Browns plan Jim Brown statue on 80th birthday, despite checkered past

On Jim Brown’s 80th birthday, 50 years after his playing days ended, the Cleveland Browns announced that they plan to erect a statue in his honor and in his likeness outside FirstEnergy Stadium.

It’s hard to believe he doesn’t have one there already. And it’s hard to believe that hardly anyone remembers the slew of allegations against him for acts of physical violence toward women.

Brown is remembered as perhaps the best football player to ever live, even though few of this generation ever saw him play live, as one who stepped away from the game too soon. He’s not often remembered as the man who was accused by multiple women of violence against them, nor as the man who was arrested in 1999 for hitting his wife.

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The most serious charges against Brown over the years were either dropped or he was acquitted, so that’s an important part of the story. He has served as a mentor to younger players and is employed by the team to do so. New head coach Hue Jackson said he’d be crazy not to listen to Brown as a sounding board.

So there are a lot of reasons why Brown, the Browns’ best player ever and one of the finest in league history, should be honored by the franchise. His 12,312 rushing yards, nine Pro Bowls in nine years and Hall of Fame membership are the biggest ones.

But it also raises a fascinating question about legacies. Brown played in a different era and those stories have not stuck with him. But Ray Rice, Greg Hardy and others have become the faces of a new era of domestic violence intolerance, and Peyton Manning — he of the almost sterling reputation — had people rethinking him in light of the dusted-off allegations of 20 years ago when he was a college sophomore.

There likely will be a statue somewhere of Manning one day — in Indianapolis, Denver or, heck, even Knoxville — and it likely will be deserving for him, too. And though it would be virtually impossible and perhaps unrealistic to expect our athletic heroes to be angelic figures in all aspects of their lives, it’s often fascinating to see some treated differently even with similar charges brought against them.

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Eric Edholm is a writer for Shutdown Corner on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at [email protected] or follow him on Twitter! Follow @Eric_Edholm