Bo Knows, But You Don’t Know Bo.

Bo Jackson: a literal man, myth, and legend. It’s a good thing Bo knows himself because he leaves the rest of us guessing. It’s impossible to capture all the many facets of Bo’s personality, but through the use of key stories and events in his life, you’ll get to know him just a little bit better. For more banger articles like this, make sure to check out more like it here.

Bo Jackson The Mischievous 

Bo, who was actually born Vincent Edward Jackson (named after his mother’s favorite actor, Vincent Edward), was the eighth of 10 children born to Ms. Florence Jackson Bond. Nicknamed “Wild Boar Hog” as a child, Bo gave his mother hell. He was a troublemaker through and through.

“Wild Boar” Jackson was breaking windows, stealing things, and bullying kids. He beat up so many kids that he delegated his bullying to others because he didn’t have enough time to throw hands at everyone. Showing symptoms of the dark triad, Bo outdid himself when he was 13 when he murdered pigs. Not just anyone’s pigs but the town’s Baptist preacher’s pigs. The budding serial killer threw rocks at the pigs with his friends, making bacon out of many of the penned hogs.

Jackson had to pay his portion of the $3,000 loss of profit (did the hogs have gold in them?) by doing odd jobs. Ms. Florence didn’t know what to do with her Wild Boar of a son and asked the pastor for some recommendations. The pastor, in a decidedly unforgiving mindset, suggested that she basically send her kid to The Ranch. Reform school or bust. Bo was like, Oh no, and used athletics to channel that problematic behavior into something productive because he wasn’t trying to be sent away.

At the age of 13, Jackson was playing against grown men in an industrial baseball league in his hometown of Bessemer, Alabama. Whatever it takes, Bo, whatever it takes

Bo The Multi-Star Athlete

Calling back to the athletes of yesteryear, Bo Jackson had that multi-sport athleticism. He’s sort of the Jim Thorpe of the 1980s. While it was typical, even the norm, for NFL players in the 1920s and 30s to play multiple sports, that’s an alien concept today. In this day and age, where kids are specializing in sports in elementary school, the multi-sport approach is almost unheard of.

Jackson excelled at baseball, football, and field and track in college at Auburn University. As a freshman and sophomore, Bo qualified for the NCAA nationals in the 100-meter dash. Deciding that track and field wouldn’t provide the money that baseball or football would, Jackson didn’t pursue the sport as much as he could have. His speed did benefit him on the gridiron.

Bo almost skipped the entire college thing entirely, having been drafted in the MLB in 1982. There was no one that Jackson loved more than his mother, and he promised her he would be the first person in his family to go to a “major” college, so he decided to forego the draft. That choice made differently could have completely changed Bo’s life forever.

Described by a baseball scout as “the best pure athlete in America today,” but citing a lack of baseball experience as a weakness for the young man, Bo’s MLB future was on the rocks. A problem that often occurred with multi-sport athletes back in the day and that plagued Bo Jackson as well was that injuries sustained in one sport would hinder their success in another. Jackson’s football injuries often negatively impacted his ability to get on the diamond in college, thus limiting his experience.

What he lacked in baseball in terms of experience, he more than made up for on the gridiron. Jackson was voted MVP his Sophomore year after Auburn won the Sugar Bowl that year. He repeated that his Junior year, except he was the MVP of the Liberty Bowl this time.

Jackson would snag the Heisman Trophy in his junior year, beating out talent like Chuck Long. At the end of his career, he wrapped up his time with the Tigers nicely by setting a SEC record with his 6.6 yard per carry average.

Bo Jackson, The Father

Jackson’s harrowing hog incident made him a god-fearing man for life. He is a devoted husband to his wife of over 30 years, Linda. He has three children: Garrett, Nicholas, and Morgan. These days, “Wild Boar Hog” prefers to go by “Pop Pop,” as he enjoys being a grandfather.

There’s a story, and like most of the lore surrounding Bo, only he knows if it’s true or not. He says he purposely ejected himself on the day of his daughter’s birth from a baseball game so he could spend the day with his wife and newborn daughter. The statistics suggest this might have happened another day. But the sentiment is good. And shows where Jackson’s priorities are.

Hopefully, baseball allows players to accompany their wives to the hospital when they’re in labor without purposely breaking the rules. Have some respect!

Bo was not above at least threats of corporal punishment back in the day, saying he would smack his kids in the mouth if they ever tried to play football. It wouldn’t surprise me if he landed a few Bessemer blows back in the day; everyone’s parents did.

