Somehow, I missed the news that another of my heroes of yesteryear -- Cleveland Brown great Jim Brown -- had passed away last Thursday. When I did learn of that unfortunate news, it started a remembering process.

I had lots of favorites from the sports world when I was growing up. But Jim Brown was very high on the list. I became acquainted with him through a newspaper article that called him one of the world’s most skilled athletes. Not only was he a football star at Syracuse University, but he was a world-class lacrosse player, he ran track and started on the Syracuse basketball team. I had never heard of lacrosse at the time, but since then I’ve heard Brown was called one of the top two or three lacrosse players of all time.

Not long after reading that article, I saw some clips of lacrosse on television, so as with many other subjects, I deemed myself an expert on the sport only to learn later that I didn’t know as much as I thought I did.

When I really became a fan of Jim Brown, however, was while watching the 1956 Cotton Bowl between Syracuse and TCU. It was an amazing game and Brown put up some amazing numbers. I remember he ran for three touchdowns and kicked three extra points-- it was unusual for a running back then to also kick extra points. I see now that his rushing yardage total for the game was 132 yards. The play-by-play announcer, more than likely Lindsey Nelson who often did the Cotton Bowl, kept raving about Brown’s performance. TCU won the game by a point, 28-27, as Brown had one of his extra point attempts blocked. Brown had been named consensus All-American that year and was fifth in the voting for the Heisman Trophy. He rushed for 986 yards during the season--third highest in the nation, despite Syracuse having played only eight games. In the final game of the year, a 61-7 runaway from Colgate, Brown rushed for 197 yards, scored six touchdowns and kicked seven extra points to total 43 points for the game.

He was first-team All-American in lacrosse his senior year after scoring 43 goals in 10 games. Rules were changed after his senior year to make players keep their stick in constant motion while carrying the ball. Brown was quite skilled at holding the stick close to his body while carrying. Besides being in the College Football and NFL Halls of Fame, Brown also has a place in the Lacrosse Hall.

In college, he finished fifth in national decathlon competition and averaged 11.5 and 15 points per game in two years of playing basketball. Obviously, the man was an athlete.

In the 1957 NFL draft, the Cleveland Browns picked him as the overall No. 6 selection. He played all of his career in Cleveland and was so dominate that sportswriters were saying the team name Browns was in honor of him. (Not true, of course. The team name came from coach Paul Brown).

I didn’t always watch NFL on TV, since games were usually on Sunday and my family frowned on watching or listening to sports on Sunday. But I did catch a game or two in which Brown and the Browns were on. He put up record-setting numbers in just about every category, and many of his records stood for years. To this day, he is the only runner in NFL history to average more than 100 yards per game for a career.

Brown chose to retire at age 30 after nine seasons while he was still an effective player. There were always rumors that he would come out of retirement to play again, but it never happened. Actually, before retirement he had accepted a role in the movie “The Dirty Dozen,” and the filming caused him to miss training camp. After hearing that he might be fined for missing the camp, he chose to retire. John Mackey of the Baltimore Colts said that Brown once told him, “Make sure when anyone tackles you, he remembers how much it hurts.” That was Brown’s philosophy of competing. He always got up slowly after being tackled and the TV announcers would speculate whether or not he was hurt. They eventually learned that he did that after every play on purpose, to conserve energy.

He did have an acting career after football and appeared in many movies and a few television shows. He was never described as a “gifted” actor, but did blaze the trail for other African-Americans to get good movie roles. Besides “The Dirty Dozen,” a notable Jim Brown movie was “100 Rifles” which also featured Raquel Welch and Burt Reynolds. Brown got top billing and a love scene with Welch was one of the first interracial love scenes in American film. Both Welch and Brown spoke of their nervousness in doing the scene later and Brown said he felt the pressure that went with doing such a controversial thing.

Jim Brown was known later for being an “activist” about racial matters, and was criticized in some circles for that. He said that his interest in speaking out for racial equality stemmed back to his college days when Syracuse University said up front that it didn’t want black athletes when he was recommended for the school’s lacrosse team. But reluctantly Syracuse offered him a place on both the football and lacrosse teams with a promise for a scholarship in the second half of his freshman year. That promise was never honored and Brown’s education was funded by a private donor that year. He endured racist taunts while at Syracuse and was treated differently in many ways than his white teammates. One difference was that he was not housed in the athletic dorm. That treatment was what spurred Brown to become an activist after his playing days were finished.

Back in the day when the magazine Playgirl was showing nude centerfolds of men, as a commentary on Playboy’s centerfold, Jim Brown was one who agreed to pose. I have never seen a copy of Playgirl, so I didn’t see the Brown centerfold (or Burt Reynold’s for that matter). But I do remember it having been a minor scandal at the time.

Many of the obituaries that I have read since Jim Brown’s death, call him a great football player, but a flawed man. The flawed man connection comes from his having been charged with violence against women several times. He was convicted a time or two, but most of the complaining women later dropped their complaints. The most recent incident was when he was charged with making terroristic threats against his wife, Monique in 1999. Among other deeds, he smashed her car with a shovel. He ignored the sentence of seeking counseling and doing hours of community service and was sentenced to three months in jail. He rejected another offer of satisfying the sentence with community service and served the full three months.

In showing remorse for these events, he said in 2015, “There is no excuse for violence. There is never a justification for anyone to impose themselves on someone else. And it will always be incorrect when it comes to a man and a woman, regardless of what might have happened. You need to be man enough to take the blow. That is always the best way. Do not put your hands on a woman.” There is no doubt that Jim Brown had his problems over the years and as he said, there is no excuse for violence. But as far as calling him a flawed man is concerned, who among us wouldn’t fit that category in one way or another. There is no denying that the man made his impact on the world of sports. For that reason, he will be missed.