[ARETE] Sport and Society 5/23/23 Jim Brown and

[richard crepeau]

Sport and Society for Arete

May 23, 2023



Over the past few days, the sports media have been filled with commentary and tributes to Jim Brown, superstar running back of the Cleveland Browns and leader in the battle against racism in the NFL, in Sport, in the United States, and across the world. Brown died last week at 87 having set all sorts of records in the NFL and having played an important leadership role in the fight for Civil Rights.

Jim Brown, of course, was not a saint. His self-acknowledged anger issues are well documented. Many of the incidents involved violence toward women, and they became a matter of public record when they entered police files and court records. This is not to be admired nor emulated, and Jim Brown acknowledged as much.



As an athlete, he excelled in several sports. He is a member of the NFL Hall of Fame, the Lacrosse Hall of Fame, and the College Football Hall of Fame. After starring in both football and Lacrosse at Syracuse University, Brown was drafted by the Cleveland Browns. In his rookie season in 1957, he won the NFL Most Valuable Player Award and, in 1964, led the Browns to an NFL Championship. He never missed a game, playing in 118 consecutive regular season games during which he played one season with a broken toe and another with a broken wrist.

Although not all NFL games were available on national television, I remember watching him many times. He ran with tremendous power as he ran over players and carried others who were on his back or holding on to his legs. The word “awesome” gets overworked these days, but in the case of Jim Brown, it was always appropriate.

He led the NFL in rushing yardage as a rookie and in eight of his nine seasons. His career yardage stood as the NFL record for 18 seasons.  In his final season in 1965, Brown rushed for the second highest total of his career, scored 17 touchdowns, and was the league MVP.

These and other impressive numbers have been cited in the tributes and obituaries in the last week. There are other achievements that were of equal or greater importance.

As a player, Brown exposed the racial discrimination that permeated NFL culture. There were quotas on the number of African American players per team; there were rules against black and white players rooming together; and game officials ignored the illegal physical assaults used against African American players. Brown exposed these cases of discrimination in interviews, on his radio program, and in his autobiography.

As a team leader, Brown organized a support system for African American players coming into the system. He tutored them in professional behavior and team standards. Off the field he organized the Black Industrial and Economic Union to help promote black businesses. In the 1970s, after the Union faded, Brown organized the America-I-Can Foundation to teach life skills to gang members and prisoners. It remains active.

While still playing football, Jim Brown started an acting career in which he enjoyed considerable success. His best-known film role was in “The Dirty Dozen,” and it was a role that ended his football career. Production of the film in the summer of 1966 was delayed by bad weather. When Brown told his team he would be late for training camp, owner Art Modell said he would fine Brown for every day he missed camp. Brown answered Modell by immediately retiring from football.

Perhaps of all his activities, the most important may have been the Cleveland Summit in the summer of 1967. Brown organized the gathering of prominent African American athletes to discuss Muhammed Ali’s decision to defy the Military Draft. Among those present were Bill Russell, Willie Davis, Carl Stokes, Bobby Mitchell, Kareem Abdul Jabbar (Lew Alcindor), and others including Ali.

Kareem has written that the Summit was a turning point for him. At age twenty he was grappling with fame as a basketball player, and he was moved by his experience at the Summit. The group met for several hours and debated and listened to Ali explain his decision. It was not a foregone conclusion that this group would support Ali. The debate was real and, at times, heated. The twenty-year-old basketball player came away from the meeting impressed by what he heard there and ready to commit himself to political action.

The Summit was also a strong statement of solidarity by African American athletes and a clear statement to Americans about the future of discrimination and civil rights. In The New York Times this past Saturday, Kurt Streeter summed up Brown’s significance as stemming from the Power of No: “For all his athletic prowess, all the heft he brought to his social activism, Jim Brown’s power sprang from his unyielding resistance to the narrow definitions imposed by American society on its Black citizens and, in his case, Black male athletes.”


As a matter of sheer coincidence, the death of a giant of Modern British Literature was announced about the same time as that of Brown. Martin Amis is one of my favorite contemporary writers who defied critics, broke the mold of what a British writer should be, and produced a small library of fine writing. Should I call him the Jim Brown of Literature? I probably should not, but then I think I just did.

On Sport and Society this is Dick Crepeau reminding you that you don’t have to be a good sport to be a bad loser.



Copyright 2023 by Richard C. Crepeau



Hope everyone enjoys the conference. Unfortunately, we will not make it this year. We'll see you in Maine in 2024.











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