Jim Brown

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

Brown was a first-team All-American in both football and lacrosse

For the MPP, see Jim Brown (politician)

James Nathaniel "Jim" Brown (born February 17, 1936) is an American professional football player and actor. He is best known for his exceptional and record-setting career as a fullback for the NFL Cleveland Browns, for which he was inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame.

Brown is also a member of the College Football Hall of Fame and the Lacrosse Hall of Fame, one of the few athletes to be a Hall of Fame member in more than one sport, and the only athlete to be inducted into more than two Halls of Fame. In 1964, Brown won the Hickok Belt as top professional athlete of the year.

Brown earned 13 letters at Manhasset High School playing football, baseball, basketball, lacrosse, and running track.

Brown was an All-American at Syracuse University in both football and lacrosse; many who saw him play lacrosse still consider him the greatest player ever in that sport.

He ended his career in the NFL in 1966 with a single-season rushing yardage record and total career rushing of 12,312 yards. He still holds the career record for yards per carry (5.2), and is the only rusher in NFL history to average over 100 yards per game for a career. He also scored 126 touchdowns over the nine seasons he played.

"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

The outspoken NFL Hall of Fame running back retired abruptly from football at the age of 29 to pursue a career as an actor (which had started with an appearance in the film "Rio Conchos" in 1964). Brown starred in the 1970 movie ...tick...tick...tick..., as well as in numerous other features. Brown acted with Fred Williamson in films such as Three the Hard Way (1974), Take a Hard Ride (1975), One Down, Two to Go (1982), and On the Edge (2002). Perhaps Brown's most memorable film role was as Robert Jefferson in The Dirty Dozen (1967). Brown also acted in The Running Man (1987), an adaptation of a Stephen King story.

In 1984, nineteen years after retiring from professional football, Brown mused about returning when it looked like either Walter Payton or Franco Harris would break his all-time rushing record. Brown disliked Harris' style of running, in which he tended to run out of bounds rather than fighting for every yard and taking the tackle. Eventually Payton broke the record, and Brown didn't make a comeback.

In 1993, Brown was hired as a color commentator for the Ultimate Fighting Championship 1. Brown also was a color commentator on many of the early UFC events, but eventually he stopped participating in those events.

Brown currently works with kids caught up in the gang scene in Los Angeles through the Amer-I-Can program, which he founded in 1988. It is a self-esteem-building organization that operates in inner cites and prisons.

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