Portal:American football/Selected biography/January, 2010

Jim Thorpe (Sac and Fox (Sauk): Wa-Tho-Huk) (May 28, 1888 – March 28, 1953) was an American athlete. Considered one of the most versatile athletes in modern sports, he won Olympic gold medals in the 1912 pentathlon and decathlon, played American football at the collegiate and professional levels, and also played professional baseball and basketball. He lost his Olympic titles after it was found he was paid for playing two seasons of semi-professional baseball before competing in the Olympics, thus violating the amateur status rules.

Of Native American and European American ancestry, Thorpe grew up in the Sac and Fox nation in Oklahoma. He played on several All-American Indian teams throughout his career, and barnstormed as a professional basketball player with a team composed entirely of Native Americans. He served as the first president of the National Football League and was one of its early star players.

In 1950, Thorpe was named the greatest athlete of the first half of the twentieth century by the Associated Press (AP). In 1999, he was ranked third on the AP list of top athletes of the 20th century.

His professional sports career ended in the years of the Great Depression, and Thorpe struggled to earn a living from then on. He worked several odd jobs, struggled with alcoholism, and lived his last years in failing health and poverty. In 1983, thirty years after his death, the International Olympic Commission (IOC) restored his Olympic medals to his name. (more...)