Jim Brown upstages the Ring of Honor inductions by saying he will not attend -- and shows the limitations of the greatest player the franchise has ever known in everything but football.
It's been 45 seasons since Jim Brown carried the ball for the Browns, but his latest feud with the team shows that Brown can still grab the spotlight -- to the detriment of his legacy, says Bill Livingston.CLEVELAND, Ohio -- Jim Brown, in upstaging the Browns' Ring of Honor by declaring his intention to skip the induction ceremonies, once again makes the discussion all about himself.
The other inductees feel honored. At 74, indisputably the Browns' greatest player, as well as probably the oldest ex-player to have the ear of a team owner in pro football history, Brown feels snubbed.
Since the great icon says he will sit out the September induction ceremony, Leroy Kelly, Mike McCormack, Paul Warfield and the others to be honored are suddenly cast in the shadows by the ego of one recalcitrant player.
Great as Brown was on the field -- and in this estimation he was the greatest football player ever, and that goes for everywhere, not just with the Browns -- he is divisive, angry and bitter off it.
As usual, he casts the issue in racial terms, despite members of racial minorities holding political office, including the Presidency of the United States, and despite Cleveland's own demonstrated history of racial progressiveness in sports.
Brown endured real, venomous bigotry in his playing career. His world view will forever-more be black and white. That was evident in his indefensible evocation of a "plantation" mentality at Ohio State in the Maurice Clarett scandal, in which, while defending the ex-con running back, Brown called athletic director Andy Geiger a "slave master." It is evident in his latest racially charged language to the Browns' front office. The proud protester fights injustices he conjures out of thin air.
Brown's most inflammatory statements include putting in team president Mike Holmgren's mouth the statement that "one monkey don't stop the show."
As with Geiger at Ohio State, so with Holmgren now: It is virtually impossible for a man to reach such a lofty position as athletic director at OSU or president of an NFL team and hold such beliefs or speak in such terms. He would betray his bigotry in a hundred ways. In the meritocracy of sports, he would be dismissed from his job.
Brown says he refused to be a "greeter" or "mascot" with the team, instead seeking a more meaningful role.
One might ask how well things worked out during the years when Brown advised team owner Randy Lerner?
The disaffected legend ended his letter to Holmgren and Lerner by writing: "So let me end with a little humor, because as you say, one monkey don't stop the show, and as I say 'Willie Lynch missed a few of us,' and there will be no Buck Dancing."
Along with the reference to African-Americans as monkeys, Brown apparently brings up lynching, and a derogatory term (Buck) for African-American males. There might be echoes of a minstrel show in "Buck Dancing" or to lynching. It's unclear at exactly whom the man aims his "humor."
One thing is clear, though. What organization with a lick of sense would let someone who sees the world this way speak for it?