Jim Brown, Cleveland Browns and NFL legend, dies at 87

CLEVELAND, Ohio – Jim Brown’s first game as a pro was a Wednesday night exhibition opener against the Lions in 1957. It wasn’t a splashy debut. Brown wasn’t mentioned until near the end of the next day’s recap in The Plain Dealer.

“Jim Brown played briefly but the All American from Syracuse wasn’t able to shake loose,” reporter Chuck Heaton wrote.

• Related: Read complete coverage on the passing of Jim Brown.

His second exhibition game provided the splash. Brown rushed for 96 yards in a win against the Steelers. It was a 48-yard touchdown run in the third quarter that made its way into the next day’s headlines.

When Brown got back to the sideline after the play, coach Paul Brown simply said, “You’re my fullback.”

Brown’s legacy only grew from there.

When Brown died Thursday night at age 87, that legacy had come to encompass more than his time in the NFL, from which he retired as the league’s all-time leading rusher and soon became a Hall of Famer. It branched out to social activism and acting, and also included a complicated personal life.

Statues outside Cleveland Browns Stadium in Cleveland and Syracuse University remain, symbolizing his glory days as a football player.

“I think it goes without saying he’s not only the greatest Cleveland Brown of all time, but I think arguably the greatest pro football player of all time,” Browns owner Jimmy Haslam said during the 2016 statue unveiling in Cleveland.

But a combination of Brown’s desire to do more than play football and his fractured relationship with then-Browns owner Art Modell led to his retirement from the NFL after nine seasons. He was just 29 at the time, and the reigning league MVP.

See more on Jim Brown’s legacy.

“I had a full dose (of football),” Brown told Sports Illustrated in 2015. “It gave me an opportunity to express myself on a personal level. As a black man in America, there were certain disadvantages to my existence. Football gave me certain other advantages. It has been a major part of my existence.”

In his post-football life, Brown acted in more than 50 films and television shows. He also embraced social activism, famously taking a lead role in the Ali Summit, held in Cleveland in 1967 to address Muhammad Ali’s refusal to serve in the Vietnam War.

Brown later founded the Amer-I-Can empowerment program in the 1980s, targeting at-risk youth and young adults in inner cities, including those involved with gangs. It’s a program that reached other countries and continues today.

Brown’s post-football life was also marked by allegations that he abused women. In 2000 Brown served nearly four months in jail stemming from a vandalism incident involving his wife’s car.

All this made Brown’s legacy difficult to pin down in his later years.

“He is fabled and flawed, one of the most complex figures in sports history,” wrote cleveland.com’s Tom Reed in 2016. “His greatness on the gridiron is undeniable. His history off the field is complicated.”

EARLY LIFE

Brown was born on St. Simons Island, off the coast of Georgia. His father, Swinton Brown, was a boxer who soon left the family. His mother, Theresa, worked as a maid in New York and left him in the care of his great-grandmother for many of his early years.

Brown joined his mother in New York when he was eight. So he could attend the mostly-white and upper-class Manhassett High School, Brown’s mother had him stay with a co-worker – a butler – who lived across the street in Manhassett’s school district.

“We lived on the dividing line,” Brown told Manhassett students during a 2013 speech at the school. “She wanted me to come here. She used a little trickery.”

Brown earned 13 letters in five sports at Manhassett. While excelling in football and lacrosse, he also averaged nearly 40 points per game in one season of basketball. And, according to a New York Times profile, there was talk of the Yankees signing him to play baseball.

Ed Walsh, Brown’s high school football coach, told Newsday that Brown “probably had more drive to succeed of anybody I have ever coached. Whatever he did, he wanted to do better than anybody else.”

Brown was recruited by more than 40 colleges, but chose Syracuse at the urging of Ken Molloy, a family friend and attorney. Malloy pooled money from Manhasset businessmen to pay Brown’s first year of tuition.

COLLEGE

Brown’s football career at Syracuse started slow. He rode the bench behind players he believed were less talented. At one point, Brown became discouraged enough to consider leaving Syracuse.

But an injury during his sophomore season opened the door and he finished second on the team in rushing. He became the team’s top running back the next two seasons.

