If there were ever a “boxscore doesn’t tell the whole story” athlete, it’s Bo Jackson.

The Auburn legend changed what we thought was possible. His physical feats at his size were unmatched. Unfortunately in an era that didn’t have YouTube, social media or even the 24-7 sports news cycle we live in today, Bo is only appreciated by those who lived during the 2-sport sensation’s abbreviated time atop the pop culture world.

The highly-regarded ESPN 30 for 30 “You Don’t Know Bo” sheds light on why he was unique. He was someone who, as many suggest in the documentary, had as much God-given physical ability as an athlete we’ve ever seen. Director Michael Bonfiglio explained how “for a very brief period in time, Bo was one of the most famous people in the country, and even the world.”

But Bo wasn’t a showman like Magic Johnson, nor did he have a Hall of Fame NFL career like Emmitt Smith. You won’t find Bo among the all-time leaders in any NFL or MLB record books. He had 2,782 career rushing yards and 16 touchdowns in the NFL and he was a career .250 hitter who once led the league in strikeouts.

So why does this generation need to know about him? This doc explains it all.

“There are stars, and there are superstars. Then there was Bo Jackson.”

Why did I choose this doc?

I don’t know Bo. Really. All I know are the stories and YouTube clips that I’ve seen. My only faint memories of him during his playing days came when he was past his prime playing for the Chicago White Sox (which I’m pretty sure was just because he was on the White Sox in the Sega Genesis game “Frank Thomas’ Big Hurt Baseball”). Again, I was born in 1990 and I spent the majority of my life living in the suburbs of Chicago.

My dad didn’t grow up telling me about how great Bo was. If anything, I’d hear him say “Bo Knows.” Whether it had to do with the Bo, I couldn’t tell you. I imagine for most of the people reading this, that wasn’t the case.

I felt like this doc was important to show my generation, who was more NFL Blitz/Madden than Tecmo Bowl, just how much of a unicorn he was. Our generation would’ve loved Bo for the viral sensation he would’ve been.

His dual-sport dominance aged like a fine wine. Like, can you imagine how the internet would talk about a human being who many thought was on his way to a Hall of Fame career in 2 sports? Take Bo’s career and drop it into 2020. Could he have been a bigger star? Probably, though as this doc outlined, his Nike marketing campaign was second to none. That was louder than Bo, who was just a quiet guy who liked to hunt and had some once-in-a-century physical gifts. (Can you believe he hated training?) I think more about how his football career could’ve been extended with modern medicine. That’s what bums me out the most.

This doc, which I’ve seen roughly half a dozen times, does such a great job illustrating how the “what-if” added to his legacy. Watching this back, I wish that what-if didn’t exist and he could have stayed healthy like Herschel Walker. Selfishly, I wish that I could at least have some memories of watching Bo live.

I don’t know Bo, but this doc certainly makes me feel like I did.

3 things I liked

1. The comic book graphics

I’m admittedly not a comic book guy. Sorry, the “Marvel” movies don’t excite me. I don’t dislike them, but they’re just not my thing.

For this doc, though, the comic book graphics were perfect. That’s what Bo was portrayed as — a superhero. Bonfiglio said “he’s really the closest thing we’ve ever seen to a real-life superhero.”

It’s not like he was working with a bunch of footage of that time that Bo allegedly dunked a stick? That’s right. Dude apparently dunked a stick. Oh, and he was in 8th grade.

Instead of using reenactment shots of this — something I hate — Bonfiglio used these comic book drawings to illustrate these physical feats. On second thought, that was probably the only choice he had. Imagine doing a casting call and being like, “Ok, I’m gonna need a young kid who can jump high enough to dunk a stick.”

This looked so much cooler:

 

Credit: ESPN

We also got to see the comic book theme later to set the stage for Bo’s wild in-game achievements. It was really the only way you could have brought those things to life.

2. They didn’t necessarily care if the stories about Bo were sensationalized

Author Chuck Klosterman said it best in the doc.

