Heisman at 40: Auburn honors Bo Jackson's 1985 season

AUBURN, Ala. – After missing half of his junior season with a shoulder injury, Bo Jackson began his senior year with a vengeance, rushing for a career-high 290 yards and four touchdowns to launch his campaign for the 1985 Heisman Trophy.

Jackson topped the 200-yard mark again the following week against Southern Miss, then did it twice more against Ole Miss and Georgia Tech.

He finished the 11-game regular season with 1,786 yards and 17 touchdowns, averaging 6.4 yards per carry despite playing part of the season with broken ribs.

Bo was at its best when it mattered most. In four Iron Bowls from 1982-85, he carried 90 times for 630 yards and six touchdowns, an average of 7 yards per rush. 

Ray Perkins, who coached against Jackson in three Iron Bowls and who played and coached in the NFL, had seen enough. 

“Bo Jackson is the best running back in the world, college or pro,” said Perkins, whose assessment would prove accurate two years later.

In his closing argument for the Heisman, Jackson gained 142 yards on 31 rushes in the 1985 Iron Bowl. 

“Bo Jackson is, without a doubt, the most talented athlete I have ever been associated with,” Auburn coach Pat Dye said at the time. “There’s no doubt he ranks right up there with the all-time greats. But as anyone who knows him can tell you, he’s just as impressive as a person as he is as an athlete.”

In the closest Heisman voting in history until 2009, Jackson edged Iowa quarterback Chuck Long by 45 points to join 1971 winner Pat Sullivan in Auburn’s Heisman fraternity. 

Bo finished his career with 4,303 rushing yards, a program record that still stands. Had the NCAA included bowl statistics – a change that did not go into effect until 2002 – Jackson’s total would increase by the 411 yards he gained in the Tangerine, Sugar, Liberty and Cotton bowls.

Six months after Bo won the Heisman, the Kansas City Royals drafted Jackson in the fourth round of the 1986 Major League Baseball draft.

To the astonishment of many, Jackson spurned the NFL’s Tampa Bay Bucs, which had drafted him No. 1 overall six weeks earlier, and signed instead with the Royals, debuting in the majors on Sept. 2, 1986, after only 53 minor league games.

Kansas City drafted Jackson, he says, in part because of Bo’s baseball coach at Auburn, Hal Baird, who had pitched six seasons in the Royals’ organization in the 1970s.  

“Coach Baird and (former Royals scouting director) Art Stewart are the reason I became a Royal,” Jackson recalled when he was inducted into the Royals Hall of Fame in 2024. “Every other ballclub within the league was afraid to come after me because of that football thing. Art Stewart called Coach Baird and asked if I was serious about baseball.

“Coach Baird said yes, and whoever gets him is going to be lucky to have him, so he is serious. Art Stewart convinced the ownership and everybody to take a chance on me, and I’m glad they did.”

That football thing, Bo’s “hobby” as he famously referred to it at the time. Beginning in 1987, when the Royals season ended, Jackson joined the Los Angeles Raiders, averaging 5.4 yards per carry over four seasons until a hip injury ended his NFL career.

“It was easy for me,” Jackson said of juggling professional sports simultaneously. “The two sports are drastically different. Whenever the baseball season was over, I would take a week off with my family then on the seventh day I would report to Los Angeles and play the next weekend. Just something I did, a normal day in my life.”

Forty years later, former Auburn quarterback Randy Campbell, Jackson’s teammate his first two seasons on the Plains, still has not seen anyone better.

“I think Bo Jackson is the greatest running back who ever played football, college, pros whatever, Campbell said. “He’s an unbelievable athlete.”

Four decades after Jackson became the Tigers’ second Heisman Trophy winner, No. 34 will hear the roars once more at Jordan-Hare Stadium when Auburn honors Bo during Saturday’s Iron Bowl. 

“It’s great that he’s coming back to campus and all our fans in the biggest game of the year are going to get to celebrate him for that accomplishment,” Campbell said. “He’s a wonderful person and a phenomenal athlete.”

Jeff Shearer is a Senior Writer at AuburnTigers.com. Follow him on X: @jeff_shearer