On the morning of March 25, 1986, Bo Jackson had a baseball game to get back to. Tampa Bay's owner had sent a private plane to Auburn, Sports Illustrated later reported, to bring the Heisman winner to Florida for a medical exam and return him before Auburn played Alabama-Birmingham that night.[1]
Bo Jackson's famous refusal to play for Tampa Bay began with that Buccaneers jet trip. The flight cost him the rest of his Auburn baseball season, and Jackson answered by rejecting Tampa's NFL offer, signing with the Kansas City Royals, and later playing football for the Raiders.
The trip mattered because Jackson was still trying to be two kinds of athlete at once. The Heisman Trust credits him with 4,303 rushing yards, two All-America selections, and the 1985 Heisman Trophy.[3] At Auburn he was also a center fielder, good enough that ESPN later described baseball as his first love.[2]
Sports Illustrated's Jeff Pearlman reported that Jackson and the people around him were told the Tampa Bay visit had been cleared. The problem was the SEC rule. The NCAA allowed an athlete to be professional in one sport and amateur in another, but the SEC treated a professional team's paid flight as a benefit that made Jackson ineligible to keep playing for Auburn.[1]
The baseball consequence came first. Sports Illustrated quotes SEC commissioner Boyd McWhorter saying Jackson could not play any more sports for Auburn, and Pearlman's excerpt describes Jackson as believing Tampa Bay knew the trip could put his season at risk.[1] The Buccaneers still used the first overall pick in the 1986 NFL draft on him.
The 1986 calendar is where the easy version of the story can get muddy. Jackson did not leave Tampa Bay and walk straight into a Raiders uniform. ESPN says he rejected the Buccaneers' reported five-year, $7.6 million offer, waited for the Kansas City Royals to take him in the fourth round of the 1986 baseball draft, and signed his first professional contract with Kansas City.[2] Baseball Reference lists his major league debut that September.[4]
The Raiders part came one year later because Tampa Bay lost his rights when he refused to sign. ESPN writes that Jackson's name went back into the 1987 NFL draft, where the Los Angeles Raiders picked him in the seventh round. Unlike the Buccaneers, Al Davis accepted the baseball career Jackson would not give up, offering full-time money for part-time football after each baseball season.[2]
The private jet ended up doing two things at once. It ended Jackson's Auburn baseball season, and it turned Tampa Bay from the team with the number one pick into the team he would not trust. The Royals gave him a baseball home. The Raiders later gave him a football deal that let baseball stay first. The Buccaneers were left with the strangest image of all: a franchise that flew in Bo Jackson, then watched him leave before he ever put on its uniform.