“Bo Jackson was one of the last athletes who, the information about him was anecdotal, that you wouldn’t necessarily see the things, you heard about them, but there was this legendary, kind of Paul Bunyan description around him.”

If you’re making a documentary or even if it’s just writing, you usually fact-check everything. I liked that Bonfiglio didn’t care if he had confirmation on everything that was said about Bo. That’s sort of the point. For example, it wasn’t like when he heard Bo’s Auburn baseball coach, Hal Baird, claim he saw him jump over a Volkswagen, he went to Bo or some other eye-witnesses and was like, “can you confirm that?”

Myths can make up legends. Bo was indeed a legend. People would say they saw him do these extraordinary physical things like rip off a backflip while standing knee deep in water. Even his name “Bo” apparently was because he killed the minister’s boar by throwing rocks at it. Because of course it was (his birth name is Vincent).

The stories of Bo’s childhood added to this myth and because of what we did see from him, there’s not really any reason to doubt them. It was a smart executive decision to allow these unconfirmed stories to make the cut. They aren’t “fake news” or anything. It’s noteworthy that even if people made stuff up about Bo, they wanted to because he fit the description of this mythical figure.

3. We saw the in-game moments that would go viral today

A) When he went over the top to win the 1982 Iron Bowl

Because what’s the best way to score when you’re on the goal line with the game hanging in the balance? Give it to your tailback who was once a 7-foot high jumper, obviously. Ending a 10-year losing streak to Alabama will certainly put you on the map, and to do so in that atypical fashion would still be a highlight for the ages.

B) When he threw out Harold Reynolds from the warning track

The most underrated part of Bo’s athleticism was his arm. Just like he was back chucking crab apples, Bo took a double off the wall in Seattle and from the warning track in left field, he fired what he called in the doc “a pellet” all the way to Royals catcher Bob Boone on a fly. With his teammates walking off the field, Bo’s pellet was in time to catch Reynolds, who was one of the top base-stealers in the sport. In other words, he was no slouch.

Unfortunately for him, neither was the dude who fired the cannon from the warning track.

C) When he broke a bat over his helmet after a ground out

What????

D) When he broke his bat on his knee like a toothpick

Don’t try this at home, kids.

You know you’re a freak of nature when even your outs are viral-worthy.

E) When he casually scaled the outfield wall

Just in case you needed another reason to believe that he was a superhero, Bo went full speed after a ball, caught it and instead of slowing down before the wall, he chose to scale it. Spiderman couldn’t have done it better.

Who does this?

That’s a nice play that turned into something that we still can’t quite process 30 years later.

F) When he took down “The Boz”

Monday Night Football. Bo vs. “The Boz.” Good vs. Evil. We all know how that went.

The doc had good buildup for that moment with the cartoon of Brian Bosworth, which he sort of was because of his own marketing creation. “The Boz” was the comic book villain, and it was up to Bo to take him down … which he did. That goal-line truck stick would’ve been the GIF seen ’round the world.

Oh, and that was after he ripped off that 91-yard run that finished with him running through the tunnel, which also would’ve gone super viral.

G) When he hit that BOMB to start the 1989 MLB All-Star Game

No big deal. Former President Ronald Reagan and Vin Scully were just trying to have a casual conversation when Bo decided to kick off the mid-summer classic by smoking a ball to the freaking moon. Casual. Another day in the life of Bo.

A couple things I didn’t like

1. Could there have been more insight about Bo, the adult?

The title suggests that we’re really going to dig into just who Bo was, and to an extent, we get that. Like, he tells the story about how introverted he was as a kid and how he felt like he didn’t belong because he didn’t have 2 parents at home. We found out about how Bo had a stuttering problem and was bullied — a crazy thought in itself — which was why that fueled the aggressive persona he developed.

The reasoning for why he went to college instead of signing with the New York Yankees shed some light on Bo, the teenager, as did his reasoning for turning down Bear Bryant and going to Auburn. Oh, and the story behind why Bo turned down being the No. 1 overall pick by the Tampa Bay Buccaneers to go play baseball was fascinating. Those details were great.

