Bo Jackson

The Full Biography

Bo Jackson. Runner. Hitter. The only man who made two professional locker rooms look like a single job, until a hip explained the limit.

This is his story.

The image most people still carry is a Nike spot: Bo running, throwing, hitting, the joke that he knows everything except, in one cut, Diddley. The late 1980s made that image national. What the commercial cannot show is Vincent Edward Jackson of Bessemer, Alabama, a Heisman tailback who also wanted a batting average, a Raider who ran over linebackers as if they were a rumor, and a later life after the 1991 hip injury in which the myth had to become a person again.

He was born on November 30, 1962, in Bessemer, one of many children in a house that did not have extra. He was fast in the way small towns notice. Auburn University got him. As a Tigers tailback he won the Heisman Trophy in 1985. The Tampa Bay Buccaneers drafted him first overall in 1986. He did not want Tampa’s terms. He went to baseball instead — the Kansas City Royals — and made the football people wait. The Los Angeles Raiders took him in a seventh-round draft the next year. In 1987 he began doing both: summers in a Royals uniform, autumns in silver and black. The country had not seen that as a serious adult plan. He made it look like a commute.

Baseball: a Royals outfielder with power that bent highlight shows, an All-Star in 1989, an arm that turned singles into conversations. Football: a Raider who could take a handoff and be gone before the television director had found him, including a Monday night run against Seattle that people still describe with their hands. He was not a novelty act. He was, for a few seasons, excellent at two jobs that each usually consume a body.

The “Bo Knows” campaign did what advertising sometimes does: it told the truth at a volume the box scores could not. He did not know every sport. He knew two, at a level that made the joke land. He also knew, and said, that the campaign was a job. The myth is the country’s. The commute was his.

I was the kind of guy who wanted to do something nobody else could do.Bo Jackson

Auburn was not a prelude. He rushed for 4,303 yards as a Tiger, won the 1985 Heisman, and finished a college football career that would have been enough for most men. The California Angels had drafted him in 1985; he did not sign. The Buccaneers took him first overall in 1986 and then, by making him visit during baseball season, helped him decide he would not wear Tampa’s colors. Kansas City took him in the fourth round. He debuted with the Royals on September 2, 1986, and hit a home run in his first week as if the other sport were a rumor. The Raiders, patient and cheap in the seventh round of 1987, offered football on a part-time contract Al Davis was willing to live with. Summers in Kansas City. Autumns in Los Angeles. The commute was the invention.

On the baseball side he became an All-Star in 1989 and the All-Star Game’s Most Valuable Player — a leadoff home run, an arm that turned singles into conversations, a right fielder who looked borrowed from a different species. He finished that year with 32 home runs. The football side was shorter and louder. On Monday night, November 30, 1987, against Seattle, he ran for 221 yards, including a 91-yard touchdown, and the country learned what the Heisman had been describing. Two weeks earlier he had run over Brian Bosworth at the goal line and kept going. In 1990 he made the Pro Bowl. He was not a novelty act. He was, for a few seasons, excellent at two jobs that each usually consume a body.

The Nike spots — Bo on a bike, Bo on skates, Bo not knowing Diddley — ran behind those seasons and made the box scores feel like a punch line the whole country was in on. He filmed them as work. Children learned his name from the ads and then had to be told he also had a batting average. That is advertising doing what advertising rarely does: telling a version of the truth at a volume statistics cannot reach.

The turn is January 13, 1991. A playoff game against the Cincinnati Bengals. A 34-yard run. A tackle by linebacker Kevin Walker. A hip. Avascular necrosis. The Raiders released him. The football career ended. The Royals, unsure the body would answer, let him go. Jerry Reinsdorf’s Chicago White Sox signed him as an insurance policy and got, after hip-replacement surgery and a missed 1992 season, a 1993 comeback that won him The Sporting News American League Comeback Player of the Year: 16 home runs in a year most men would have spent learning to walk. In 1994 he played 75 games for the California Angels, the club that had wanted him first, and hit 13 more. The strike ended the season. In spring 1995 he decided not to come back. He was not yet thirty-three when the two-sport sentence became past tense. That is young for a myth and old for a man who still had to become someone on a single set of legs.

McAdory High School in McCalla is the first field. He was a track man as well as a tailback and a hitter; the small-town notices were already about more than one sport. Auburn’s Pat Dye got him. The 1982–85 Tigers seasons are a completed college career, not a tryout. He rushed, he caught, he returned, he won the 1985 Heisman over a field that included some of the decade’s other professional futures. The Angels drafted him in June 1985 and could not sign him. The Buccaneers, a year on, could not make him wear their colors. Those two refusals are the door. Kansas City and Los Angeles were the rooms he chose.

