For the non-US people, Bo Jackson is a retired professional baseball and gridiron football player, one of a few to ever achieve top level success in multiple pro sports. He also found a degree of success in several other sports such as track and field, and cycling. Hence the ad text.
As far as I can tell, he remained wholesome after he aged out of pro sports. After his sports career he went on to get a BS in Family and Child Development, started a charity bike ride to help victims of tornadoes and other natural disaster in Alabama called Bo Bikes Bama, and has donated significant money to various other worthy causes over the years.
Seems like a good dude. Please don’t tell me if there’s some weird scandal I never heard of. I want to believe some people are just generally good for the world.
This is officially the least vintage ad I’ve posted.
Bo is a living American tall tale. He has origin stories of learning to run to escape his bullies, learning to throw by hurling crabapples at them, and learning to leap gaps in backwood paths and creeks that the bigger kids couldn’t make.
there’s no ‘controversy’ tab on his Wiki. only an ‘enduring legacy of greatness’ tab.
Bo knows…
He’s famous for playing (US) football, but I saw him play baseball in person, and he was good both with the bat and with fielding, and a terror running the bases, because of his legs.
I honestly don’t know that he’s more famous for football than baseball. He has one of the most iconic throws from the outfield to make an out at a plate in the history of the sport.
Short interview here with the guy who was the runner on that play.
Nobody thought it would be possible to make the play, but Bo caught the ball off the fence with one hand, spun around, and launched it back to home plate with no prep or windup, perfectly positioned throw to tag Reynolds out.
It’s not a throw that a human should be able to make.
Absolutely incredible play.
“Please don’t tell me if there’s some weird scandal I never heard of. I want to believe some people are just generally good for the world.” -well said
I don’t know that I’d even bother mentioning that my cross trainers are good for cycling, sounds like faint praise.
Didn’t he end up forced into an early retirement because he was such a hard runner his joints got damaged? Like, such an incredible athlete his bones couldn’t keep up?
Not sure, but wikipedia says he sustained a hip injury in a football game, which caused some trauma to the joint, and his retirement.
If he had focused on baseball, and skipped football, he never would have gotten an injury like that, and would have had a LONG career, as one of the best.
Football is a brutal sport. All those guys that make it to the majors are lottery winners. There are 5x that many who were just as good, but their careers ended in high school or college with a serious injury that ended any potential for a pro career.
Football is a brutal sport
For sure. I think Bo himself has said that if we knew then what we know now about CTE, he never would have gone into a football career.
