Dawgs By Nature
The gesture would symbolize just how remarkable JB was
The passing of Jim Brown in May of last year was indeed a sad day for every diehard NFL fan. It also provided an opportunity.
The National Football League (NFL) can now memorialize arguably one of the greatest players ever to set foot on any NFL football field.
The NFL should retire Brown’s #32 jersey – leaguewide. Yes, every team.
This was the suggestion of former Cleveland Browns offensive guard John Wooten back in February of 2024. Wooten was not only a teammate of Jim Brown who blocked for the talented runner, the two were best friends.
Wooten made the suggestion in a podcast interview with journalist Lenny Moon on LennyMoonSports.com.
On the podcast, Wooten stated:
“There is no greater football player that has ever played in this league than Jim Brown. And therefore, I am asking publicly and privately to the NFL, to retire his number similar to what Major League Baseball did for one of my greatest heroes Jackie Robinson.”
Yahoo! Sports, cleveland.com, and the Akron Beacon-Journal picked up the story. In mid-September former New England Patriots head coach Bill Belichick made the same suggestion on the SiriusXM podcast “Let’s Go!” speaking to Charles Barkley.
The idea is an exceptional one. MLB has retired the #42 jersey for Robinson with every club. The NBA retired Bill Russell’s #6 leaguewide while the NHL retired Wayne Gretzky’s #99.
Currently, only three NFL teams have the number 32 retired: Browns (Jim Brown), New York Football Giants (Al Blozis), and the Pittsburgh Steelers (Franco Harris).
Wooten and Brown would formulate a lifelong bond and became roommates on road games and at the hotel in Cleveland the night before home games. Brown died May 18, 2023, at age 87.
Jim Brown was taken by Cleveland head coach Paul Brown in the 1957 NFL draft with the sixth overall pick. Coach Brown was looking for the replacement of his long-standing quarterback Otto Graham and coveted signal-callers Len Dawson of Purdue and Stanford’s John Brodie. But each was taken before the Browns picked, so Coach Brown “settled” on Jim Brown out of Syracuse.
Jim Brown would win the league MVP as a rookie – an event that had never occurred and hasn’t happened since. Let that one sink in for a second.
He played just nine seasons but led the league in rushing yards in eight of his nine years in the NFL, won three league MVP awards, named 8-Time First Team All-Pro along with a long list of other accolades throughout his career. He was voted to the 50th, 75th, and 100th NFL Anniversary All-Time Teams and went to the Pro Bowl all nine seasons.
As Jim Brown was set to attend Browns’ training camp in the summer of 1966 after being voted as the league MVP once again, he was on location shooting the major film “The Dirty Dozen” in England which had run over two weeks because of inclement weather. Jim Brown...