The 1989 All-Star Game in Anaheim is the baseball still. He led off with a home run. He threw a runner out. He was the night’s most valuable player in the league that had once treated him as a football rumor. The Royals of those years were not a dynasty; he was the reason a casual fan watched. The Raiders of those years were Al Davis’s last loud clubs; Jackson was the reason a casual fan stayed for the second half. Two locker rooms. One body. A hip that had not yet filed the paperwork.

The Royals years were not a cameo. He played 694 major-league games, hit 141 home runs, and put up a slugging percentage that would have been a career for a man who had never seen a football. The Raiders years were 38 games and a set of runs people still describe with their hands. Combined, the two jobs lasted about five serious seasons. That is the whole commute. Parents who cite him as a reason to make a twelve-year-old play two sports are citing the wrong man. He was a college football player who then signed two adult contracts. The hip in Cincinnati is the limit the body filed. The classroom in Auburn is the promise he paid his mother. Everything after is a man declining to live as a mascot of his own ads. He has said the two-sport life was something he wanted to do because nobody else could. That sentence is enough. The ads were a job. The hip was a fact. The degree was a debt. Bessemer does not need a sermon. Auburn still hangs the Heisman in the same weather. The Royals still run the All-Star clip. The Raiders still run the Monday-night run. He lets all three claims stand and does not move to a studio to referee them.

He married Linda, raised sons — Garrett, Nicholas, Andrew — and kept a private weather that interviewers have not always been able to enter. Friends describe a man who is kinder and quieter than the Raider still. The public Bo of these decades is a man at a celebrity hunt or a college function, not a weekly analyst shouting about a league he could still, in memory, break.

The later years

Home has been, by design, less filmed. He went back to Auburn and finished a Bachelor of Science in family and child development in 1995, a promise he had made to his mother, Florence Bond, who died of cancer in 1992 while he was learning to walk on the new hip. The degree is not a celebrity hood. It is a classroom and a debt he chose to pay when the commercials no longer needed him.

The 1990s also gave him a second, smaller public: guest spots on The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, Lois & Clark, Moesha, Married... with Children; small film parts in The Chamber (1996), The Pandora Project, Fakin’ Da Funk. He did not become an actor. He became a man who would take a call if the day was free. He opened a motorcycle shop. He went into business with Charles Barkley on a restaurant. He built N’Genuity, a food-service company, and treated it as a job rather than a celebrity label slapped on a warehouse. He has signed autographs for soldiers. He has ridden Bo Bikes Bama after tornadoes tore through the state that made him. He has hosted and appeared on sports television without becoming a weekly shout.

Those years are long on purpose. He has spoken, when asked, about the hip without making it a sermon. He has watched two generations of athletes be told they must specialize at twelve, and he remains the counterexample that parents mis-cite. He was not a child doing two sports. He was an adult with two contracts and a hip that lasted until it did not. He is in his sixties. Alabama and the Royals and the Raiders still claim him. He lets them. He does not owe any of them a comeback. The body that knew two jobs now knows a walk, a family, a classroom he finished, and the particular fame of being a highlight that new children discover every autumn on a phone. Linda and the sons have had the quieter version. That is the version he seems to prefer.

N’Genuity kept him in warehouses and sales calls instead of in a studio chair yelling about a league he could still, in memory, break. The motorcycle shop was a shop. The restaurant with Barkley was a restaurant. He has appeared at Auburn functions as an alumnus who finished the degree, not only as a Heisman bronze. He has done charity hunts and soldier meet-and-greets without turning either into a brand refresh. When television has wanted him — The Titan Games among the calls — he has shown up as a presence, not as a weekly analyst. The hip is still the hip. He does not owe a medical TED talk.

Bessemer is still the origin. Alabama still prints the name on summer camps and on the kind of banquet that needs a two-sport ghost. Kansas City still claims the All-Star who threw from the warning track. The Raiders still run the Monday-night clip. He lets all three claims stand and lives somewhere the clip cannot reach. He is in his sixties. The commute is over. The classroom is finished. The sons are grown. The myth is the country’s problem now, not his.

After the spotlight moved

It moved because the hip moved it. No one replaced him. Two-sport stars since have been footnotes or college stories. The Nike spots are period pieces and still funny. The Monday night run is still a test of whether a younger viewer believes film. The useful remainder is simpler: a man from Bessemer who would not let one league own the week, until the week owned him.

He came out of Alabama, won the Heisman, told Tampa no, hit baseballs for Kansas City, ran through the NFL as a side job that was not a side job, and then had to invent a life that did not require a second locker room. If you only remember the commercial, you have the joke. If you remember the Buccaneers refusal, the 1989 All-Star game, and the hip in Cincinnati, you have him.

Portrait: Unknown · Public domain · via Wikimedia Commons

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