In college basketball, we occasionally have a transcendent player who just erupts on the scene. Think about Cooper Flagg most recently. In the early ‘80’s, it was Patrick Ewing. You know it when you see it: that guy just has it.
In football, it’s generally either a quarterback or a running back, and there haven’t been many better than Auburn’s Bo Jackson.
Jackson was born in Bessemer, Alabama in November of 1962. About 33 miles away, Charles Barkley was born just a few months later. They would become
the most iconic athletes in Auburn’s long history.
Jackson showed up at Auburn in 1982, a year after Barkley, and it didn’t take him long to make an impression.
He played baseball as well as football, and was brilliant in both. Football was what he first became known for, though.
By 1983, people knew Jackson was special, but in the Iron Bowl that year, he dominated Alabama, with 256 rushing yards, and two touchdowns.
Jackson got mad when he felt the Tampa Bay Buccaneers damaged his eligibility, which resulted in him missing several games as a senior.
Consequently, he refused to play for the Bucs, instead opting for pro baseball, where scouts said he had the potential to be an all-time great.
He later began to play pro football with the Oakland Raiders as, he said, “a hobby.”
Unfortunately, Jackson suffered a devastating hip injury against the Cincinnati Bengals in 1991, which ended both of his brilliant careers.
Nonetheless, he remains perhaps the purest athlete of the 20th century. Quite simply, there was no one even close to him.
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