That Was A Phone Call For The Ages

For those of us given the home and cell numbers of Jim Brown by the legend himself, you never knew what was coming on the other end. The greatest athlete ever also ranked among the Most Interesting Persons In The History of the World, and he always answered the phone.

Then again, it just seemed that way since all of my conversations with Brown were never less than memorable.

Hey, Jim. Terence Moore here.

How’s it going?

“What’s happening, Terence? Go ahead,” Brown said in his baritone voice from his home in Los Angeles.

We chatted in the fall of 2016 after Colin Kaepernick spent days earlier kneeling for the first time during the national anthem as the starting quarterback for the San Francisco 49ers in protest of police brutality and social injustice.

Yeah. I just wanted to get your thoughts on what Kaepernick just did before an exhibition game, because it appears you have athletes sort of getting out of that apathetic state they were under for the longest time.

(Pause for several seconds)

“Well, I think you’re calling the wrong guy, my man,” said Brown, and I’d seen this before. He was just stretching before preparing to carry his version of a ball disguised as an answer for a long gainer. “I don’t relate to, um (slight chuckle) situations like this. There’s nothing for me to say. Sorry about that.”

Sometimes, such words meant Brown was done with the conversation.

Thanks, my man.

Bye.

Other times (like this one), you had to stay in your lane. Then James Nathaniel Brown would sprint your way with an answer as somebody who was the epitome of peerless at so many different levels.

In athletics, Brown flourished at basketball and track. Then came his love affair with lacrosse, which has been around since the 17th century.

So, this was telling: When the Premier Lacrosse League began in 2019, its officials named their most valuable player award after Brown, who scored five goals in the first half of the 1957 North-South All-Star game along the way to becoming the first Black member of the National Lacrosse Hall of Fame.

Brown also played a little football. He used his Syracuse days to reach the College Football Hall of Fame, and after a vote from an ESPN panel in 2020 of 150 media folks, college administrators and former coaches and players, he was crowned the greatest college football player ever.

To hear The Sporting News tell it in 2002, Brown was the greatest football player, period. He left Syracuse as that four-sport sensation to become a bruising NFL running back with finesse and durability at 6-foot-2 and 232 pounds over nine seasons through 1965 for the Cleveland Browns.

How elite was Brown at that position?

Here’s all you need to know: According to overthecap.com, the five highest-paid running backs in the NFL last season were Christian McCaffrey of the San Francisco 49ers at $16 million, Alvin Kamara of the New Orleans Saints at $15 million, Dalvin Cook of the Minnesota Vikings at $12.6 million and Derrick Henry of the Tennessee Titans at $12.5 million, and Nick Chubb of the Cleveland Browns at $12.2 million.

If you add those salaries together and multiply them by the number of seasons Brown led the NFL in rushing (8), and then multiply that by how many yards per game he averaged per carry (5.2), and then multiply that by all the times he shocked reality by doing the incredible (numerous), you still would fall short of what the football gods would say you should pay Brown today in his prime.

Consider, too, that when Brown shocked the combination of the Browns, the NFL and conventional wisdom by retiring from the league after the 1965 season to join Hollywood as a full-time actor, he had a season to go on a two-year contract worth (wait for it) $60,000 per season.

According to Sportskeeda.com, Brown’s net worth near the end of 2022 was around $30 million, and the website attributed much of that to his frequent appearances on the big screen and the little one called television from 1964 through 2019.

Brown also continued his passion for civil rights after bolting the NFL. For one, he organized “The Cleveland Summit” in June 1967. He included other prominent Black athletes such as Lew Alcindor before he became Kareem-Abdul Jabbar and Bill Russell. They gathered to support Muhammad Ali’s stance against serving in the U.S. military during the height of the Vietnam War.

That said, Brown battled personal demons, and they were ugly enough to tarnish his image beyond repair among large chunks of the public. He had several arrests for domestic abuse against his wife and other women. He even went to jail for battering one of his golfing partners.

There was always that other Brown, though. He did everything from curbing gang violence in Los Angeles with his presence and his words to counseling ex-convicts on becoming productive citizens to ripping athletes for vanishing during the 1980s and 1990s on social issues.

So, when the Kaepernick thing first surfaced nearly seven years ago, I dialed Brown for a reaction.

I knew the deal. He’d either talk for a few seconds before ending the call abruptly yet politely (due to his schedule or lack of interest in the topic), or he’d stick around for as long as I kept firing questions.

This was one of those rare moments in between.

You’ve got a lot of people in the African American community seeing this Kaepernick thing as sort of a bigger-than-life cause, but when you look at the ones you were involved in with Muhammad Ali, Bill Russell and Arthur Ashe. This seems like it’s not even close to that level.

(Pause)

“Well, look. I’m going to say this, and then I’ve gotta get off the phone,” Brown said, with another pause. “I am not sitting here waiting for any youngster to guide my way to contributing to the benefit of individuals or to the less fortunate. So, if I’m not a part of a person’s life, I don’t have an opinion on them in the sense that, why should I say something that is totally unnecessary?

“I do my own works, and that speaks for itself.”

Oh, you’re right about that.

“I don’t relate to certain things, you know. I like to give respect to people like yourself who ask for my opinion, but that young man has decided to do what he wants to do, and he has a right to do it. But I don’t sit around waiting on some young man who decides he wants to do something, and that’s going to be my contribution to try to help people in my life.

“Why would I wait around for somebody else to show me the way?”

I gotcha.

“Well, boss. I’ve got to go. Have a good one, OK?”

Same to you, Jim.

And God speed.