RIP Jim Brown

[OrangeXtreme]

 

[OrlandoCuse]

RIP to the OG GOAT

 

[gmoney44]

First my old man and now Jim Brown. All my Supermen are dead. I’ve officially come to terms that I too will die someday.

 

[ORANGE OATH]

I remember Frank Ryan #13 would handoff the ball to JB and I’d watch JB break tackle after tackle.
I’d laugh because once tackled he would walk back to the huddle like both feet hurt.
Ryan would then give the ball to JB and he’d ramble for another 6,7 or more yards.
All in all the best I have ever seen in my life.
RIP, The Greatest Athlete I have had the privilege & Pleasure to see.

 

[OrangeDW]

First my old man and now Jim Brown. All my Supermen are dead. I’ve officially come to terms that I too will die someday.

Sorry for your loss.

 

[gmoney44]

Sorry for your loss.

My old man died 19 years ago so nothing recent but I appreciate it.

 

[BVille44]

I will never forget being on the field for the #44 ceremony with Jim Brown, Floyd Little, Ernie Davis’ mother, and Rob Konrad. November 12, 2005

 

[GooseMutt]

Oh no! I’m broken

Molten you dislike? Screw you

 

[DoctorBombay]

I will never forget being on the field for the #44 ceremony with Jim Brown, Floyd Little, Ernie Davis’ mother, and Rob Konrad. November 12, 2005

View attachment 227962

All due respect to "The Prototype", and not to derail the thread, but retiring #44 is one of the most misbegotten, misguided, and ultimate fails in the history of sports.
Don't understand the logic or rationale, and never will. Just...stupid.

 

[Ozone!]

 

[CuseLegacy]

 

[br801]

Probably one of the best athletes ever, football, lacrosse, basketball and track. A good actor - loved the Dirty Dozen! Not mentioned much is that he was in ROTC during his time at SU and graduated as a second lieutenant. He completed his military career in the army reserves for 4 years ending during his NFL career as a captain. His relationship with women was a horrible issue, fraught with charges of neglect, domestic abuse and violence throughout much of his life. He’s left an unbelievable, absolutely remarkable legacy in sports but quite an enigmatic, extremely troubled one in his personal life.

Excellent summary of an iconic life. RIP, Jim.

 

[rrlbees]

 

[rrlbees]

 

[Orangedontrhyme]

Memories of Jim Brown

I am a grad SU class of 64 and my father a grad SU class of 26 (Dad knew Vic Hanson). I saw my first SU football game at age 6 in 1948 in Archbold, and could not see over the heads and shoulders of the people sitting in front of me.

In the fall of 1954, in an early football game in Archbold, a number 44 comes into the game as a third stringer and proceeds to do some fine running. After seeing this guy run a few plays, my father said that this 44 is really good and should be starting. This was our first look at Jim Brown.

It's November 17, 1956, SU vs Colgate, and Dad and I are privileged to be in attendance at Archbold to see Jim Brown score 43 points, then an NCAA record, composed of six touchdowns and seven extra points. Brown kicked the extra points on the team, and played good defense. I have the program and can tell the weather; the day was not rainy because the program is wrinkle-free.

In early 1962, I am a soph living on Sadler 2. Back then, the athletes lived in the regular dorms with the rest of us, although they ate high cuisine in Slocum. In the east wing were top players who were on our #1 59 team, including next to my room Dick Easterly and Bob Stem, across the hall Pete Brokaw and John Brown, and in room 264, first room on the right in the west wing, John Mackey and the great Ernie Davis. (If the students living in 264 today only knew).

This one morning, the body of a woman was found in Thornden Park, and the campus was buzzing and nervous. I come back to Sadler 2 from class, climb the stairwell opening to the Sadler 2 lounge, enter, and spot a sinister looking stranger sitting there. I go to my room and think I should call the campus cops because maybe this is the crime perpetrator, when I decide to look at the guy again, which I did. Thank goodness I did not call the cops, because the sinister looking stranger was Jim Brown. He was in town and was looking to visit Ernie. Well neither Ernie (or John) showed, and in the meanwhile I got several floor mates to the lounge (I knocked on some doors and said "Come see who's in our lounge, you won't believe it.). We spent about an hour with Jim and he discussed what he was doing in the off-season, including working for Pepsi, in promotions and I think doing a radio show on sports.

Jim Brown was a great athlete. Imagine him running against skinny, preppy (back then) lacrosse players, like a bowling ball through the pins. The boxing industry tried to get him into a professional boxing career. He refused, explaining that he did not want to hurt people. Ironic.

