"Look at Me, Man!"

(See Cover)

The guest of honor at last week's luncheon meeting of the Cleveland Touchdown Club seemed the soul of mild-mannered urbanity. He broke his rolls before he buttered them. He politely said nothing about the veal cutlet. He refolded his napkin neatly when he was through. He wore a charcoal herringbone suit, and he buttoned his vest all the way--so only his tailor knew for sure about those 17-inch biceps, that 46-inch chest and that 32-inch waist. But the banquet toastmaster was not fooled for a second. "Gentlemen," he firmly announced, "I give you Superman."

Well, not quite. James Nathaniel Brown, 29, fullback of the National Football League's Champion Cleveland Browns, cannot leap over the Empire State Building--or even stop bullets with his chest. But it is sheer nonsense to try to convince the practitioners and patrons of pro football that Jimmy Brown is an ordinary mortal. After nine seasons in the league, Brown is regarded as a genuine phenomenon in a sport that shares the language ("blitz," "bullet," "bomb") of war. Pro football's stars are the samurai of sport--immensely skilled, brutally tough, corrosively honest mercenaries who respect each other almost as much as they respect themselves. In the critical company of his peers, the Baltimore Colts' Johnny Unitas is considered "a great quarterback, but if you beat his blockers, you beat him." Rookie Fullback Tucker Frederickson of the New York Giants is "strong right now, but in a year he'll hit a little less hard." And Flanker Bobby Mitchell of the Washington Redskins is already "slowing down fast"--at the age of 30. There is only one player in the game today whose ability on field commands almost universal admiration, and that is Jimmy Brown.

Seven Out of Nine. When he tucks that $23 official N.F.L. pigskin into the crook of his arm and stutter-steps into the line, big (6 ft. 2 in., 228 Ibs.) Jim Brown is without argument the greatest runner in professional football. In 1957, the first year he joined Cleveland as an All-America from Syracuse University and the Browns' No. 1 draft choice, he gained an incredible 942 yds. on the ground. He has not done that poorly since. Only eleven men in the N.F.L.'s 45-year history have gained 1,000 yds. or more in a single season --an accomplishment roughly equivalent to batting .400 in baseball or scoring 50 goals in hockey. Brown has done it seven times in nine years. He has led the National Football League in rushing for eight of those years, and in 1963 he gained 1,863 yds. to become the only runner in history to pass the mile mark in a single season. By last week Jimmy had carried the ball a record 2,268 times in his career, gained a record total of 11,832 yds. (for a record average of 5.2 yds. per carry), scored a record 119 touchdowns.

Jimmy naturally has his off days: in one game against Baltimore in 1962, he carried the ball 14 times and managed the grand total of 11 yds. He also has his natural enemies. There are defensive men around the league who have dedicated themselves, their souls, their bodies to a holy war against Jimmy Brown. None of them has yet won the crusade--although their ferocious determination speaks for itself.

A Philadelphia Eagles defender managed to get a clawing hand inside Brown's face mask, an infraction worth 15 yds. if spotted by an official. Jimmy exacted his own penalty by biting down hard. A Washington Redskins tackle tried to clothesline Jimmy, clubbing him across the throat with a rigid arm (also worth 15 yds.), and complained afterward: "He almost tore my shoulder off." Interference (automatic first down at the point of the foul) was supposed to be the stopper for Pittsburgh Steelers Linebacker John Campbell. "On one pass play this season, I was all over him," says Campbell. "I was sure I'd draw the penalty, but I didn't. Not that it made any difference. How he caught the ball with me hanging on him I'll never know. But he did, and he carried me, the mud and the ball right over the goal line." Latest to weigh in with ideas is Detroit Tackle Alex Karras. Recommends Karras: "Give each guy in the line an ax."

