One of the gems of the story, however, was that when he needed a job driving a truck, the guy who controlled all the trucking licenses was a guy who had been convicted (if I remember correctly) of being a part of the murder of three civil rights workers in the late 60s. The guy was a huge fan, gave him a license immediately.
The problem with claiming DuPree was so great is that we only have high school footage of him, plus really only one solid season at OU, with a bust game in the Fiesta Bowl.
Moreover, I think as Barry Sanders, Jim Brown, and Emmitt Smith showed, to be the "best" you have to have consistency, durability, and above all, discipline to go the distance. We never will now how "great" Marcus DuPree, or Bo Jackson, or any other number of "incredible" runners would have been because they just didn't hold up. Some of it is bad luck, but in DuPree's case, his achilles' tears were poor conditioning. Even back then, in better condition he could have recovered from the knee injury---many, many had far worse (Willis McGahee, Amare Soudamire) and not only came back but were effective.
Willis McGahee, I remember watching that game, when they first showed showed the hit his knee took. It was brutal to watch...
I thought it ruined his career.
Having knee surgery at one time, I can’t imagine the effort it took to get back in condition to play again...
His injury was far, far worse than mine.
The man has guts and fortitude for sure...