Brian Bosworth
This article's tone or style may not reflect the encyclopedic tone used on Wikipedia. (July 2014) |
No. 55 | |||||
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Position: | Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, U.S. | ||||
Height: | 6 ft 4 in (1.93 m) | ||||
Weight: | 265 lb (120 kg) | ||||
Career information | |||||
High school: | MacArthur (Irving, Texas) | ||||
College: | Oklahoma | ||||
Supplemental draft: | 1987 / Round: 1 | ||||
Career history | |||||
Career highlights and awards | |||||
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Career NFL statistics | |||||
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Player stats at NFL.com · PFR | |||||
Brian Keith Bosworth (born March 9, 1965), nicknamed "the Boz", is an American actor and former
Early life
Brian Bosworth was born in
College career
Bosworth played linebacker for the
Bosworth was barred from playing in the Orange Bowl following his junior year after he tested positive for steroids. He claimed that his use of steroids was medically prescribed by his doctor because of injuries.[1]
A strong-side inside linebacker throughout his college career,
College controversies
Bosworth is known for his radical hairstyles, his on-field play, and his criticism of the NCAA. He was particularly focused on the level of control the NCAA exerted over athletes, preventing them from making money during their college careers.
Because of the steroid suspension, Bosworth was not allowed to play in the post-season 1987 Orange Bowl. During the 3rd quarter of that game, Bosworth pulled off his football jersey to reveal a t-shirt that read, "NCAA: National Communists Against Athletes". Immediately picked up by the television cameras, this led to much consternation among alumni and administrators at Oklahoma. Aware that Bosworth was likely to be entering the NFL Draft anyway, the OU coach, Barry Switzer, dismissed Bosworth from the team.[4]
Bosworth was quoted in Sports Illustrated magazine's 1986 fall football issue as saying that at a summer job at GM's Oklahoma City plant, co-workers taught him how to insert the bolts in hard-to-reach places so they would rattle. He told the magazine, "If you own a Celebrity or Century made in 1985 in Oklahoma City, that car is (messed up) if I had anything to do with it". In addition, he claimed that each bolt carried a note that said: "Aha! You found me!" and said, "I love the thought of people going absolutely crazy, saying "Where is that ... rattle coming from?"' Some of Bosworth's former co-workers who read about it disputed the story.[5] Bosworth reportedly retracted the statement, although he later denied the retraction.[6]
In September 1988, Bosworth wrote an autobiography, The Boz, with Sports Illustrated's Rick Reilly. In it, Bosworth said the Sooner football program was laden with drug use, gunplay in the athletic dorm, and other wild behavior. Although many Sooner boosters dismissed it as the rantings of a resentful ex-player, an NCAA report issued three months later confirmed many of Bosworth's claims, and ultimately led to Switzer being forced to resign.[7]
NFL Draft
Bosworth planned his college coursework so that he could graduate a year early, which would allow him the option to enter the NFL Draft a year early. In addition, it would give him some leverage over which team drafted him. Knowing he could go back to Oklahoma if he did not get chosen by a preferred NFL team, Bosworth sent letters to various NFL teams stating that, if they drafted him, he wouldn't report to their training camp and he wouldn't play for them. As a joke, the
By getting dismissed from the football team after the Orange Bowl t-shirt incident, Bosworth lost his leverage in trying to control where he would play.[4]
Professional career
Bosworth was drafted by the
Bosworth signed with a Seahawks team that had failed to reach the playoffs for two seasons (a 10-6 finish in 1986 was only good enough for 3rd in the
Injury
Bosworth was forced to retire after only two seasons in 1989, having suffered a shoulder injury in the 1988 season. Team Doctor Pierce E. Scranton Jr. explained that, "Brian was a twenty-five-year-old with the shoulders of a sixty-year-old. He flunked my physical." In 1993 Bosworth prevailed in a $7 million lawsuit against Lloyd's of London.[15] Lloyd's position was that Bosworth's shoulder was injured as a result of degenerative arthritis which was not covered in his policy. Bosworth maintained his injury was sustained during a single hit.
