Bo Knows Bullying
Author Jeff Pearlman reveals Bo Jackson's (failed) campaign to ban him from Alabama bookstores. Plus: a fun glimpse at a few long shots by my son at Indiana University's Assembly Hall.
Back in 1989, Nike created a “Bo Knows” advertising campaign around the legendary athletic versatility of Bo Jackson. For those old enough to remember, this was all the rage back then.
He was a Heisman Trophy winner (the award given to the top college football player in the country) and went on to become one of the swiftest and most rugged running backs in NFL history.
Simultaneously, he was a Major League Baseball All Star with a cannon arm in the outfield and great power at the plate.
To top it off, he achieved one of the most remarkable comebacks from injury after undergoing hip replacement surgery in 1992. He was an easy guy to admire, both for his grit and his exploits on the field of play.
I knew he settled down in the Chicago area—in fact, though I never met him, Bo was on the Board of Governors1 of an athletic club client of mine for many years. I’d walk past his picture on the wall every time I was there.
So, last fall, when sportswriter and best-selling author Jeff Pearlman came out with The Last Fok Hero: The Life and Myth of Bo Jackson, I made a point of reading it. As with most everything that Jeff writes, it was exhaustive (he spoke to over 700 sources!) and excellent.
Yesterday, through his blog, Jeff shared an extraordinary account of Bo’s attempts to scuttle Jeff’s appearances at six bookstores in Bo’s native state of Alabama.
None of the bookstores bent to Bo’s will—in football parlance, they gave him the Heisman stiff-arm—but his efforts clearly demonstrate that Bo Knows Bullying, too.
Even if you are not a sports fan, and especially if you are an advocate of freedom of expression, I highly recommend you give Jeff’s column a read:
Take Your Shot…After Shot…After Shot
A few fun videos to share, especially if you enjoy basketball trick shots and, through them, some basic broader observations about life.
The first clip is all of 10 seconds: it’s my son, Zach, making a halfcourt shot at Indiana University’s Assembly Hall earlier this week.
He got it on his eighth try. How many people can say they made a halfcourt shot in this storied arena of the basketball powerhouse Hoosiers?
For that matter, how many people can say they’ve made a halfcourt shot anywhere?
Zach’s long-range ability astounds me. If the ball doesn’t go in, usually it’s off only by a few inches. When he was half my body weight, and I was coaching in the local youth league, he could shoot from halfcourt with far more accuracy than I could muster.
Zach developed this skill because he never got discouraged by all the misses that laid the foundation for his makes.
Over the years, so many of our basketball shootarounds have concluded with him trying shot after shot, sometimes from well beyond halfcourt, until he makes one. He’s been willing to fail repeatedly, so that he can succeed increasingly.
That same principle is what I emphasized last Saturday, when I provided juggling entertainment at a festival and children asked how they could do it, too.
Along with some practical steps, such as building hand-eye coordination by repeatedly tossing a ball from one hand to the other, I told them: Be willing to have a lot of drops. Be willing to fail. Just keep going.
It’s a principle that holds true for anything we pursue, of course. At this point, if I were a motivational speaker, I’d challenge you to reflect on something that you really want to achieve and break it down into smaller goals, then….
Oh, you know where I’m going. To borrow from the Nike tagline that was a complement to the Bo Knows campaign of a generation ago, just do it.
If you have another five seconds to spare, check out the crazy shot Zach made from the Assembly Hall stands, too.
It came on his fourth try; the first three, as you might suspect, were all airballs.
Not 100% sure, but I suspect “Board of Governors” was code for: “A really well-known local person who gets to use the facilities for no charge.”
I don't know. Different values. Different cultures. Here is a guy - Jeff Pearlman - who invests time, effort ... essentially his whole being in sorta a hagiography project ... about - in the long run - a trivial unimportant person. Really? And I'm supposed to care? Jeff Pearlman should get a life. Particularly since Dick Schaaf apparently already walked this path.
As far as the books stores being brave and noble. Count me skeptical. I'm wondering if the subject was Nick Sabin, and ole Nick called in a similar vein, would the bookstores be so noble in standing up for the First? Count me doubtful.
I think we can all stand against censorship, but Jeff Pearlman is one of the last writers I will ever feel sorry for. I do not share your high opinion of his work. He takes on excellent subjects, and he is to be given some credit for choosing them, but I do not think he does them justice. I've read three of his works, and I haven't read any of Bob Woodward's, but he is like Woodward in that, as an athlete, you'd be a fool to ever authorize his reporting of you. (Politicians are reminded that, when consenting to a Woodward interview, they will not win. He is not to be spun. The one exception I can think of with Pearlman is Troy Aikman.) Michael Lewis's original reservation about Pearlman's book about the '86 Mets has stood up as Pearlman has built his oeuvre: you didn't come away liking any of the players on the team. That can't be reality. Pearlman may say he's reporting the truth, and that the portraits are balanced, but the profiles he writes are deeply troubling. One example would be Jerry Jones. Seemed like a monster in the book Pearlman wrote about the Cowboys, but I watched a documentary with him in it, and I don't think Pearlman got the essence of the man. Beyond this, Pearlman's analytical abilities, statistical and otherwise, are simply poor. Going chapter by chapter, I can eviscerate his work, and there are more problems in reasoning than one can name. Then the Cowboys book featured a couple of grating analogies on every page. They were showy but distracting. I wish the sports biography market were bigger, and the considerable attention given to Pearlman's work was shifted to more deserving authors.