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Message: [QUOTE="JB123, post: 2697902, member: 7203"] A good case can be made for Brown. It really comes down to how lacrosse gets valued. If you treat it like the major sports, that helps him a ton. If you treat it very differently (on the ground that its relative lack of media attention means that fewer great athletes choose to play it as compared with football, baseball, or basketball), then that cuts the other way when comparing him with people like Bo and Deion. Brown was one of the best football players ever, though it's worth noting that he certainly has a lot of competition for the rank of #1 (e.g., Jerry Rice and a bunch of quarterbacks). He was better at his top sport than were the other major contenders for best multi-sport athlete -- much better, in some cases. As for lacrosse, Brown may have been the best player in the nation in his senior year of college. That's a very far cry from "best ever" status, in my view. To be sure, lots of people throw that term around in reference to his lacrosse days; but as great as he was that year, his overall achievements in the sport don't match such lofty statements. This happens a lot with elite multi-sport competitors. Often, people say how amazing they were at their second-best sport, but the numbers tell a somewhat less ecstatic story. Don't get me wrong: Brown was a GREAT lacrosse player. Not being the best ever is obviously no knock on him whatsoever. I think a fair assessment of his achievements would be something like the following. He was one of the greatest players ever in a major sport (football), probably the best player in the nation during his senior year of college in another sport (lacrosse), and a quality college athlete in track and basketball. How that stacks up to Thorpe, Jackson, Sanders, et al. is a topic on which reasonable minds can differ. [/QUOTE]

Verification: First name of men's bb coach