Legacy
On January 9, 2015, Bosworth was announced as one of the inductees to the College Football Hall of Fame class of 2015.[16]
In 2004, Bosworth was picked by voters as the third-worst flop (and by an expert panel as the sixth-worst) on the Biggest Flops of the Last 25 Years list by ESPN.[17]
Commentator and acting career
Following the end of his football career, Bosworth decided to pursue a career as an actor. He starred in the 1991 action film
In 2001, Bosworth joined the XFL as a color commentator for its television broadcasts. He was assigned to the crew which called games that aired Sunday nights on UPN, which consisted of Chris Marlowe on play-by-play and Chris Wragge and Michael Barkann as the sideline reporters.
Two years later, Bosworth was hired by
Bosworth has been a guest on numerous episodes of Chopped as a judge.
He appeared on episode 1, in the 2010 season of
In August 2014, Bosworth appeared in a Dish Network commercial with fellow former players Matt Leinart and Heath Shuler, depicting them pining for a chance to return to their more successful college days.
Bosworth appeared with Bo Jackson in a Tecmo Bowl-style television advertisement for the Kia Sorento in 2016, which parodied Jackson running through him in their 1987 game.[19]
Bosworth has appeared as the sheriff in the "Fansville" series of Dr Pepper commercials since 2018.[20]
Personal life
Bosworth married his high school girlfriend, Katherine Nicastro, in September 1993. The couple had three children before divorcing in 2006.[21] He also has two nephews who played football for the UCLA Bruins. They both were signed as undrafted free agents, one by the Jacksonville Jaguars and one by the Detroit Lions. In 2010, Bosworth became a real estate agent for Sotheby's International Realty in their Malibu, California brokerage office.[22]
On July 5, 2008, Bosworth assisted with the rescue of a woman who rolled her SUV east of Winnipeg, Manitoba.[23] In 2009, he administered CPR to a fallen man in a parking lot until medical help arrived.[24]
Brian and the Boz
In 2014, Bosworth was the subject of a documentary by Thaddeus D. Matula.[25] The film, titled Brian and The Boz, premiered on October 28, 2014, as part of the ESPN 30 for 30 series and chronicled Bosworth's rise and fall as an athlete. The title of the film refers to an internal conflict Bosworth discusses during the film at length, which got to the point where the image he created for himself as "The Boz" took control of his life.
Much of the film focuses on a trip that Bosworth takes with his son Max to a storage facility in Austin, Texas, where Bosworth had rented a locker and filled it with personal belongings from his football career that he had discovered were sitting around his mother's attic. Special attention is paid to the T-shirt that got Bosworth kicked off the Oklahoma football team, as well as his recruiting letters and a scrapbook kept by his father Foster, which consisted of dozens and dozens of newspaper clippings focusing on his son's games. While going through what was in the locker, the two men reminisce about the past and Bosworth's fractured relationship with his father, whom Bosworth knew was proud of his accomplishments but also was extremely hard on him and, according to Bosworth, never seemed to be happy with what he did.
Among the other participants in the film were Barry Switzer, whom Bosworth still considers a father figure; several of Bosworth's teammates including Tony Casillas, who is particularly critical of Bosworth's autobiography; Rick Reilly, who co-wrote The Boz with Bosworth; and several close friends and family members of Bosworth including his childhood friend John DiPasquale, his daughter Hayley Bosworth, who followed in her father's footsteps and became a student-athlete at Oklahoma by joining the volleyball team, and Sooners fan and close friend Jim Ross.
Acting filmography
Year | Title | Role | Director |
---|---|---|---|
1991 | Stone Cold | Detective Joe Huff / John Stone | Craig R. Baxley |
1995 | One Man's Justice |
John North | Kurt Wimmer |
1996 | Virus | Ken Fairchild | Allan A. Goldstein (also released under the title Spill) |
1997 | Midnight Heat | FBI Agent John Gray / Wayne Garret | Allan A. Goldstein |
1998 | Back in Business | Joe Elkhart | Philippe Mora |
1999 | Three Kings | Action Star | David O. Russell |
2000 | The Operative | Alec / Grady | Robert Lee |
2001 | Phase IV | Detective Steven Birnam | Bryan Goeres |
2001 | Mach 2 | Captain Jack Tyree | Fred Olen Ray |
2005 | The Longest Yard | Guard Garner | Peter Segal |
2005 | CSI: Miami- Episode - "Shattered" | Duane 'Bull' Merrick | Scott Lautanen |
2009 | Rock Slyde | The Friendly Pirate | Chris Dowling |
2010 | Blue Mountain State (Season 2 Ep. 3) | Himself | Eric Falconer, Chris Romano |
2010 | Down and Distance | John Vonarb | Brian J. De Palma |
2013 | Revelation Road: The Beginning of the End | Hawg | Gabriel Sabloff |
2013 | Revelation Road 2: The Sea of Glass and Fire | Hawg | Gabriel Sabloff |
2014 | The Black Rider: Revelation Road | Hawg | Gabriel Sabloff |
2015 | Do You Believe? | Joe | Jonatham M. Gunn |
2019 | What Men Want |
Nick | Adam Shankman |
2019 | Ambitions | Hunter Purifoy | |
2019 | The Reliant | Jack | Paul Munger [26] |
References
- ^ Craig Neff (January 5, 1987). "Bosworth Faces the Music". Sports Illustrated. Archived from the original on October 25, 2012. Retrieved October 11, 2010.