Hope you found this interesting. I'll try to scan a few informative pages from the 1956 Colgate program and pass them through.

 

[IthacaMatt]

Jim Brown, all-time NFL great and social activist, dead at 87

The NFL legend, actor and social activist shattered records during a relatively short NFL career, leading the Cleveland Browns to their last championship in 1964.

apnews.com

A complicated man, much like Muhammed Ali or Kareem Jabbar.
An all-time great athlete. A symbol and a legend for some; a symbol and a villain for others.

 

[IthacaMatt]

One of the greatest football players to ever walk the earth. RIP.

By the time I was watching his games, he was with the Browns, in around '63 or '64.
What a player.

He was like Lawrence Taylor as a running back, just overpowering people, and forcing his will on them, much like Michael Jordan could do years later in hoops.

 

[SWC75]

Jim Brown was my first real hero, (after Errol Flynn and George Reeves died - but they were just actors playing roles). The best player in the only sport that mattered to me as a kid was a guy who had played for Syracuse! Somehow it made perfect sense to my little brain. As an adult I realized what an amazing circumstance that was. Jim was the football GOAT at a time when running the football still mattered. Now it's Brady because it's all about passing. Jim was football's Babe Ruth, Wilt Chamberlain or Wayne Gretzky. He brought the game's numbers to a level it had never seen before. Since then, other players have put up Jim Brown numbers but they didn't do it for 9 years in a row - and then quit at the top of his game. If you take the averages of all the great running backs - yards per carry and per game, % of carries that produced touchdowns, etc. - Jim Brown is still #1 across the board. I remember someone arguing with me that Walter Payton was better because he was a better pass receiver. I told him that we were talking about running the ball. He insisted that catching the ball was part of being a running back too. These days he's certainly correct. But I looked up Jim's pass catching numbers and Walter's. Jim caught 262 balls in 118 games for an average of 9.5 yards per catch. Walter caught 492 in 190 games for an average of 9.2. Jim caught 20 TD passes, Walter just 15. Case closed.

On top of that, he was a dominant player in any sport he tired. He scored 38 points a game as a high school basketball player. He may have been the greatest lacrosse player ever. Roy Simmons SR., SU's boxing coach when we had a team, said he could have turned Jim into the heavyweight champion. Jim had an opportunity to compete in the decathlon in the Olympics but turned it down to play football for SU, (That was the Year the Olympics was in Melbourne, where the seasons are reversed, so they held them in November: Milt Campbell an Indiana football player who later briefly backed up Jim in Cleveland won it that year).

Being a fan of Jim off the field has been harder than being a fan of his on the field. My parents asked me it fit matter to me that my hero was ...brown? I said know and wondered why anyone would ask. They said "Good". I admired his promotion of black capitalism. Why should blacks wait for whites to do nice things for them? I admire his efforts to get kids and inmates out of gangs. I admire his efforts to get other athletes involved in civil rights issue. On the flip side, there are his difficult relations with women, although he was never convicted of any crime. His last marriage appears to have been a success after a rocky start. But there's an awful lot of smoke there to be no fire. Then there was his bizarre support of Donald Trump after being a Barack Obama supporter. I guess it made sense to him. He's been a very problematic hero and you can't ignore either side of the ledger. I could never completely give up on my hero.

It became obvious in recent years that we were going to lose Jim in the near future. He was obviously hobbled and weakened by age, (a car crash didn't help). He no longer appeared at events except on videos where he seemed barely able to talk and do as little as possible. His death was likely a relief to his loved ones and should be to us, too. The first and last of the famous 44's.

 

[SWC75]

 

[IthacaMatt]

Memories of Jim Brown

I am a grad SU class of 64 and my father a grad SU class of 26 (Dad knew Vic Hanson). I saw my first SU football game at age 6 in 1948 in Archbold, and could not see over the heads and shoulders of the people sitting in front of me.

In the fall of 1954, in an early football game in Archbold, a number 44 comes into the game as a third stringer and proceeds to do some fine running. After seeing this guy run a few plays, my father said that this 44 is really good and should be starting. This was our first look at Jim Brown.

It's November 17, 1956, SU vs Colgate, and Dad and I are privileged to be in attendance at Archbold to see Jim Brown score 43 points, then an NCAA record, composed of six touchdowns and seven extra points. Brown kicked the extra points on the team, and played good defense. I have the program and can tell the weather; the day was not rainy because the program is wrinkle-free.