He was a first-team All-American as a senior, rushing for 986 yards (third-most in the nation) and 13 touchdowns despite the Orangemen playing just an eight-game schedule. He finished fifth in voting for the Heisman Trophy.

Brown lettered in three other sports at Syracuse: lacrosse, basketball and track, and was the university’s athlete of the year in 1956-57.

He even qualified for the 1956 Olympics after placing fifth nationally in the decathlon.

Brown was also a first-team All-American as a senior lacrosse player.

“Lacrosse is probably the best sport I ever played,” Brown told The York Times in 1984. He remains the only person inducted in both the College Football Hall of Fame (1995) and the National Lacrosse Hall of Fame in (1983).

His time at Syracuse also led to induction in the US Army ROTC Hall of Fame (2016). Brown was commissioned as a second lieutenant through the Army ROTC while at Syracuse.

NFL CAREER

By 1957, the Browns were in need of a new identity. The 1956 season had been the franchise’s first without legendary quarterback Otto Graham, the first in 10 seasons without reaching a league championship game, and the first with a losing record.

The Browns selected Brown with the sixth overall pick in the 1957 NFL Draft, and he provided the identity by leading the league in rushing yards (942) and total touchdowns (10) and was unanimously voted rookie of the year. The Browns returned to the NFL title game that year, where they lost to the Lions.

Brown dominated the NFL for the entirety of his career. He led the league in rushing in eight of his nine seasons, was voted to the Pro Bowl every year, was a first-team All-Pro in eight seasons and the Associated Press’ NFL MVP three times.

Brown played in three NFL title games with the Browns, including 1964, when the Browns defeated the Colts to win what remains their last championship.

“I’ve never seen a back who has been endowed with all the things needed to rush the football” Hall of Fame wide receiver Paul Warfield said in the book “Legends by the Lake.” “You’d see the film and see the things the guy did, and it was incredible. It was almost like no other human being could do them.”

Along with his athletic ability and powerful running, Brown was also known for his intelligence, often going over plays with his linemen to make sure everybody was on the same page, or redirecting players because he knew how a defense would react.

Another Brown trademark was the slow walk back to the huddle.

“In between plays, if you’re going to be a star and I’m going to run you 35 times, and you get up in between plays and jump up and down and run back to the huddle, that’s not conserving energy,” Brown said in 2019. “If you’re gonna be a star, you’re gonna have to carry the load, you’re gonna have to be intelligent enough to conserve that energy in between plays, because it doesn’t count what you do in between plays. And you get prepared for the next play and produce with the next play. So, it was really simple for me, I was conserving energy.”

Brown retired with 12,312 rushing yards, an NFL record that stood for 22 years. The mark was broken by the Bears’ Walter Payton 10 years after the league expanded to a 16-game schedule (The NFL had 12- and 14-game schedules during Brown’s career.)

Brown never got hung up on where he ranked among football’s great players.

“And I’ve always said that I’ve never tried to make myself be the best. I want to do my best,” Brown said in 2019. “And if you think that’s the best, it’s okay, but I’m not going to be hard on that.”

RETIREMENT

Brown retired from the NFL on July 14, 1966, six months after the Browns lost to the Packers in the NFL title game.

The decision came amid a dispute with Browns owner Art Modell, who wanted Brown to leave the filming of the movie “The Dirty Dozen” in London and report to training camp. Modell was fining Brown $100 for every day he didn’t report.

In an interview with Sports Illustrated a day after his announcement, Brown said, “I could have played longer. I wanted to play this year, but it was impossible. We’re running behind schedule shooting here, for one thing. I want more mental stimulation than I would have playing football. I want to have a hand in the struggle that is taking place in our country, and I have the opportunity to do that now. I might not a year from now.”

Brown was inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 1971, his first year of eligibility.

ACTING

Browns’ acting career began with a supporting role in the 1964 western “Rio Conchos,” which he filmed during the 1964 NFL offseason.

He appeared in more than 50 films and TV shows during his acting career. That list includes more than 20 films from 1964-80, the later part of that stretch including a number roles in blaxploitation films.

“What I want to do,” Brown told film critic Roger Ebert in a 1968 interview, “is play roles as a black man, instead of playing black man’s roles. You know? … And I don’t make a big thing out of my race. If you try to preach, people give you a little sympathy and then they want to get out of the way. So you don’t preach, you tell the story.