- ^ "The Fabulous Forum". Los Angeles Times. March 6, 2009.
- ^ Sports Illustrated: All Century Team Archived 2000-08-24 at the Wayback Machine
- ^ a b "In Retrospect, T-Shirt Incident Was the Boz's Worst Moment". Orlando Sentinel. September 5, 1988.
- ^ "Boz Confession: Bolt Out of Blue". Los Angeles Times. October 16, 1986.
- ^ "Boz Denies Retracting GM Quote". newsok.com. October 15, 1986.
- ^ Telander, Rick, and Robert Sullivan. Later, when playing for the Seattle Seahawks in the NFL, he flew into practice on a helicopter. Many television news stations all over America showed footage of the stunt. You Reap What You Sow Archived May 17, 2008, at the Wayback Machine. Sports Illustrated, February 27, 1989.
- ^ "1987 NFL Draft Listing". Pro-Football-Reference.com. Retrieved October 1, 2023.
- ^ "Bosworth threatens to skip season after being drafted by Seahawks". Toledo Blade. (Ohio). Associated Press. June 13, 1987. p. 14.
- ^ Richmond, Peter (June 13, 1987). "Maybe he'll swap for missiles". Spokesman-Review. (Spokane, Washington). Knight-Ridder. p. B2.
- ^ ISBN 978-1-59921-176-3.
- Profootballtalk.com(March 25, 2015)
- ^ "ESPN 30 for 30: You Don't Know Bo". ESPN. Retrieved July 23, 2014.
- ^ "Los Angeles Raiders 37 at Seattle Seahawks 14". Pro Football Reference. Retrieved July 23, 2014.
- ^ "Bosworth Wins $7 Million In Suit". The Seattle Times. February 23, 1993. Retrieved February 19, 2018.
- ^ "NFF Proudly Announces Star-Studded 2015 College Football Hall of Fame Class - National Football Foundation".
- ^ "ESPN25: The 25 Biggest Sports Flops of 1979-2004". ESPN. Archived from the original on May 24, 2011. Retrieved October 11, 2010.
- ^ "Hell's Kitchen (TV Series 2005– )" – via www.imdb.com.
- ^ "Kia Ad Recreates Bo Jackson and Brian Bosworth's Famous Tecmo Bowl Moment". AdAge. September 8, 2016. Retrieved January 13, 2017.
- ^ "Dr Pepper's 'Fansville' Is Back For The 2021 College Football Season". Forbes. August 13, 2021. Retrieved January 1, 2021.
- ^ Johnny Dodd (October 17, 2006). "Football's Brian Bosworth and Wife Divorcing". People.com. Retrieved January 15, 2010.
- ^ "Malibu CA Realtor Brian Bosworth | Sotheby's International Realty, Inc". Archived from the original on October 11, 2007. Retrieved October 11, 2010.
- ^ "Ex-NFL player aids woman in car crash". Winnipeg Free Press. July 6, 2008. Retrieved October 11, 2010.
- ^ Harper, Justin (April 11, 2009). "Boz gives CPR to fallen man". The Oklahoman. Archived from the original on February 19, 2010. Retrieved December 20, 2010.
- ^ "Double Life Films".
- ^ "The Reliant". IMDb. October 24, 2019.
External links
- Career statistics and player information from NFL.com · Pro Football Reference
- Brian Bosworth at IMDb
- Brian Bosworth at AllMovie