But I felt like there was more to dig into about Bo, the adult. He’s by nature a guarded person, which makes that a challenge. Still, I found myself wanting to hear more about his reaction to how he handled his rapid rise and fall. And by “fall,” I mean the devastating hip injury that ended his football career and brought his baseball career to a a halt (they showed his rehab journey to return from the unprecedented hip replacement surgery).

We get the final few minutes at the end of him with all of his — ironically enough — bow and arrows. You get the sense that he just wants to live a quiet life now. The guy spends his free time building crossbows. Could we have gotten more insight from other people he’s been close to for the last 20 years? I think so.

His wife, Linda, is a psychologist. I’m going out on a limb and guessing that she didn’t want to be interviewed for this. Obviously, she would have added more depth to Bo, the adult.

As important as it was to illustrate the legend of Bo — something that Bonfiglio did a tremendous job of — it would’ve added even more to know how he and those close to him processed his rise to stardom as this mythological figure.

2. No Frank Thomas or Charles Barkley interviews?

No offense Marcellus Wiley, but I would have rather heard from Thomas and Barkley. No, they weren’t teammates at Auburn, but those guys became so synonymous with each other because of when they starred there. Perhaps there was a desire to differentiate this doc from the SEC Storied doc “Bo, Barkley and the Big Hurt.” Or perhaps Thomas and Barkley weren’t available.

Here’s my thing. Thomas was with Bo when he got to the White Sox, so he could have provided some of that “how did Bo handle being a shell of his former self” thing. And as for Barkley, they were a year apart at Auburn. On top of that, how many alumni events have they been together over the years? Plenty.

I don’t want to say this doc had too few interviews, but some of the best stuff came from Bo’s Royals teammates and Raiders teammate Howie Long. Some of Bo’s old Auburn teammates or White Sox teammates surely could have added more perspective.

Do I need a reason to listen to Barkley talk about anything? Of course not.

My grade — 3.7 stars out of 4

I remember that I couldn’t wait for the 2012 Heisman Trophy ceremony, and it didn’t have anything to do with Johnny Manziel. I should rephrase that. I remember that I couldn’t wait for the 2012 Heisman Trophy ceremony to end. Why? That’s when “You Don’t Know Bo” was set to air on ESPN.

By the way, can we go back to making the post-Heisman college football-related 30 for 30 an annual tradition? Look at these list of 30 for 30s that aired following the Heisman ceremony:

  • 2009: “The U”
  • 2010: “Pony Excess”
  • 2011: “The Marinovich Project”
  • 2012: “You Don’t Know Bo”
  • 2013: “Youngstown Boys”
  • 2014: “The U: Part II”
  • 2015: “Four Falls of Buffalo”
  • 2016: “Catholics vs. Convicts”

Those are some incredible docs that I’m definitely going to have to rewatch during this quarantine.

“You Don’t Know Bo” had a whopping 3.6 million viewers, which was actually the highest-rated 30 for 30 ever. That included the “OJ: Made in America” special that aired on ABC.

In other words, I wasn’t the only one who was excited. Despite all that hype, this doc truly lived up to it.

It paused to appreciate all of those superhuman feats of his, and as great as it would’ve been to have another 20-30 minutes, I suppose it didn’t need to be 2 hours (it clocked in at 77 minutes). My only critiques were small. A few different interview subjects here and there would’ve added to it, but overall, this was still as re-watchable as any 30 for 30.

The what-ifs about Bo are something that I thought about a lot after the first time I watched it. They actually dug into that. Would he have rushed for 10,000 yards? Would he have hit 500 home runs? We don’t know. It’s such a key part of Bo’s story, though. Multiple people compared him to a shooting star. He existed in this larger-than-life universe for such a brief period of time that you truly had to see to believe.

After watching this doc yet again, I don’t think he was a shooting star. If anything, Bo was Halley’s Comet.

Here’s hoping we don’t have to wait another half century to witness another one.