After all his time off from professional sports in the early 90s, Bo decided spending quality time with his family was better than any multi-million dollar contract, hanging up his cleats for good at age 32. He said it best: “My role as a father is probably the most important thing to me as a man.”

Bo Jackson’s Father

Father who? There’s not much love for AD Adams in the Bo appreciation corner. One family wasn’t good enough for Adams, so he decided to have two on opposite sides of Bessemer. He was married to a woman with kids and would meander over to his lover, Ms. Florence, and his bustle of children there when he felt like it. Bo found a father figure in a much more qualified individual—his track team and football coach in high school, Dick Atchinson. Jackson attributes much of his success to Atchinson in his autobiography.

The author, Jeff Pearlman, wrote “The Last Folk Hero,” attempting to help decode Bo Jackson for us, working with Bo to make sure he captured the essence of the cryptic hero. In an interview, he discussed Bo’s dad a bit more. A story stuck out to Pearlman dating back to Jackson’s college days: Bo was getting his Heisman Trophy in his junior year, and he requested that his parents stand up. Florence stood up shyly, not one to enjoy having all the attention in the room. Then AD Adams stood up and gave a grandiose wave to the crowd. Gross.

Jackson had complicated feelings about his dad and often used the resentment he had over his dad not being present to motivate himself in his athletic endeavors.

Those of us with loving, present fathers may find it difficult to identify with the emotions that Bo Jackson had. Why not forget about this Adams guy? You have a dad worthy of your love, and his name is Coach Atchinson. It’s not that easy; we all have a connection with our biological parents that can’t easily be broken. Bo stuck it to his dad in the best way possible by being the father he never was. And AD? Well, he had to live with himself, and that seems like punishment enough.

Thankfully, Bo’s mother, Ms. Florence, was such an incredible mom, which also fueled his successes. He took care of his mom, buying her a house and taking a hiatus from the Kansas City Royals when she had cancer so that he could dedicate his time to caring for her. He promised his mother that he would get a home run in 1993 for her after his hiatus the year before. She died before he could return to the diamond. On his first at-bat back, he got a home run. He was able to trade a fan for the ball and planned to bronze it and put it on his mama’s dresser.

 Bo The Oakland Raider

Jackson had a unique debut in professional sports. A kind that is rarely seen today but was also commonplace among multi-sport athletes at the beginning of the NFL. Bo is basically a player born 60 years after his time. Of course, most of us, barring a few, wouldn’t want to go back to that era of American history, so maybe it all worked out just right.

Bo was thinking baseball was the way to go towards the end of his collegiate career, viewing the NFL as an unpleasant place to play. A dust-up with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers was something Jackson could never forgive. The owner of the team and Alabama alum, Hugh Culverhouse, courted Bo, paying for an all-expenses-paid private jet trip to Tampa so that Jackson could get to know the team and get a physical.

The college athlete was under the impression that the trip had been cleared by the SEC and NCAA; allegedly, that’s what Culverhouse told him, but this was not the case. A rule dating way back prohibited a player from playing professionally in any sport and playing at the amateur level in that same sport or another. As a result, Bo got the boot his senior year from the baseball team, and he was mad. Zeus’s thunderbolt was released.

Tampa Bay attempted to draft Jackson as the first overall pick in the 1986 draft, offering a five-year, 7.6 million-dollar contract. Bo said over my dead body and signed with the Kansas City Royals instead for much less money. In a bizarre offer only the Raiders would think up, Al Davis offered to extend an NFL contract to the baseball player that he would have in tandem with his MLB career. Bo would play after the baseball season was over, even if that meant he missed football games at the beginning of the season.

Al Davis paid Bo Jackson the most of any non-quarterback NFL player in the league at that time. Davis sweetened the deal by offering $500,000 in bonuses in 1987 and 1988 if Jackson came to play. Bo signed with the Raiders in 1987, remaining a Royal until he retired from football and was traded away from Kansas City at the tail end of the 1990 season.

Bo’s professional career likely had its strongest period from 1989 to 1990. He was nominated for the Pro Bowl in 1990, having had his best season stat-wise in 1989 with 950 rushing yards, a 5.5 per carry average, and four touchdowns. Bo had his own record in the NFL; in 1987, he had the most rushing touchdowns (221) on MNF, just 29 days after his debut in the NFL.