Nothing short of gang warfare is sure to stop Brown. "All you can do," opines Sam Huff, late of the New York Giants and currently playing middle linebacker for the Washington Redskins, "is grab hold, hang on and wait for help." There was a time, Huff recalls, when he could have sworn he had Jimmy's number. He actually flattened Brown singlehanded for no gain twice in a row. Then Sam succumbed to the temptation to rub it in. "Brown," he sneered, "you stink!" The next thing Huff remembers seeing was the backside of a fire-breathing, chocolate-colored monster that burst straight up the middle on a trap play and streaked 65 yds. for a touchdown. "Hey, Sam," called Jimmy from the end zone, "how do I smell from here?"

Work Enough. Like most supermen, Jim suffers criticism badly because he has never had enough to get immune. He bristles when sports writers, mostly for want of anything else to carp at, suggest that he is a less than spectacular blocker on pass plays. "If they had another guy at Cleveland who was doing the running," he snarls, "I'd be the best blocker in the league." And like a lot of people with one great native talent, he would prefer to be recognized for something else, such as his occasional passing (four completions for 117 yds. in nine years) or receiving (253 catches for 2,406 yds.). "I don't like to be typed," he says. "I don't like to be thought of just as a guy who runs. I could gain 250 yds. in one day and still have played a lousy game. I might have a 7-yd. average and not have taken advantage of half the opportunities given me. Yardage isn't the big thing. Winning the championship is. It means about $6,000. That's what I work for--winning the championship."

Brown's main work is running. And that is work enough. Pro football today is dominated by thread-needle quarterbacks and jitterbug ends--except on the Cleveland Browns. About half of all offensive plays in the pros are passes. But on the Browns, 60% are running plays, and Jimmy Brown carries the ball on 62% of them--an average of 20-odd plays per game, Sunday in and Sunday out. The best passer in the game can be replaced; Baltimore's Gary Cuozzo demonstrated that last week when he took over for the injured Johnny Unitas and threw five TD passes to beat the Minnesota Vikings 41-21. But there is no substitute for Jimmy Brown: he is the indispensable man--as Cleveland's own passer, Frank Ryan, is happy to concede. When Brown asks for the ball in the huddle, he gets it, no questions asked.

Last year, with Jimmy Brown rolling up 1,446 yds., the Browns edged out St. Louis for the Eastern Conference title; in the championship playoff Brown gained 114 yds., and Cleveland demolished favored (by seven points) Baltimore, 27-0. Last week the Browns took a long step toward their second straight playoff berth, as Jimmy presided over a 34-21 defeat of the third-place New York Giants. Cleveland's defense was not anything to brag about--it did not have to be. Not the way Butcher Brown was slicing up New York.

Bread & Butter. On the very first play from scrimmage, he caught a little flare pass and galloped 30 yds., leaving Giant defenders strewn in his wake. Over the next 45 minutes, Brown scored three touchdowns, and each was something to see. On the first, he started toward right end from the 3-yd. line, abruptly cut back, and while the Giants were twisted into pretzels, he literally walked across the goal. He ran 4 yds. straight through Giant Safetyman Jimmy Patton for his second TD, and his third brought satisfying animal growls from the throats of Cleveland fans. With the ball on the New York 17, Quarterback Ryan called a "Bread and Butter 19"--a slant play off tackle. Picking his way daintily through a tiny hole, Brown exploded at full speed into the Giants' secondary. Two defenders hit him--wham! wham!--at the 6-yd. line. Somehow, Jimmy kept his feet. Painfully, in a kind of slow-motion, he dragged them to the three, planted a foot, gave a mighty lunge and pitched forward, hugging the ball to his chest. His knees landed at the one; the ball landed in the end zone.

While the rest of the Browns got in their licks (Ernie Green scored one TD, and Lou Groza kicked two field goals), the game belonged to Brown. In all, he carried the ball 20 times for 156 yds. That boosted his 1965 rushing total to 1,064 yds.--almost twice as much as his closest competitor, Philadelphia's Timmy Brown (no kin), and more than eight of the 14 N.F.L. teams have gained on the ground all season. Jimmy caught three passes for an additional 36 yds., and his three TDs gave him 84 points so far this year--tops in the N.F.L.

