EQUALTIME SECRET STAR
N.J.'s Milt Campbell greatest U.S. athlete no one knows'
E SPN loves lists, loves to rank plays, teams, high school kids, quarterbacks, slam-dunkers, exit-velocities, touchdown dances and superstars. That these lists and rankings so often are bereft of context and relevance is irrelevant.
In its eagerness to be socially inclusive, ESPN recently released the results of what it portrayed as an extensive survey of exclusion, one entirely based on race.
Respondents were asked to name the top 50 Greatest Black Athletes. The results are in. One through five are Michael Jordan, Jackie Robinson, Muhammad Ali, Willie Mays and Jesse Owens.
It’s interesting that three (Jordan, Ali and Owens) were Olympians, because perhaps the most extraordinary black American Olympic athlete of all time didn’t even make the list, likely because few respondents ever heard of him.
That also was reflected in a 2000 survey in which ESPN personnel ranked the Top 100 athletes of the 20th Century. He didn’t make that list, either.
Milt Campbell, who in 2012 died at 78 to small notice outside of his hometown of Plainfield, N.J., was, by international definition, the greatest American athlete of any hue.
At Plainfield High School, he starred at everything he attempted: running back, bowling, track, swimming.
Also while in high school, he finished second to the legendary decathlete Bob Mathias in the United States trials — in Campbell’s first-ever participation in a decathlon. He was just a kid, who weeks earlier learned that such a 10skill track-and-field event existed and thus decided he would give it a try.
Having made the 1952 Olympic team, he won the silver medal, finishing behind Mathias. At 18, Campbell arguably, but more likely indisputably, was the world’s second greatest athlete.
Four years later, the Olympic decathlon was billed as an epic struggle between American Rafer Johnson and the Soviet Union’s Vasily Kuznetsov. Campbell beat both, winning gold and bet- tering Mathias’ Olympic record by 50 points.
Decathletes Mathias, Johnson and Bruce Jenner are known to most, if not all, as American champions with sustaining fame. Campbell? Sorry, wrong number.
At the 1956 Melbourne Olympics, Campbell’s achievement was diminished by fate, as a series of rights disputes mostly prevented what was supposed to be televised in the U.S. Those Games showed up in movie houses as part of newsreels. And the Cold War “Blood In The Water” water polo match won by Hungary over the USSR in the midst of the anti-Soviet “Hungarian Revolution,” made the most news.
In 1957, Campbell was drafted by the NFL’s Cleveland Browns. In 1958 he was cut. Why?
The team’s coach and cofounder, Paul Brown, Campbell said, told him he was unhappy Campbell had just married a white woman. Campbell next played in the Canadian Football League through 1964.
Still, he wasn’t done. In 1972, at 40, he nearly quali- fied for the U.S. Olympic judo team.
I came to know Milt Campbell through his love of bowling and mutual friends, PBA Hall of Famer Johnny Petraglia and Lee Livingston, then owner of the massive Carolier Lanes in North Brunswick, N.J. I wanted — needed — to get to know Campbell. And I made sure to do so.
He was wonderful: engaging, candid, funny, opinionated, but open-minded. He seemed pleased by my questions and attention. We remained in touch.
When asked if he was bitter his Olympic achievements provided him only brief, long-forgotten fame and denied him the residual business opportunities enjoyed by Mathias, Johnson and Jenner — all three landed movie contracts — he answered: “I’m only human. How can I not be?”
And so there’s reason, beyond a lack of knowledge and research, as to why 48 years after he won silver in the Olympic decathlon while in high school, and 44 years after he won the gold, that Milt Campbell didn’t even make ESPN’s Top 100 of the 20th Century and its Top 50 Black Athletes survey.
And when I told friends — solid sports fans — that I had met and even dined with Milt Campbell, few had ever heard of him.