His myth fully crystallized on a Monday night, on the last day of November 1987, when Bo was a rookie running back for the Los Angeles Raiders, a two-sport athlete sharing time in the backfield with a Hall of Famer named Marcus Allen. Bo took a handoff and Bo parted the entire Seattle defense and then Bo -- How does one even describe this method of propulsion? Glided? Propelled? Teleported? -- 91 yards down the sideline, and then Bo kept on running until he disappeared into a tunnel in the bowels of Seattle's Kingdome. The sound of Bo running past him, former Seahawks receiver Steve Largent said, was like nothing he had ever heard before.
For a moment, Bo was gone, out of the picture entirely, prompting ABC analyst Dan Dierdorf to proclaim to a TV audience that Bo "might not stop until Tacoma." When Bo emerged from that tunnel, and when he lowered his shoulder and toppled a cocky young linebacker named Brian Bosworth on a short touchdown run later that evening, and finished the night with 221 yards, nothing was ever the same. Bo was on his way to becoming an icon, both physically and commercially, a man who could do anything he wanted on any field of play, a man who made a fortune for embodying that Nike catchphrase concocted by a copywriter in Portland, Ore.: Bo Knows.
With those two words, Bo Jackson helped usher sports into the modern age.
GREAT piece on one of the best athletes of all time
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