“Richard, are you going middle-age crazy on us?” That question was put to me by a friend named Debra Drueple at an Austin Runners Club picnic in the summer of 1989. She had good reason for asking because I was sporting a new and fairly uncharacteristic hairstyle, one in which three grooves were shaved on both sides of my head, curving down behind the ears. My purpose in having done so was to recognize/honor/ape Brian Bosworth, who had come up with such a look—except his grooves were multicolored: red, yellow and blue. Now that, I should have told Debra, would constitute middle-age crazy.
Bosworth, a.k.a. “the Boz,” was quite a character. He hailed from the Dallas area but scorned my alma mater, choosing instead to enroll at the University of Oklahoma. Up in Norman, he did rather well. Bosworth was a star linebacker for the Sooners from the very beginning. He was a good player, a great player who made ferocious tackles, created turnovers, ran from sideline to sideline and intimidated opponents, including more than a few guys in orange (UT). The Boz was a wild-eyed rebel; sportswriters loved him because he was a font of colorful, provocative quotes. The hairstyle I imitated in ’89 did not last long with him. He was always onto something new. Even so, it is worth pointing out that he was no dumb jock. Bosworth majored in information system management at OU and made excellent grades.
He was a consensus all-American in 1985 and 1986, and won the Butkus Award (for the nation’s best linebacker) both seasons. College Football News listed him among its top 100 players of all time, and Sports Illustrated had him on its all-century team. Bosworth stood 6′ 2″, weighed 240 pounds, and had played at the highest level of the sport, at least as an amateur. What he did as a professional was another matter, however. Since Bosworth appeared to have all the bonafides, the Seattle Seahawks took him in the first round of the 1987 NFL draft. They did so although he had missed his final game with OU, in the Orange Bowl against Arkansas. The NCAA had suspended him after he was caught using steroids.
Before going any further, it behooves me to ask just how legitimate Bosworth’s college football career had been. To what extent was it chemically aided? I once saw a photo of him as a high school athlete and compared it with him during his freshman year at Oklahoma. The difference was so stark that he barely resembled himself. The muscles, the speed, the attitude, I began to wonder where they had come from.
The Boz’ NFL career, if it may be called that, brought him little but ridicule. He barely lasted two seasons and had to retire because his body was falling apart—a tell-tale sign of steroid usage. His most famous play came in a 1987 game against the Los Angeles Raiders when Bo Jackson steamrolled him on a short touchdown run. It appeared that many people took pleasure in seeing Bosworth humiliated in such a fashion. In 2004, ESPN writers compiled a list of the top 25 busts of the previous 25 years (in all sports), and our boy Brian came in sixth.
He has been out of the limelight for a long time now. The Boz tried making it as a thespian—that is, performing in low-brow “action” movies. Reviews of his work on the silver screen were not kind. Nevertheless, he has been a real-life hero twice. In 2008, he helped rescue a woman whose car had rolled over. The following year, he administered cardiopulmonary resuscitation to a fallen man in a parking lot before medical help arrived. That impresses me. He has also shown some genuine remorse for the many outrageous and foolish things he said and did in the 1980s. Few would have expected to find Bosworth, a divorced father of three, working as a real estate agent, but that is exactly what he does these days to earn a living.
The College Football Hall of Fame has so far seen fit to deny him admission. In fact, although he has been eligible for many years he has not even come close to getting enough votes. The things he did as a player at OU from 1984 to 1986, briefly stated above, were such that his membership in the Hall would seem to be a certainty. While I do not gainsay the voters’ perceptions, it is a fact that Bosworth made a lot of enemies during his football career. He also, to one degree or another, is regarded as having benefited greatly from the use of performance-enhancing drugs.
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