[For this year’s annual Super Bowl series, I wanted to focus on some football figures & communities. Leading up to a special weekend tribute to some of our best current public scholarly SportsStudiers!]
On the parallel yet very distinct ways in which two of all-time greats left
the game—and the American resonances of each.
When Jim Brown unexpectedly retired in the summer of 1966, after nine seasons with the Cleveland Browns, he left
football as the undisputed greatest running back in the league’s
history, with numerous league records (including the
career yardage mark) under his belt. Thirty-three years later, in the summer of
1999, Barry Sanders announcement his just as unexpected
retirement; in his ten seasons with
the Detroit Lions, Sanders had threatened numerous records of his own (he
retired less than 1500 yards behind the all-time mark), and had struck many observers as the greatest running back since Brown. Yet despite these similarities, the circumstances of
the players’ retirements were also hugely different: Brown retired due to
conflicts with his burgeoning acting career, which he would pursue for the next
few decades, remaining in the public eye throughout; Sanders refused to discuss
the reasons for his retirement, and largely disappeared from the spotlight
thereafter.
It’s impossible, and probably irresponsible, to speculate at length about
the reasons why anyone makes the choices in his or her life, and I don’t
pretend to have any special knowledge about either of these particular men or
cases. But given the particular circumstances and details that we do know of
each, I would say that Brown came to feel that he was bigger or more
multi-faceted than the sport, and no longer wanted to be contained by its
limits (such as the training camp restrictions from Browns owner Art Modell
that specifically precipitated his retirement); and that Sanders, on the other hand, seems to have felt that the sport and its various attendant effects and issues were bigger or more
draining than he was willing to
deal with. I’m sure that there were multiple factors in each case, and I don’t mean
to critique either man in any way; instead, I highlight these particular frames
as they have interesting resonances with other talented American figures.
When it comes to Sanders, I can think of various famous Americans who seem
to have suddenly decided (while still at their prime) that the demands of their
respective worlds were intolerable and to have withdrawn from those worlds;
perhaps the most extreme example would have to be J.D. Salinger. After the
mega-success of The Catcher in the Rye (1951), Salinger withdrew entirely from public life and mostly from
publishing; his last published story appeared in 1965, 45 years before his 2010 death. Brown, on the other
hand, reminds me of those talented but fickle Americans who abandon established
success in one field to pursue an entirely different one, perhaps to prove to
the world or themselves that they can do so; the most common contemporary moves
seem to be between the worlds of acting and music, but perhaps even more complicatedly and compellingly American are those celebrities who decide to pursue a career in politics and
public service, particularly those who
do so at the height of success. If The
Rock had chosen to run for president, he’d have been simply one of the
latest in that long and interesting American line.
Next
football figure tomorrow,
Ben
PS. What
do you think? Football figures or communities you’d highlight?
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