In early 1962, I am a soph living on Sadler 2. Back then, the athletes lived in the regular dorms with the rest of us, although they ate high cuisine in Slocum. In the east wing were top players who were on our #1 59 team, including next to my room Dick Easterly and Bob Stem, across the hall Pete Brokaw and John Brown, and in room 264, first room on the right in the west wing, John Mackey and the great Ernie Davis. (If the students living in 264 today only knew).

This one morning, the body of a woman was found in Thornden Park, and the campus was buzzing and nervous. I come back to Sadler 2 from class, climb the stairwell opening to the Sadler 2 lounge, enter, and spot a sinister looking stranger sitting there. I go to my room and think I should call the campus cops because maybe this is the crime perpetrator, when I decide to look at the guy again, which I did. Thank goodness I did not call the cops, because the sinister looking stranger was Jim Brown. He was in town and was looking to visit Ernie. Well neither Ernie (or John) showed, and in the meanwhile I got several floor mates to the lounge (I knocked on some doors and said "Come see who's in our lounge, you won't believe it.). We spent about an hour with Jim and he discussed what he was doing in the off-season, including working for Pepsi, in promotions and I think doing a radio show on sports.

Jim Brown was a great athlete. Imagine him running against skinny, preppy (back then) lacrosse players, like a bowling ball through the pins. The boxing industry tried to get him into a professional boxing career. He refused, explaining that he did not want to hurt people. Ironic.

Hope you found this interesting. I'll try to scan a few informative pages from the 1956 Colgate program and pass them through.

He was like the LeBron of lacrosse.

 

[IthacaMatt]

Memories of Jim Brown

I am a grad SU class of 64 and my father a grad SU class of 26 (Dad knew Vic Hanson). I saw my first SU football game at age 6 in 1948 in Archbold, and could not see over the heads and shoulders of the people sitting in front of me.

In the fall of 1954, in an early football game in Archbold, a number 44 comes into the game as a third stringer and proceeds to do some fine running. After seeing this guy run a few plays, my father said that this 44 is really good and should be starting. This was our first look at Jim Brown.

It's November 17, 1956, SU vs Colgate, and Dad and I are privileged to be in attendance at Archbold to see Jim Brown score 43 points, then an NCAA record, composed of six touchdowns and seven extra points. Brown kicked the extra points on the team, and played good defense. I have the program and can tell the weather; the day was not rainy because the program is wrinkle-free.

In early 1962, I am a soph living on Sadler 2. Back then, the athletes lived in the regular dorms with the rest of us, although they ate high cuisine in Slocum. In the east wing were top players who were on our #1 59 team, including next to my room Dick Easterly and Bob Stem, across the hall Pete Brokaw and John Brown, and in room 264, first room on the right in the west wing, John Mackey and the great Ernie Davis. (If the students living in 264 today only knew).

This one morning, the body of a woman was found in Thornden Park, and the campus was buzzing and nervous. I come back to Sadler 2 from class, climb the stairwell opening to the Sadler 2 lounge, enter, and spot a sinister looking stranger sitting there. I go to my room and think I should call the campus cops because maybe this is the crime perpetrator, when I decide to look at the guy again, which I did. Thank goodness I did not call the cops, because the sinister looking stranger was Jim Brown. He was in town and was looking to visit Ernie. Well neither Ernie (or John) showed, and in the meanwhile I got several floor mates to the lounge (I knocked on some doors and said "Come see who's in our lounge, you won't believe it.). We spent about an hour with Jim and he discussed what he was doing in the off-season, including working for Pepsi, in promotions and I think doing a radio show on sports.

Jim Brown was a great athlete. Imagine him running against skinny, preppy (back then) lacrosse players, like a bowling ball through the pins. The boxing industry tried to get him into a professional boxing career. He refused, explaining that he did not want to hurt people. Ironic.

Hope you found this interesting. I'll try to scan a few informative pages from the 1956 Colgate program and pass them through.

Great post! Thank you for sharing the memories.

 

[007]

Molten you dislike? Screw you

When you start posting "screw you" in response to YOUR own posts, it's probably time to put yourself on ignore to yourself.

 

[SWC75]

 

[IthacaMatt]

He delivered a hit to the defender like Larry Csonka later did. And he had nifty feet like Gayle Sayers. Amazing balance, and he could fight off half a dozen tacklers and still get to the end zone. There will be no other like him, IMO.

 

[Hoo's That]

Purely and simply, he was and still is the greatest football player I've ever seen play. As someone who grew up as a Giants fan, he will forever be a big part of my memories of watching the NFL with my Dad. My sympathies to the SU community on his passing.