All He Does Is Run. Statistics aside, there is no way to fix Brown's place among the great running backs of history--except to say that he is different. Somebody will always insist that Jim Thorpe or Johnny Blood or Bronko Nagurski or Red Grange or Steve Van Buren was the best runner who ever lived. Thorpe was flamboyant and unpredictable; he could be very good when the notion struck him--or very, very bad; he was always at his best when he had a bet riding on the game. Nagurski was a runaway truck who was lucky to be bigger (at 230 lbs.) than most of the people he had to run over in the 1930s. Grange was a 165-lb. scatback, who never ran over anybody at all. Like Brown, he was accused of being a shirker at blocking: "All Grange can do is run," was the classic comment--to which Bob Zuppke, his coach at Illinois, retorted: "All Galli-Curci can do is sing." Van Buren, "the Flying Dutchman," of Coach Greasy Neale's 1948-49 world championship Philadelphia Eagles, was the first great modern pro running back; a bruising 200-pounder, he could run the 100-yd. dash in 9.8 sec.--and set a career ground-gaining record (5,860 yds.) that Jimmy Brown buries a little deeper every time he pulls on his cleats.

In terms of pure style, the oldtimer whom Brown most resembles is the legendary Johnny Blood, whose real name is John McNally, and whose pro career spanned 15 seasons between 1925 and 1939, when writers could still get away with calling a football field a gridiron. McNally played for the Green Bay Packers and coached the Pittsburgh Steelers; now in his 60s, he spends his time "meditating," and Captain Ahab of Moby Dick is one of his favorite subjects. "Ahab," explains McNally, "had the courage of ignorance, comparable to the courage of a fullback playing his first season of professional football. He hurls himself against the line. But look at him at the age of 30. He will not be hitting the line with quite the same abandon. For the courage of ignorance, he has substituted the restraint, the caution of a little wisdom."

Which is the perfect way to describe Jimmy Brown. "At Syracuse," says Jimmy, "I was a slasher, a leveler. When I became a pro, I really became conscious of technique. I had to. In college you're running against a 230-lb. defense. But the pros are 260-pounders, and you're not going to run over them very often." By his own definition, Brown is an unorthodox runner: rather than depend on a play working out the way the diagram says it should, he relies on his instinct to sense the spot where a hole is about to open, on his reflexes and agility to get him there in time.

Limber Leg & High Step. "With Jim," says the Browns' offensive coach, William ("Dub") Jones, "a play diagram is really only a hopeful approach to the way a play will develop." Best example in the Cleveland repertory is the Option Seven, a Jimmy Brown special in which the opposing players are perversely permitted to pick Jimmy's route by the direction of their own defensive charge. It is all the same to Brown: if they charge in, he sweeps wide; if they charge out to stop the end run, he cuts back off tackle. Each of the Browns' blockers is responsible for somehow disposing of one enemy defender (there is no prize for neatness), and Flanker Back Gary Collins fakes a "flash" pass pattern straight up the opposite sideline to draw off two deep men. Ideally, that should leave Jimmy just one safety-man to race to the goal line--and if worst comes to worst, safeties do not weigh 260 Ibs.

Brown gets his power, speed and balance from his tremendously muscular thighs, which absorb so much punishment during a game that it usually takes three days for the soreness to disappear. (To help the healing process, he plays golf every Tuesday; he shot a 115 the first time he tried the game, but he now scores regularly in the low 70s.) To lighten his load, Jimmy wears no hip pads, has his thigh protectors stripped to the bare plastic. He accelerates so fast that he has been timed in 4.5 sec. for the 40-yd. dash, but he rarely gets a chance to stoke up full steam; instead he employs one or more of his patented evasive maneuvers, labeled and designed to discombobulate the defense.

