Jim thorpe game

I was not wise in the ways of the world and did not realize this was wrong, and that it would make me a professional in track sports, although I learned from the other players that it would be better for me not to let anyone know that I was playing and for that reason I never told anyone at the school about it until today. Sullivan rejected the plea and stripped Thorpe of his amateur status, then controlled by the AAU.

This affair caused some puzzlement in Stockholm. The official Olympic report reveals uncertainty about the proper procedure, since, as it emerged only 70 years later, the deadline for challenging the results of the Games had long passed.

But Warner presented them with a fait accompli. The harsh action against Thorpe looks also like a case of damage control and cover-up. It also set a precedent for an extreme interpretation of amateurism, which was not at all settled at the time and which now has been completely abandoned. This version held that an Olympic competitor should not have received any compensation at any time for any sport, even one unrelated to his event, or for a line of work related to sports.

The great Native Hawaiian swimmer and surfer George Freeth, mentor of Duke Kahanamoku, was excluded from the Olympics because he worked as a lifeguard. This principle would seem quaint now, if it were not so vicious. This version of amateurism was said to be modeled on English upper-class sportsmanship, and that is the tip-off. The English rules were overtly designed to keep lower and middle classes from competing with the aristocracy.

Kelly, Sr. Kelly went on to win three gold medals, in the and Olympics, even though he had previously played professional football.

Historians would say that this doctrine of amateurism was a case of status anxiety, a means of protecting privilege against a rising class challenge.

When the newspaper scandal broke around Thorpe, the unwashed masses remained strongly on his side. Many editorials defended him and ridiculed the AAU.

As a major box office draw, he helped put professional football on its feet. He served as first president of the forerunner of the National Football League. Thorpe was a main reason pro sports are now so deeply a part of American life. Although Thorpe himself remained stoic and rarely complained about the loss of his Olympic medals, his friends were furious. The results were devastating to Carlisle. The Bureau of Indian Affairs dispatched an investigator, E.

Linnen, who wrote a thorough, and thoroughly hostile, report. A special joint investigation committee of Congress descended unannounced on the campus and held a week of public hearings on location. But the prime target was the athletic program. The extensive national touring of the team had been highly profi table. The heads of the teaching departments resented the priority given football and secondarily, the marching band.

Student suspicions of corruption, however, were largely unfounded. Football receipts paid for the erecting and refurbishing of fi ve buildings, including a separate dormitory for athletes, the print shop and the art department. Linnen emphasized, however, that it was a violation of federal law for the athletic corporation to keep control of its profits; all earnings were supposed to be turned over to the school.

The most startling accusation, however, was that the student players themselves had received payments. Linnen listed several large checks used to pay cash to football players. Some scholars through the years have cited this statement to justify the IOC action against Thorpe.

When he finds the time he golfs, skis and enjoys live music. Follow him on Twitter JimHamill. Contact information: jhamill poconos. Tuesday, February 8, at 8 p. Sunday, February 20, at 10 a. He is enshrined in the Pro Football Hall of Fame, as well as several other halls of fame: college football, U. Olympic teams, and national track and field. Tragedy stalked him, beginning shortly after his Olympic triumph: half a year later, the International Olympic Committee stripped him of his gold medals for a minor infraction of its rules.

Four years after his Olympic gold medals were unfairly taken from him, Thorpe suffered an even greater tragedy when his beloved first child, Jim Jr. The boy was only three years old.

It was the first of two divorces Thorpe would suffer. He tried to play sports for as long as his body could stand the grind, but finally, in at the age of 41, Jim Thorpe hung up his cleats for good. What followed were years of misfortune. He never again held a steady job. Alcoholism damaged his health. Despite his third wife trying to make money by promoting Thorpe on a lecture circuit, his finances bottomed out. He had to be accepted as a charity case when he was hospitalized for lip cancer in After suffering his third heart attack, the year-old Jim Thorpe died in his trailer home in Lomita, California, on 28 March After his Olympic gold medals were returned to his family in , the Knight-Ridder News Service produced a two-part newspaper series describing the life of Jim Thorpe, including all the highs and lows.

The replicas are meant to take the place of the medals Thorpe won in the Olympics, medals the IOC took away when it learned Thorpe played semi-pro baseball two summers while attending Carlisle College.

They made their decision and stuck to it, stubbornly, for 70 years. Their ruling cast a shadow over Jim Thorpe, a shadow that followed the great Indian athlete to his death in a California house trailer in and lingers even now. Still, it is doubtful the scars ever will heal. Jim Thorpe was arguably the greatest athlete who ever lived. He set Olympic decathlon records that stood for four decades. He outdistanced Red Grange and Bronko Nagurski in the voting for top football player of the half-century Thorpe was all of that, yet his life was filled with pain.

Three marriages, poverty, drink. He was at once a triumphant and tragic figure. His father was Hiram P. Thorpe, the son of Hiram G. She gave her first-born son the name Wa-tho-huck, which meant Bright Path. It proved to be prophetic. The boy grew up fast and strong. At 8, he bagged his first deer. At 10, he was hiking 30 miles through the woods with his father.

At 15, he could rope and break a wild stallion faster than any man on the reservation. Young Jim happily would have stayed in Oklahoma and worked the land, but his father had other ideas. Hiram Thorpe had heard of this Indian school in faraway Carlisle, Pa. The school was founded by a U. Cavalry officer, Lt. In , Hiram Thorpe enrolled his son in Carlisle.

I want you to show other races what an Indian can do. At the time, there were 1, students at Carlisle, ranging in age from 10 to They spent half the day in the classroom learning to read and write, the other half in the shop learning a trade.

Thorpe started in tailoring, then, like many students, he was sent out to live and work with white families in the area. He spent two years on a farm in Robbinsville, N. Thorpe returned to Carlisle in So he hung around and watched. One day, the track team was practicing the high jump. Thorpe came by in his overalls and work shoes. He cleared the bar on his first jump. No warm-up, no nothing. Warner informed Thorpe he had high-jumped 5 feet, 9 inches, breaking the school record.

I was on the track team. One month later, Thorpe entered five events in the Pennsylvania Intercollegiate Meet and placed first in all five: the high and low hurdles, the high and broad jumps and the hammer throw. He had no formal training, his form was crude, yet he won easily.

Well, almost nothing. He considered Thorpe too valuable as a trackman to risk losing him with a football injury. Thorpe kept after Warner until the coach agreed to take him on as a kicking specialist. Every day at practice, Thorpe asked the coach to let him run with the ball. Fifty yards. So Thorpe did it again.

They bounced off and shriveled up behind him, like bacon on a hot griddle. For four seasons, Thorpe and the Carlisle Indians were unstoppable.

They won 43 games, lost five and tied two. Jim Thorpe ran up numbers that even now, 70 years later, boggle the mind. In his final season, he led the nation with points.

He scored 25 touchdowns and averaged 9 yards every time he touched the ball. Thorpe was 6-foot, pounds, with 9. He had the physical gifts to be a great running back in any era. He was a s All-American turned loose in the s. The Indian just had something better than all of them. The first was the win over Harvard in , a game in which Thorpe, playing on a bad ankle, drop-kicked four field goals, including two from 48 yards out, to win it.

The following year, Thorpe ran wild in a upset of Army. I never knew a player who could penetrate a line as Thorpe could, nor did I know a player who could see holes as well. He could knock off a tackler, stop short and turn past another, ward off still another and escape the entire pack.

Olympic team. Thorpe had never heard of the Olympic Games until Warner told him about them. Warner told Thorpe this was his chance to compete against the best athletes in the world.

Thorpe said that sounded like fun.