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Fullback Post Open With Retirement of 9-Year Star
By William N.
Wallace
On a movie set
at Elsree, England, yesterday, Jim Brown confirmed his retirement from pro
football.
On a College campus at Hiram, Ohio, four all but anonymous
athletes named Charley Scales, Randy Schultz, Jamie Caleb, and Charlie
Harraway became conversation pieces.
The Cleveland Browns are in training at Hiram College and for the
moment are these four are the candidates to succeed Brown.
He was a fullback who never missed a game in nine years, who
led the National Football League in rushing eight times, who carried the ball
an average of 20 times every Sunday afternoon in a season and who gained
12,312 yards, far more than anyone else who ever played professional
football.
Shultz is a rookie from Iowa State Teachers College: XXXXXXX
Modell Considers Trade
“We might make a deal,” said Art Modell, the team president
who denied Brown the priveledge of playing in a movie this summer instead of
practicing football.
Modell, who was in New York on Wednesday with Brown’s
retirement letter in his pocket, had just come from Hiram. “I told our coaches,” he said, “that I did
not want a defeated attitude. We are
going to go without Jim and we are going to win again. We have the players who can do it.”
The Browns won the Eastern Conference title the last two
seasons, but there are a few authorities around who believe they can win a
third championship without Big Jim.
When Brown left for London in late April to join the cast of
the movie “The Dirty Dozen,” he set a collision
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course with Modell,
the small but peppery president of the Browns.
Jim did not disclose his plans and his last contact with
the Browns had been in late January.
Filming of the movie, originally set to take four months
beginning April 1, started a month late and immediately fell further behind
schedule. It is now expected to be
completed at the end of September.
Brown was
aware of the possibility of delays and he had hoped that Modell would
excuse him from training camp. In
mid June, the Browns president said that he would be suspended and fined if
he failed to report to camp by July 17, the starting date for the
regulars. Brown’s response was to retire.
This season, he had said earlier, was to be his last in
any event. He is 30 years old with
a magnificent physique and physically capable of continuing in football for
several more years.
Would he reconsider when the movie was complete? “No,” he
said in Elstree. “The decision is final.”
Paramount Pictures is reported to have signed Brown for
three additional films. Jim
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Brown for three additional
films. Jim added, “My ambition is
to devote time to the National Negro Industrial and Economic Union which
stresses participation of Negroes in the American Economy.”
Brown formed the union a year ago and has recruited
several athletes to help. “We’re
trying to instill a sense of pride in the 22 million Negroes in the
country,” he said. “This is a
self-help type of program.
“By using Negro dollars collectively, we hope to be able
to make loans to qualified applicants, set up clinics and give guidance to
young Negroes.”
Brown is a vice president and a 10 per cent owner of Main
Bout, Inc, a promotional firm that handled the ancillary rights for Cassius
Clay’s recent fights with George Chuvalo and Henry Cooper. Some believe that Brown next fall will
take on the active management of Clay, with whom he has a personal
friendship.
Brown is giving up a salary estimated at $80,000, the
highest in pro football history. He
had one year left to go on his contract.
He is receiving $40,000 for his role in “The Dirty Dozen.”
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