CBS Sports recently took a look at 10 all-time athletes who called it quits too early, and former Syracuse football star Jim Brown is on the list.
Jim Brown starred in four sports on the Hill, including Syracuse football, before going on to play in the NFL for the Cleveland Browns from 1957 to 1965, during which time he scored 106 touchdowns, per his bio on cuse.com.
For his spectacular athletic achievements, Brown got inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 1971 and into the College Football Hall of Fame in 1995. Earlier this year, ESPN slotted Brown at No. 1 in its rankings of the 150 greatest players in college football’s 150-year tenure.
But Brown elected to stop competing in the NFL after fewer than 10 seasons in the league, and at the relatively young age of 29. That is why CBS Sports, in a recently published and really interesting piece, featured Brown among 10 of the best athletes ever “who had some gas left in the tank before calling it quits.”
Here’s what CBS Sports said about Brown. “Much like Barry Sanders, Jim Brown retired when he was still putting up monster numbers on a yearly basis. Brown retired after just nine seasons and was coming off a season in which he rushed for 1,544 yards and tied his previous career-high of 17 touchdowns. The Cleveland Browns star tailback averaged 104.3 rushing yards per contest and 5.2 yards-per-carry over the course of his career. Brown was one of the most lethal running backs in the league and widely considered one of the greatest NFL players of all-time when he walked away in the prime of his career.”
Additionally, 247Sports chimed in as well, offering this take. “Brown had rushed for 1,400 yards or more and had almost 300 carries for three-straight seasons. He was also showing no signs of slowing down in his career, retiring in 1965 at the young age of 29. There’s no telling just what his career would’ve amounted to if he had played more than nine seasons.”
The other nine studs in CBS Sports’ story are Barry Sanders, Andrew Luck, Calvin Johnson, Patrick Willis, Brandon Roy, Michael Jordan, Sandy Koufax, Bjorn Borg and Bo Jackson.
Brown’s influences on college football and the NFL are historic and unparalleled. It’s just somewhat of a bummer that the world didn’t get to see him in action on the field for a few more years.