In early 1986, Bo Jackson was the best athlete in America, and everyone knew it.
He'd just won the Heisman Trophy. He was hitting over .400 for Auburn's baseball team. NFL scouts were already calling him a generational talent. So when the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, holding the No. 1 pick in that year's draft, wanted to bring him in for a visit, owner Hugh Culverhouse sent his private jet and promised Jackson the trip wouldn't cost him anything.
It cost him everything.
The NCAA ruled the flight an improper benefit. Jackson's college baseball career was over before he ever agreed to play a single down for Tampa Bay. He believed it wasn't a mistake he believed it was a setup, a way to force him onto the football field by taking baseball away from him.
So when the Buccaneers drafted him first overall anyway, he told them plainly: don't bother. They offered him $7.6 million over five years the richest rookie contract in NFL history at the time. He turned it down and signed a minor league baseball contract worth a fraction of that, choosing bus rides and small crowds over a team that had lied to him.
People called it irrational. Jackson didn't see it that way. Some things, he believed, mattered more than money.
A year and a half later, on his 25th birthday, he stepped onto the field for the Los Angeles Raiders a team that let him play both sports against a Seattle linebacker who'd publicly promised to shut him down. Jackson took a handoff, stiff-armed a defender to the turf, and outran the entire Seattle defense for a 91-yard touchdown that carried him straight into the stadium tunnel. He finished the night with 221 rushing yards, a record that still stands today.
Then baseball season came, and he did it all over again playing outfield and hitting a 448-foot home run in the same All-Star Game, on his way to being named MVP.
To this day, Bo Jackson remains the only athlete in American professional sports history named an All-Star in two major leagues.
His career ended earlier than anyone wanted, cut short by injury in 1991. But the story people still tell isn't really about the speed or the records. It's about the year he refused to let anyone buy back his integrity and turned out to be right.
-Fabulous Lovers Of Weird Everything
🚨BREAKING: Gene Simmons has delivered a strong and unapologetic message on immigration and patriotism.
The KISS co-founder and legal immigrant from Israel stated:
"If you don't like America, please go back to where you f@king came from."
He continued:
"250 years of telling the world if they don't like it, f@ck off. This is the greatest country... I myself am an immigrant, but a legal one. I came through the lawful way. You wait in line, you respect the country, respect its laws, and then you become a citizen of the United States of America."
🚨 PRINCE WARNED US ABOUT COMPUTERS IN 1999 — 27 YEARS LATER HIS WORDS ARE FREAKING PEOPLE OUT
Prince said something in 1999 that hits completely different now.
“Don’t be fooled by the internet. It’s cool to get on the computer, but don’t let the computer get on you. It’s cool to use the computer, don’t let the computer use you.”
He brought up The Matrix and added: “There is a war going on with battlefields in the mind, and the prize is the soul. So just be careful. Very careful.”
That same year he also warned that media-driven fear is damaging to people’s health and suggested turning the television off for a day or even a full week.
Decades later the clip is circulating again and a lot of people are saying the man saw exactly where this was headed.
Was Prince just being artistic… or did he actually understand the trap before almost anyone else?
Bill Maher ERUPTS on Francesca Hong’s claim that she never wanted to cancel Thanksgiving.
“I DON’T BELIEVE YOU! ... You meant it... she hates all holidays.”
Then he dropped the receipts:
“Democrats have found a candidate who hates Thanksgiving and wants to get rid of it. Yes. Running for governor in Wisconsin, Francesca Hong. Have you heard about this? Yeah. Thanksgiving, she says, 'should be canceled.'”
“Of course, yesterday she went on CNN, renounced it. I DON’T BELIEVE YOU! ... We know what you said. You mean it... You know why I know she meant it? Because she hates all holidays."
"She talked about feeling attacked on Christmas when someone put on her computer a Christmas scene.
“Doesn’t like fireworks, Fourth of July.”
“Halloween, all the far lefties hate Halloween (cultural appropriation).”
“This woman doesn’t like Valentine’s Day... She said, ‘Valentine’s Day, the holiday that brings out the worst of humanity.’”
[Mahers face drops]
“That’s the holiday that brings out the worst of humanity?! Have you ever been to a Black Friday sale?”
Here's Hong's deleted Thanksgiving tweet that she says she doesn't mean anymore:
“Cancel Thanksgiving. Should have done this in 1621. If it takes a worldwide pandemic for us to realize we should stop celebrating colonialism and the original superspreader event that killed indigenous folx and women, so be it.”
Do you believe her?