Count on more two-sport stars like Bo or Deion
Posted: Sunday, January 27, 2008 2:44 PM
While I was in Eugene to call the UCLA-Oregon men's basketball tilt, I started thinking about Dennis Dixon, the terrific Oregon quarterback whose knee injury late in the season knocked the Ducks from the BCS Rose Bowl derby.
Dixon also plays baseball in the summer. He was a fifth-round draft pick of Atlanta and played for Danville at the Single-A level last year. I drove by Autzen Stadium, Dixon’s football home, and the question jumped out at me: could we have another Bo Jackson or Deion Sanders, could we have more two-sport major leaguers?
The hurdles are obvious. There's the overlap of seasons, which is now worse than ever as pro football has introduced a new acronym, the OTA (organized team activity) as a means of keeping players on the job 11 months a year. There's also the growing rebellion in football against the “divas,” who turn the focus on themselves, and the unceasing physical toll of the game.
I thought of Sanders. Which NFL team was willing to take him on in the prime of his baseball run and accept his mid-season arrival? It was the San Francisco 49ers in 1994. They were coached by George Seifert, but clearly cast in the Bill Walsh mold -- a team with a remarkably strong locker room and a veteran presence that could handle the arrival of a “diva.”
The baseball strike of that year helped as Sanders was able to play 14 of 16 games and the 49ers won the Super Bowl. There was some postseason backlash when Jerry Rice openly complained about so much of the focus being on Sanders rather than on the team. But RIce and his teammates all received rings.
So there in lies the dilemma: does a team accept the tradeoffs made in taking on a two-sport player for a better chance to win?
If there were to be another two-sport star, it would be a player with outstanding speed. That is the most sought after quality in football (see Ohio State's Ted Ginn now with the Miami Dolphins and watch where California's DeSean Jackson is drafted this April) and the most difficult quality to find in baseball. As one baseball general manager told me a few years back, “speed plays football.”
Take a gifted player who can run. Toss in the possibility that he is an African-American athlete. In this era when baseball is working hard to maintain a connection with the black community, could a team truly walk away from such a player if he also had an option to play pro football?
It would have to be a real star of a player, someone of the Bo-Deion ilk. Look at those athletes who in recent years have been forced to choose between professional baseball and professional football: Drew Henson, Chad Hutchinson, Chris Weinke, Jeff Samardzija, and Joe Mauer all were paid well for exclusivity but none had enough star power to control their destiny.
I do believe we will see others like Deion or Bo, but they will have to be such super athletes that they are known by their first names. Those whose star power outweighs all because we are still in an America where a name on a marquee rules.
