Some Facts
According to "Peanuts and Crackerjack", a book of baseball anecdotes, while the early twentieth-century New York Giants teams were fun-loving, nobody dared to try to mess with Jim Thorpe. Thorpe was described as a man with a "gold medal temper" with brute strength to back it up. One teammate described Thorpe fighting a man as a dog would grab a rat.
Halfback for the Canton Bulldogs (1915-1920,1926), Cleveland Indians (1921), Oorang Indians (1922-1923), Rock Island Independent (1924), New York Giants (1925) and Chicago Cardinals (1928).
Of combined Irish and Native American (Sac and Fox) ancestry.
After he died in 1953, the town of Mauck Chunk, Pennsylvania, in exchange for the right to bury his body, offered to change its name to Jim Thorpe, PA. A movement has since been started to have his body returned to its native Oklahoma.
Inducted into the College Football Hall of Fame in 1951 (charter class).