The "Cut, Change Pace and Run By" is self-explanatory. The "Limber Leg" is a lesson in Indian giving; Jimmy teasingly offers a defensive back his leg, then when the man grabs for it, he pulls it back and zooms on. A third maneuver called the "High Step" is a lengthened, knee-lifted stride designed to prevent a pair of converging tacklers from grabbing both legs at once. The worst moment for a defender comes when he finds himself face to face in the open field with on-charging Fullback Brown. Says Jimmy: "In one-on-one situations, you break guys into categories. If he's a lineman and he's four yards away, you figure to put a good move on him and go around. A line backer is quicker and therefore harder to fake. If he is three yards or less away, you drop your shoulder and struggle. If he's a small defensive back, you just run right over him."

Lord help the defensive back. At the instant of impact, Jimmy dips a shoulder, slams it into his opponent's pads, and crosses either with a straight arm to the helmet or a clubbing forearm directed at a lower and presumably more tender portion of the anatomy. Shudders San Francisco's veteran Matt Hazeltine: "He really shivers you. I wonder how many kayos he would have scored when there were no face masks?" In nine seasons, Jimmy has thrown so many punches that he has had water on the elbow, and his hands are gnarled and crosshatched with scars. "I can't shake hands tightly any more," he says, "or even grip properly on a doorknob."

If all else fails, there is psychology: go limp, play dead; maybe the defender will let go before you hit the ground. If not, it may at least lull the defense (and give the fans a fright) to see Jimmy lying there for endless seconds like an empty pillowcase, then slowly--ever so slowly--drag himself to his feet and shuffle back to the huddle. Imagine everybody's surprise when, on the very next play, he comes cracking right back through the line--knees churning, forearm swinging as though nothing whatever had happened. And to think he once turned down a $150,000 pro boxing offer by saying: "I don't like to hurt people."

Sweet Sue & St. Simons. Practically everybody who has ever come into contact with Jim Brown--on or off the field--has taken a fling at speculating on what makes Jimmy run. "Maybe it's inner frustration," suggests the Browns' owner Art Modell. "But no, Jim has too much talent to be frustrated." Brown himself shrugs: "I play the best I know how because I am a man." He is that, and he has been for as long as he can remember--because he has had to be. His father, a sometime prizefighter and golf caddy, ofttime gambler and good-time Charlie named Swinton ("Sweet Sue") Brown, lives somewhere in Hicksville, N.Y. That is all Jim knows or cares to; he has never seen much of Sweet Sue.

Brown was born on St. Simons Island, one of a string of sleepy islets that stretch along 100 miles of the Georgia coastline, just a stone's throw away from the rich white resort of Sea Island. His mother went North when Jim was two to take a servant's job on Long Island, leaving him behind with his great-grandmother. His enduring recollections of St. Simons are bittersweet: crabbing, digging for buried treasure, rock fights with white boys, a restricted beach, a two-room segregated schoolhouse.

When Jim was seven, he was handed a box lunch and packed off by train to join his mother. The town of Manhasset, N.Y., has not been the same since. At eleven, Jim hauled off and socked a seventh-grade classmate who called him a "dirty nigger" during a basketball game. Recalls his coach, Jay Stranahan: "About five days later, I got a call from the other kid's mother. She said she didn't particularly agree with her son's sentiments, but she wondered how another boy her son's age could hit him so hard that he would be laid up in bed for a whole week." The answer to that quickly became obvious. "When Jim was 13," says John Peploe, a former Nassau County policeman who coached Manhasset's Police Boys Club team, "he played an unbelievable game of baseball. He would pitch a no-hitter and knock out a few triples and homers himself. One day he came to me and said he didn't particularly like the game. There wasn't much to it, he said."

