image of burt reynolds in centerfold for playgirl magazine

I didn’t always watch NFL on TV, since games were usually on Sunday and my family frowned on watching or listening to sports on Sunday. The team name came from coach Paul Brown). He played all of his career in Cleveland and was so dominate that sportswriters were saying the team name Browns was in honor of him. In the 1957 NFL draft, the Cleveland Browns picked him as the overall No. In college, he finished fifth in national decathlon competition and averaged 11.5 and 15 points per game in two years of playing basketball. Besides being in the College Football and NFL Halls of Fame, Brown also has a place in the Lacrosse Hall. Brown was quite skilled at holding the stick close to his body while carrying. Rules were changed after his senior year to make players keep their stick in constant motion while carrying the ball. He was first-team All-American in lacrosse his senior year after scoring 43 goals in 10 games. In the final game of the year, a 61-7 runaway from Colgate, Brown rushed for 197 yards, scored six touchdowns and kicked seven extra points to total 43 points for the game. He rushed for 986 yards during the season-third highest in the nation, despite Syracuse having played only eight games. Brown had been named consensus All-American that year and was fifth in the voting for the Heisman Trophy. TCU won the game by a point, 28-27, as Brown had one of his extra point attempts blocked. The play-by-play announcer, more than likely Lindsey Nelson who often did the Cotton Bowl, kept raving about Brown’s performance. I see now that his rushing yardage total for the game was 132 yards. I remember he ran for three touchdowns and kicked three extra points- it was unusual for a running back then to also kick extra points. It was an amazing game and Brown put up some amazing numbers. When I really became a fan of Jim Brown, however, was while watching the 1956 Cotton Bowl between Syracuse and TCU. Not long after reading that article, I saw some clips of lacrosse on television, so as with many other subjects, I deemed myself an expert on the sport only to learn later that I didn’t know as much as I thought I did. I had never heard of lacrosse at the time, but since then I’ve heard Brown was called one of the top two or three lacrosse players of all time. Not only was he a football star at Syracuse University, but he was a world-class lacrosse player, he ran track and started on the Syracuse basketball team. I became acquainted with him through a newspaper article that called him one of the world’s most skilled athletes. I had lots of favorites from the sports world when I was growing up.

When I did learn of that unfortunate news, it started a remembering process. Somehow, I missed the news that another of my heroes of yesteryear - Cleveland Brown great Jim Brown - had passed away last Thursday.

Image of burt reynolds in centerfold for playgirl magazine