Bo Jackson is probably the best athlete to come out of Auburn University and is arguably one of the greatest athletes of the twentieth century. Were it not for a horrific January, 1991 hip injury the Heisman Trophy winner with world class sprinter speed who was an All-Star in both the National Football League (NFL) and Major League Baseball (MLB) might have gone on to truly rewrite the definition of an all-around athlete. As an aside few people realize Jackson was also a state champion decathlete in his youth.
The Alabama native born Vincent Edward Jackson was described as a restless child with qualities not unlike those of a wild boar with an abundance of energy. Over time the comparison to a wild boar stuck and as Jackson aged the nickname was shorted simply to Bo. Growing up in McCalla, Alabama Bo excelled at sports with perhaps his most notable prep level accomplishment being that in his senior baseball season he hit an astounding 20 home runs in 25 games. Projected over a 162 game major league baseball season that rate would produce a mind blowing 130 home runs (roughly doubling the current record).
Despite being a second round draft pick by the New York Yankees right out of high school Bo Jackson instead chose to attend Auburn University in Auburn, Alabama located about 120 miles west of his McCalla home. During his stint at Auburn University from 1982 to 1985 Bo not only excelled at baseball (batting.400) and football (winning the Heisman Trophy) but even gave thought to becoming a member of the US Olympic track team when his times in the 100 meter dash indicated that he could have a promising career as a world class sprinter. Ultimately the notion of pursuing sprinting was dropped because it did not offer the same type of financial incentives as football or baseball.
After serving as an exceptional athlete at Auburn during the first half of the 1980s Bo Jackson would go on to take the professional sports world by storm throughout the remainder of the decade while playing baseball for the Kansas City Royals as an outfielder and football for the Oakland Raiders as a running back. The year 1989 was the pinnacle of the sports career of Bo Jackson when he was selected to the MLB all-star game (where he won the all-star game MVP award) and the NFL pro bowl in recognition of his accomplishments on the grid iron during the 1989 football season. Sadly a NFL playoff game hip injury on January 13, 1991 eventually resulted in the need for a hip replacement and although Bo made a short comeback in baseball for all intents and purposes the injury ushered in the end of what might have otherwise been the most prolific athletic career in history. Due to his career shortening injury Bo Jackson is often only a footnote in sports history but when considering his collegiate and dual sport professional success it is fair to say Bo Jackson was the American athlete of the 1980s just as Michael Jordan was of the 1990s and Tom Brady or Tiger Woods arguably were of the 2000s.
In May of 2009, twenty years after his illustrious 1989 sports year when Nike "Bo Knows" advertisements were everywhere, the Alabama son came home to Auburn to pass along the lessons he learned during his lifetime to a new generation by giving the commencement speech to the 2009 graduating class at Auburn University.
Rick finds stories like the tale of Bo Jackson's life to be amongst the most interesting in sports because his accomplishments, potential, and eventual fall from grace are so exaggerated that the story almost reads like a work of fiction. Rick honors the man who (along with Michael Jordan) arguably lifted Nike and sports advertising to a new level with Auburn University wallpaper on his computer screen background so that nostalgic pictures of the great two star athlete are never more than a mouse click away.
Rick asks all Bo Jackson fans to take a look at the Auburn wallpaper pictures on his webpage. Browsing the collection of photographs and forwarding this article to a friend will encourage future biographical pieces on sports stars of yesteryear.