To this day, any number of people on the street in Manhasset can recite Jimmy Brown's high school athletic record from memory. In three years at Manhasset High, Jim won 13 varsity letters in five sports. In his senior year, he made All-State in football, basketball and track. In football he played both offense and defense, averaged 14.9 yds. per carry; in the final game he personally stopped a last-ditch drive by rival Garden City High--making seven tackles in eleven plays--to assure his team its first unbeaten season in 29 years. In basketball he averaged 38 points a game, broke a scoring record set by Carl Braun, who later played for the pro New York Knicks and Boston Celtics. Jimmy played only one year of high school baseball, but that was enough to prompt an exploratory letter from Casey Stengel, then manager of the New York Yankees. What is more, Jimmy was a B -- student, class president, and chief justice of the student court. Ohio State offered him a full four-year athletic scholarship. So did 44 other colleges.

Enemy in the Ranks. Playing it extra cool, he settled on Syracuse University, which not only offered him no scholarship but no encouragement either. A Manhasset attorney who just happened to be an Orange alumnus gave Brown a checking account with enough money to cover his freshman expenses, and Jim expectantly arrived on campus--to meet a decidedly chilly reception. It turned out that a previous Negro athlete had cut a prodigious swath through Syracuse's coed population, and, in his own words, Jimmy remembers himself as being looked on as "an enemy in the ranks--a potential troublemaker and a threat to Caucasian women." Things were not much better around the gym and the practice fields. The freshman basketball coach did not give Brown a starting assignment until the team's eleventh (of 15) game. Syracuse's football coach, Ben Schwartzwalder, was in the process of building a big-time team, but Jimmy did not fit into his backfield plans: he suggested that Brown turn out for end. Jim refused, and at the start of his sophomore season he found himself listed as a fifth-string halfback on the varsity depth chart.

Schwartzwalder, of course, was too good a coach to overlook Brown for long. Before that sophomore year was over, Jimmy was first string in basketball and lacrosse as well as football; he also starred in track and became the first Syracuse athlete since 1939 to win four varsity letters in one year. Syracuse won only five games in Brown's junior year, but the run he made with a Holy Cross punt was a harbinger of things to come. Zigzagging from one sideline to the other, he reversed field three times; he was officially credited with a 55-yd. return, but spectators estimated he actually ran 170 yds. In his senior year, Jimmy gained 986 yds., led the Orangemen to a 7-1 season, the Lambert Trophy as the East's best college team, and a trip to the Cotton Bowl--where he scored 21 points in a 28-27 loss to Texas Christian. He also found time to be the second top scorer in the nation (with 43 goals) in lacrosse.

Going into its final game against Army, Syracuse's lacrosse team was undefeated--and, as luck would have it, there was a track meet with Colgate scheduled for the same day. Track Coach Bob Grieve persuaded Lacrosse Coach Roy Simmons to lend him Brown for one event: the high jump. Figuring that Jim would only have to jump three or four times (Grieve had assured him that the Colgate man could only clear 5 ft.), Simmons said O.K. Brown won on the high jump all right. But he was having too much fun to quit. He entered the discus throw, won that, and placed second in the javelin before Simmons dragged him away. In the track meet, Syracuse beat Colgate by 13 points--the exact number Jim had scored. In lacrosse, Syracuse beat Army 8-6; Brown scored one goal, was credited with three assists.

Another Man Named Brown. When he graduated in 1957, Jim was All-America in both lacrosse and football, and he had his choice of two professional contracts--one with the football Browns, the other with pro basketball's Syracuse Nationals, who drafted him even though he had not turned out for the college team in his senior year. "He could have made it, too," says Classmate Vincent Cohen, a basketball All-America at Syracuse. But Brown chose football, signed with Cleveland for $15,000--and it was not long before he began to have his regrets. The Browns were the proud personal creation of Coach Paul Brown, and the winningest team in pro football: in ten years they had won seven league championships--four in the old All-America Conference, three in the National Football League.

