That time Bo Jackson lost in the Cotton Bowl, reporting on your own personal folks heroes and the legend of Buck Wilson

Sometimes, books just seem to leap out at me. 

I’m a habitual buyer of books. I read a bunch of them too, but it would take me a very long time to run out of new things to read. Occasionally, I’ll purchase a book and it’ll sit on a shelf for years before I open it. Then there are the ones I have to crack open as soon as I get home. Or before I get home, at a coffee shop or a park or a stoplight. 

I don’t know exactly what prompts me to disrupt the carefully constructed order of my “to be read” list. I do know reading for me, first and foremost, is a tactile experience. The weight of the book, the feel of the cover (paperback, always), the texture of the pages. 

Jeff Pearlman’s “The Last Folk Hero: The Life and Myth of Bo Jackson” is one such book. It found its way into my hands after I found my way into a Macon bookstore last weekend (no idea how I got there). And it wormed its way to the top of my list, casually relegating NK Jemisin’s “The Fifth Season” to backup “currently reading” status. 

I’m only about halfway through it, but Pearlman is a great storyteller. And he has a great story to tell. Bo Jackson is enigmatic. He is, as Pearlman argues (building on a comment from journalist Joe Posnanski, whose book “The Baseball 100” I also devoured) the last athlete to rise to prominence before ESPN and smart phones and streaming services turned “You’re not going to believe this” and “you had to be there” into, well… you do believe it, because you just saw the replay.

I didn’t watch Bo Jackson play football or baseball, but he was firmly entrenched in ‘90s pop culture — bowling over defenders in the video game Tecmo Bowl, reminding kids to drink milk as part of the “Grow with Bo” campaign. The image that sticks out to me the most is from the “Bo Knows” Nike ad campaign. Jackson poses in shoulder pads, a bat across his shoulders, all muscles and intensity. Who could be cooler than a guy who runs past Bruce Smith and throws out Harold Reynolds at home plate?

The most personal piece of Bo Jackson mythology, though, is a round, maroon Christmas ornament that still makes its way onto my parents’ Christmas tree. My folks met at Texas A&M in the 1980s, and the ornament celebrates the Aggies’ 36-16 Cotton Bowl victory over Jackson (fresh off of a Heisman Trophy victory) and his Auburn Tigers on Jan. 1, 1986. My dad still talks about the day his Aggies defeated Bo by 20 points with pride.

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If you talk with a veteran sports reporter, particularly one who covers high school sports, they’ll tell you about their own folk heroes. Athletes who stuck out from the seemingly endless parade of Friday night football games in poorly lit stadiums and basketball matches in humid field houses. Kids who had “it,” something special, something that made sportswriters and coaches and other players sit up and pay attention. Those kinds of athletes are rare. When you get to write about them, you remember it. 

Decades later, you tell other sportswriters and parents and heck anyone who will listen about the track star who turned into an NFL wide receiver or the softball player who led her team to a College World Series title. The greatest ones, it seems, never actually make it big. They struggle with injuries or family situations or the general unfairness of life.

Former Norman Transcript sports editor Clay Horning has the requisite list on hand, off the top of his head: Marcus Dickinson, a Norman North High basketball star who played at Boise State (“the best high school player I think North’s ever had,” Horning writes, and Trae Young played for North); soccer player Mauro Cichero; Norman High running back Donovan Roberts who committed to Arkansas but couldn’t make it at the college level; Woodward High’s Chad Mead, a football and baseball star who threw for OU one season but couldn’t stick.

I was never a full-time sports reporter, but I covered my fair share of high school, college and professional games. I can remember several athletes who had “it” — I saw Tyrone Swoopes bulldoze competitors for Whitewright (Texas) High School; I watched linebacker Danny Mason lead Division II in tackles per game for East Texas A&M; I covered Kyler Murray playing outfield for the University of Oklahoma (Murray looked good, but the best player that day was Steele Walker, who spent six season in the minors but could never break through).

But the high school athlete I was the most impressed with? That would be Commerce (Texas) High School’s Buck Wilson. Wilson was a stud wide receiver, he played baseball, he was a track star. He was fast… so fast. When he jumped, you’d think he was about to fly. He even carried himself like a future star: a casual stride, confident but not cocky. 

Wilson attended East Texas A&M in his hometown and had a fantastic career, graduating as the Lions’ all-time leader in kick return yards while scoring 20 touchdowns and helping the Lions win the 2017 Division II championship. Buck Wilson isn’t returning kicks Sunday afternoons for the Cowboys, but I think he could have. 

Don’t believe me? You had to be there.

Caleb Slinkard is the managing editor of The Macon Melody. Email him at caleb@maconmelody.com.