Jim Brown might be the greatest running back to ever play football, but he's the greatest mystery to kids of today.
At least, that is, to Clemson players.
Tigers coach Dabo Swinney told reporters Tuesday he has been anxiously anticipating Saturday's road game at Syracuse so he could name Tigers longsnapper Jim Brown as a team captain. But when he told the team, Swinney said, they didn't get the connection.
"I've been waiting all year to name Jim Brown as the captain for the Syracuse game. When I said that to the team yesterday, they were all just looking at me like ... I got nothing. Crickets," Swinney said when he met with the media on Tuesday. "... I said 'We've got our own Jim Brown,' and they're all going (blank). Is that not sad? That is sad. That is just sad beyond explanation that arguably the greatest running back of all time, they don't even know who he is. The only Jim Brown they know is the long snapper at Clemson."
When Clemson's oldest players were born, Brown -- who is in both the Pro Football Hall of Fame and the College Football Hall of Fame -- was somewhere around 57 years old.
So it's not as though they should, could, or would be able to remember the former Syracuse and Cleveland Browns' powerful rusher. To whatever extent college football players should know their college football history, Swinney's squad has some learning to do. But if they don't know who Jim Brown is, it begs other questions.
Could the average college player name the Green Bay Packers as winners of Super Bowl I? Or name some of the NFL's past dynasties, like the 1970s-era Pittsburgh Steelers? The guess here is no, and no.
Would they recognize other star names of the past like Johnny Unitas, Dick Butkus or Jim Thorpe? Probably so, because college football has a prestigeous individual award named for each of those.
So until a widely recognized award is named for Brown, a history lesson will have to suffice.
*Follow Chase Goodbread on Twitter **@ChaseGoodbread*.