They would never win another as long as Paul Brown was coach. Moody, irascible, he stubbornly refused to treat his players as pros. "We will be the most amateur team in professional sports," he once told them. "I want you to think of the game first and the money second." He gave lectures on how to dress. He insisted on calling every play from the bench; he tried installing a radio receiver in his quarterback's helmet, and when other teams started tuning in on his broadcasts, he switched to shuttling "messenger guards" back and forth with his orders. "We were just a mechanical club," recalls Jimmy Brown. "We'd run a play and just stand there and wait for the guard to come in with another. Maybe the quarterback's arm had been hit on the last play and was numb, but if a long pass play came in, we had to run a long pass." Still, for five years he obediently followed orders ("If the man tells me to run 50 times, I run 50 times")--and each of those five years he was the No. 1 rusher in the league.

Then, in 1962, the once all-conquering Browns slumped to a 7-6 record--and for the first time since he entered the N.F.L., Jimmy lost the rushing title, to Green Bay's Jim Taylor. Disgusted, Jimmy and six other players sought out Owner Art Modell, told him they were quitting unless Paul Brown changed his coaching methods. Modell came up with a different solution: he fired Paul Brown and appointed Blanton Collier as head coach. A quiet, methodical technician who tries to figure the exact mathematical probabilities of what opponents will do in any given situation, coaches a six-day week and turns his boys loose on their own on Sundays, Collier was just the tonic that the ailing Browns--and Jimmy Brown--needed. In 1963, Jimmy had the best year of his career, and the team climbed to second place in the Eastern Conference. Last season they fought their way to the top of the league. Jimmy Brown's reward for that was the $10,000, diamond-studded Hickok Belt as 1964's Professional Athlete of the Year.

"Keeping In." Now Jimmy seems to be shooting for still another title: Most Controversial Athlete of the Year. Flashy, arrogant, casually indiscreet, he drives a red Cadillac Eldorado, brags that he owns so many suits that "I might lose one in the cleaners and never miss it." He does not care much for people in general ("I've met three or four beautiful people in my life. The rest all have an angle")--and he does not care what they think of him. "I do what I want to do," he says.

Brown does not smoke or drink. But he has a penchant for "keeping in," as he puts it, with a full cross section of society, and he is as well known to the toughs and prostitutes on Cleveland's Hough Avenue as to the gentle people at charity affairs. He is married and the father of three children, but twice in the last year he has been publicly involved in incidents with other women. Last March in Whitehall, Ohio, a 21-year-old ex-Ohio State coed lodged a complaint that Brown had raped her; the matter was dropped when she refused to press criminal charges. Last June he was charged with assaulting an 18-year-old high school dropout in a Cleveland motel room. That case went to trial and Brown was acquitted.

Obviously, there are several sides to Jimmy Brown. There is the dignified young executive, of whom the Browns' owner Modell keeps insisting: "He has no chip on his shoulder." There is the idol of adoring kids, who patiently signs autographs by the hour and tries to answer each of the 150 letters he gets a week. And there is the militant Negro who is the national chairman and chief benefactor ($12,000 worth) of an activist organization called the Negro Industrial and Economic Union, and says: "I am skeptical of white men, because even the best of them want me to be patient, to follow Martin Luther King's advice and turn the other cheek until God knows when."

Last year Brown was deluged by criticism when he spoke out on behalf of the Black Muslims ("the more commotion the better")--although he does not share their separatist beliefs. Cleveland Sportscaster John Fitzgerald advised him on the air to pipe down and stick to football. Later, buttonholing Brown in the Cleveland dressing room, he explained to him: "I've always admired you as a football player, Jim. I've never looked on you as a Negro." "That's ridiculous!" Brown snapped. "You have to look at me as a Negro. Look at me, man! I'm black!"

Everybody's looking. At least until 1967. His $65,000-a-year contract with Cleveland runs out after next season, and Jimmy has been doing a lot of talking lately about retiring. And what then? Brown has already made one movie (Rio Conchos) for 20th Century-Fox; he has a contract for three more (at $37,000 per flick). He has his own daily radio show in Cleveland, a side job as a marketing executive with Pepsi-Cola, another as a commentator on theater telecasts of boxing matches. What's more, remember how close Cleveland came to electing a Negro mayor last month? That suggestion has been aired around the Brown household, too.

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