“I have a theory. An audience doesn’t need to get wrapped up in blackness every time they see a Negro actor. And a movie doesn’t have to be about race just because there’s a Negro in it.”

While he is best known for his role in “The Dirty Dozen,” he also appeared in the first interracial love scene in “100 Rifles” (1969) with Raquel Welch.

His most recent role was as himself in the 2014 movie “Draft Day.”

ACTIVISM

While he was still playing football, Brown helped form the Negro Industrial Economic Union, which was later called the Black Economic Union, a self-help entrepreneurial organization for black athletes.

In 1967 the BEU’s Cleveland office served as the backdrop for the historic Ali Summit, a gathering a socially conscious black athletes to discuss Muhammad Ali’s draft refusal during the Vietnam War. Brown, along with Bill Russell and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar (then known as Lew Alcindor) and others discussed whether or not to support Ali, which they eventually did.

“The principal for this meeting of course was Ali,” former Kansas City running back Curtis McClinton told The Plain Dealer in 2017. “The principal of leadership for us was Jim Brown. Jim’s championship leadership filtered to all of us.”

In 1988 Brown founded Amer-I-Can, which works with inner-city youth and young adults to improve life skills, self-esteem and self-reliance. The program took Brown into prisons to rehabilitate inmates and into meetings with gangs to help members get on a different path.

“One of the concepts that I teach in the inner cities is the responsibility of self-determination,” Brown told The Undefeated in 2017. “You are responsible for yourself. It is not your mother, your father, the white man, the politicians. It’s about you.”

That philosophy showed up when NFL players followed the lead of Colin Kaepernick and used the national anthem prior to games as a time to protest social injustice.

While Brown said he supported Kaepernick’s decision to protest, he didn’t agree with taking a knee during the anthem.

“See, first of all, I’m an American. That flag is my flag,” Brown said in 2018. “The things that I’ve overcome in this country allows me to make me a better person. I don’t think that we should take knees in protest instead of be standing up for our flag.

“I think we should work out our problems as a family and that’s what I would advocate to my children. To all the young people I work with.”

LEGAL TROUBLES

Brown was accused of and investigated for violence against women numerous times during his life. Six incidents between 1965 and 1999 were either tried before juries or didn’t make it that far because the women decided not to pursue charges.

The list includes a 1968 incident during which Brown’s then-girlfriend, Eva Bohn Chinn, was allegedly thrown from a second-story window. Brown said she jumped after a domestic dispute. Chinn later told police she fell out of the window.

In his 1989 memoir, Out Of Bounds, Brown wrote, “I have also slapped other women. And I never should have, and I never should have slapped Eva, no matter how crazy we were at the time. I don’t think any man should slap a woman. In a perfect world, I don’t think any man should slap anyone. … I don’t start fights, but sometimes I don’t walk away from them. It hasn’t happened in a long time, but it’s happened, and I regret those times. I should have been more in control of myself, stronger, more adult.”

Brown served nearly four months in jail in 2000 after refusing to accept probation and counseling for damaging his wife’s car with a shovel.

LATER LIFE

Brown’s relationship with the Browns in his retirement was rocky at times. He was dismissed from his role as executive advisor by then-Browns president Mike Holmgren in 2010. He was brought back as a special advisor in 2013 and remained in that position until his death.

The Browns erected a statue of Brown outside then-FirstEnergy Stadium in 2016.

“Definitely long overdue,’’ former Browns coach Bill Belichick said at the time. “In my opinion, no greater player in professional football than Jim Brown. But on top of that, Jim’s a very special person. He’s a great friend and he’s a great leader. I respect and have great admiration for the things that Jim has accomplished throughout his life, his career on the football field, lacrosse field, but more importantly off the field.”

There will always be many ways to remember Jim Brown. In his later years, Brown’s view of himself was focused on one aspect.

“My life has not been sports,” Brown said. “I’ve been an activist all my life, worked with the change of humanity. I have a little I might be able to contribute, but to help break down the taboos that we had in this country and to deal with freedom, equality and justice for all human beings, and to appreciate the goodness in any human being regardless of their race or their gender.

“So, that’s who I am in my heart. Not a football player, an athlete, but a humanitarian.”