AD Adams must have really pissed off Bo in 1989 because that was also the year he was voted to start for the American League All-Star team and was MVP. He was the second player ever to hit a home run and steal a base in an All-Star game, joining the ranks with Willie Mays. This was also the year of the Wall Run when he literally walked on the wall to avoid a collision with it.

Bo The Injured

At the tail end of the 1990 football season, Bo would have a football career-ending injury when he dislocated his hip on what looked like a tackle with a regular amount of pain involved. You can sort of see his hip pop in the hit. Bo claims he reset it himself, damaging blood vessels and causing a reduction in blood flow to the hip. Doctors found a fractured bone in his hip, loss of the cartilage surrounding the hip joint, and dead bone tissue. Jackson played a little baseball in 1991 in the MLB but then sat out again in 1992 to get his hip replaced.

We can’t say for sure, but Dr. Cody Green suggests that knowledge based on the science we have today would have inspired medical staff to respond faster with surgery. The delay in treatment resulted in the death of bone tissue, which instigated the loss of cartilage and required hip replacement. A replacement sans the necrosis would have been better recovery-wise if he still needed that form of treatment.

Tua Tagovailoa dislocated his hip in 2019, with compounding injuries that Bo Jackson didn’t have. Immediate surgery resulted in a smooth recovery, and his hip obviously works well, as he is the starting QB for the Miami Dolphins. Had that same expedited care happened for Bo, he probably would have still been tearing up the turf.

Bo Jackson Didn’t Know

Much like Scottie, Bo didn’t know. The pro athlete was not aware of CTE and the long-term effects of brain trauma sustained during his football career. Maybe the early end of his career saved him from more extensive brain trauma, and he would be sipping out of a straw right now if not for the hip. Jackson has no regrets about how his life, including his sporting career, turned out.

Hindsight is 2020, and people are apt to say that, of course, football causes brain trauma with long-term effects. It clearly wasn’t so obvious because Bo and many of his teammates had no idea. And as he so eloquently put it, “the people that did know that, they wouldn’t tell anybody.” Bo said he never would have played had he known about the whole developing dementia when he’s still middle-aged thing.

It’s really not that obvious that concussions would lead to your brain turning into a pile of protein. At the time, the science was that your brain healed up just fine in between and that there were no lasting consequences. 90s kids know there was never that much concern when you got a soccer ball to the head and the world went dark (thanks, high school buddy, you know who you are!).

Another thing Bo likely did know but seemingly didn’t pay much attention to and likely didn’t know what to say about was his experience as an African American football player in the 1980s at Auburn. Racism was rampant. Impregnate a white girl when you’re not a white man, and you get booted from the football team.

You might want to take a trip off-campus during “Old South Week,” when a fraternity would get their Confederate flag out and march in a parade as Confederate soldiers. The girlfriends would wear antebellum-style dresses, and they would hire black kids from the community to dress up as slaves and march in the parade with them.

Bo never discussed any of these events. He never dwelled out loud about not being able to join any fraternities because of his race, not that it seemed appealing to join one anyway with their pukey traditions. Jackson never speaks about any of those things and only expresses his love for Auburn.

Obviously, as a star player, he had a little more protection from the hate, but it still couldn’t have been easy. The football team had their own dorm and their own chef, so they were a bit insulated. Regardless, Bo has the right to handle that chapter of his life in any way he chooses, so we just may never know how he feels about it all.

Bo Jackson Today 

If you’re looking for Bo now, you’ll find him in the suburbs of Chicago with his wife. Taking care of his yard, hunting, and doing the grandpa thing. He’s had a long, successful business career post-athletics and is living very comfortably.

He does charity work. He has a charity called “Bo Bikes Bama,” and with the help of many people, including other prestigious athletes like Scottie Pippen and Lance Armstrong, he has raised over a million dollars for the Alabama Governor’s Relief Fund. This money is used in circumstances like post-natural disaster recovery in communities.

The former pro athlete was most recently in the news for his donations to Uvalde, paying for 19 kids’ funerals and two teachers who died in the school shooting. He was quoted by ESPN as saying, “It’s just not right for parents to bury their kids. It’s just not right,” and stating that hard-working families shouldn’t have to shell out thousands of dollars to bury their children in a tragedy that never should have happened in the first place.

So, the world may not know Bo, but we’ve got to get to know him just a little bit better. We should be grateful for all the information Bo Jackson shares with us; he doesn’t have to. There are likely many secrets still left that only Bo knows.