Mets, but I can not stand the sight of giants or jets paraphenalia, much less the teams themselves.

Anyway, your expertise is much appreciated, even if you do tend to rain on our overly optimistic, pie-in-the-sky parade-like scenarios! Cheers.