Larry Brown Sports

The Internet gave us a great gift on Tuesday when a 1985 baseball scouting report of Bo Jackson surfaced via Reddit. The scout who evaluated Jackson billed him as the “best pure athlete in America today.” The scout also correctly predicted that Bo would win the 1985 Heisman Trophy.

The scouting report was filled out after the scout watched Jackson play a pair of April games during his junior season at Auburn. Bo batted .401/.500/.864 with 17 home runs in 42 games that season per Wikipedia.

It was truly a joy to see the evaluation of Jackson before he developed into an MLB All-Star. The only comments I would give is that I’m surprised the scout projected Jackson as a 6 for hitting when he turned out to be more of a 5, and I’m shocked Bo didn’t get an 8 for running speed. He was one of the fastest athletes on the planet, how did he not get an 8?!?

Take a look at the awesome archive below:

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Bo Jackson was drafted as the No. 1 overall pick by the Tampa Bay Buccaneers in the 1986 NFL draft, but he turned them down and decided to pursue a career in professional baseball. It was always believed that Jackson, who told the Bucs not to draft him, did not want to go to Tampa Bay because of all the negative things he had heard about the organization. But, as I learned on Saturday, Jackson also says that he did not want to play there because he believed they were a corrupt group that intentionally sabotaged his college baseball career.

Jackson was the subject of ESPN’s latest 30 for 30 program, “You Don’t Know Bo.” The program aired following the Heisman Trophy ceremony on ESPN Saturday, and it was the highest-rated 30 for 30 program yet.

In the program, Jackson elaborated on how and why he believes the Buccaneers sabotaged him.

“I expected to play football at the professional level, and I had taken a few trips to visit some teams during baseball season of my senior year,” Jackson recalled.

“I thought I had the OK to get on a plane that Buccaneers owner Hugh Culverhouse set up. So I got on the jet and went to Tampa Bay for a visit. About four or five days later, I’m back at Auburn getting ready for my baseball game. My senior year, I am tearing the cover off the ball. I’m batting over .400*. I don’t know how many home runs I was sitting on then, but I was as hot as a bottle rocket in July,” Jackson said.

Jackson says he walked out onto the field and his baseball coach, Hal Baird, asked to speak with him. The coach asked if he had taken a trip to Tampa on Culverhouse’s plane. Bo told his coach that the Bucs told him they had checked and the NCAA had said it was OK to take the trip. The coach responded and said someone with the Buccaneers did not check with the NCAA, and that Jackson was being declared ineligible from college sports.

“I sat down there on the ground and I cried like a baby,” a disappointed Jackson recalled.

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Bo Jackson is an Auburn alumnus. He was on the sidelines celebrating the team’s national championship. Cam Newton was the star player on that team. It’s safe to say that Bo developed quite the hard-on for Cammy over the past year.

Describing Cam’s talents on The Jim Rome Show Thursday, Bo got a tad bit carried away.

“He has the arm strength and power of Dan Marino and John Elway combined,” Bo began. “He is quicker than Michael Vick, faster than Michael Vick. And he will run over you with the power of a Jerome Bettis, Bo Jackson, Earl Campbell. That is the type of guy that he is. There isn’t another quarterback in the NFL that has all of those tangibles.”

With that combination of ability, I’m truly wondering how Cam hasn’t managed to end the fighting in Libya, cure world hunger, and fix the U.S. budget. What can’t Zeus of the gridiron do?

In case you think that’s all a joke, listen to the clip below as passed along by Los That Sports Blog:

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Bo Jackson was always one of my favorite athletes growing up. I had a pair of his Bo Jackson shoes complete with number 34 on them. I had a prized Bo Jackson card that featured him holding a bat above his head while he had shoulder pads on (pictured above). I was a proud member of “Club Bo” — literally, I have the sticker and shirt to prove it. Between his dominant football and baseball abilities, it was hard not to be in awe of his superior athletic abilities. Even though I was a youngster when Bo retired from sports, it’s nice to know I picked a good one as far as favorites go.

Bo has a completely different perspective from most collegiate athletes regarding the role of education in their lives. Reading his comments to the LA Times in a recent interview makes you realize that they don’t make em like Bo anymore. Check out what he said:

I guess you could say I was blessed to see what a lot of kids don’t. A lot of kids don’t realize the gravy train is going to come to an end. They have no formal education, no business sense, no money management skills. They just have to live with that.

I made it a point to learn as much as I could in college, especially because it was free.

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