The REAL REASON Why Barry Sanders RETIRED Early

[Music] on the morning of Tuesday July 27th 1999 Detroit lands running back Barry Sanders was sitting at fifteen thousand two hundred and sixty nine career rushing yards that was just one thousand four hundred and fifty seven yards behind the late great Walter Payton on the all-time rushing list but Peyton had played 13 seasons Barry had only played ten no running back in the history of the NFL had accumulated more yards in a ten-year span than Barry Sanders the previous season Sanders had rushed for 1491 yards and he had just turned 31 on July 16th so by all accounts Barry still had plenty of life left in his legs all he needed was one more typical season and he break one of the NFL's greatest records but that one more typical season never happened and it's not because Sanders blew out a knee or fractured his hip on Sunday July 25th 1999 instead of reporting to Detroit Lions training camp in Saginaw Michigan Barry Sanders ordered a flight to London England and it was from there two days later on July 27th that Sanders faxed a letter announcing his retirement to the Detroit Lions for an office but to the Wichita Eagle his hometown newspapers football fans everywhere were absolutely shocked Barry Sanders teammates were shocked one of the greatest NFL players of all time had abruptly hung up his cleats in his prime and his explanation didn't cut it for a lot of people quote my desire to exit the game is greater than my desire to remain in it in quote Sanders wrote that in that fax to the Wichita Eagle quote I have searched my heart going through feel comfortable with this decision in quote after that after the media firestorm died down Barry Sanders just faded away there were no appearances at games or team events there were a few rumors about comebacks impossible feuds but after a few years those went away Sanders was just gone he retreated to his private life that was that so what in the hell really happened where did Barry Sanders go why did he really retire luckily we've gotten some of the answers to these questions and bits and pieces over the years today we're gonna put them all together to form a clear picture but first for some of you youngsters out there we should probably start with a refresher on just how insanely good Barry Sanders actually was in hindsight probably the most insane fact about Barry Sanders is that relatively speaking he was a nobody coming out of high school Barry said he was never a prodigy or an elite prospect you know somebody that you saw and thought that kid is destined for greatness and when he says that he's not being humble Barry Sanders the greatest running back to ever play the game wasn't even the starting running back on his high school team until the fourth game of the senior year sure he ran for 1417 yards in the seven games he was a starter which works out to about 200 yards per game but that still wasn't enough to make recruiters take notice and in the end Barry Sanders received just three scholarship honors and they weren't from powerhouse programs they were from Tulsa Iowa State and Oklahoma State in the end Sanders went with Oklahoma State and there he immediately rode the pie because ahead of him on the depth chart was Doozer hall-of-famer Thurman Thomas Barry did make a name for himself on special teams and when given opportunities to run the ball he impressed over his first two years as a backup Barry accumulated 928 rushing yards and 179 attempts but when Thurman Thomas finally left OSU for the NFL that's when Barry Sanders finally had his coming out party in 1988 Barry the lightly recruited five foot eight running back nobody had ever heard of turned in what some considered to be the greatest offensive performance in the history of college football that year Sanders set the single-season record for rushing yards and rushing touchdowns and points scored and touchdowns from scrimmage and yards from scrimmage and all those records still stand today needless to say Barry Sanders won the Heisman Trophy thank you then the Lions selected him third overall in the 1989 NFL Draft behind number one pick Troy Aikman who is now in the Hall of Fame and number two pick Tony manero's who started 63 NFL games at offensive tackle and failed to make a single Pro Bowl in the NFL Barry Sanders immediately proved his historic Heisman winning season with no fluke at the age of 21 he rushed for 1470 yards and 14 touchdowns in his rookie season while he we missed out on the NFL rushing title by a mere ten yards to the cheats Christian Okoye Sanders did when the Offensive Rookie of the Year honors though from 1989 through 1998 Barry Sanders was the most productive running back the NFL had ever seen he won four rushing titles on one touchdown time he was an all-pro and a Pro Bowler every year he was a two-time Offensive Player of the Year and in 1997 he was named NFL MVP after becoming just the third player in NFL history to record the 2,000 yards rushing season but wait there's more Barry Sanders has the most eleven hundred yard seasons of all time and the most consecutive 11 hundred yard seasons of all time he has the most thirteen hundred yard seasons of all time and the most consecutive thirteen hundred yard seasons of all time he has the most fourteen hundred yard seasons of all time and the most consecutive fourteen hundred yard seasons of all time he has the most fifteen hundred yard seasons of all time and the most consecutive fifteen hundred yard seasons of all time oh and he also has the most consecutive 100-yard game 14 straight 1997 and all those stats and records don't even tell the whole story to understand Barry Sanders greatness you would have had to watch play I mean he was fast and explosive and graceful and elusive nobody broke more ankles avoided more tackles and just generally made defenders look pathetic like Barry Sanders and he made it all look so easy in 1998 at the age of 30 Barry Sanders rushed for 1491 yards while that was a big drop-off from his historic 1997 campaign it was still good for fourth in the NFL there was absolutely no reason that they Sanders wouldn't come out in 1999 and rushed for at least 12 or 1300 yards it's not more but then came the shocking moment Barry Sanders left a lot on the table when he faxed that retirement announcement to the Wichita Eagle in 1999 in 1997 Sanders signed a six-year 34 point five six million dollar extension with the ones that made him the highest-paid player in the NFL when he called it quits he knew he was kissing 20 million dollars goodbye he also gave up on one of the biggest NFL records there is the all-time rushing yards record Walter Payton set the record in 1980 seven when you retire with sixteen thousand seven hundred and twenty six yards and it went almost unchallenged for a decade the only people to get within 4,000 yards of Paton where Tony Dorsett in there Dickerson who retired in 1988 in 1993 respectively but heading into the 1999 season Barry Sanders had 15,000 269 yards and he was just 1450 seven yards from submitting his status as the greatest running back of all time and he stayed healthy and put together three more 1,100 yards seasons Barry Sanders would be the career rushing leader to this day to this day but he retired the Detroit Lions front office was blindsided Sanders teammates were dejected Lions fans were depressed as hell I could barely do this to us that's really what I think 13-year old me said so why the hell did Barry Sanders do it why did he just walk away in his prime so close to so many mouths now the one thing that you really have to understand is Barry Sanders wasn't like other pro athletes he wasn't greedy he didn't have an ego he didn't care about records or fame or legacy he played football first and foremost because he loved it you want some anecdotes got some anecdotes for you when Sanders won the Heisman Trophy in 1988 he couldn't have cared less about all the pomp and circumstance OSU was actually in Tokyo on the day the winner was announced at the downtown Athletic Club in New York that man Sanders had to be at a Tokyo TV station by 7:00 in the morning for the telecast according to former OSU coach Pat Jones Sanders had zero interest in being on national television he just wanted to stay in bed so Jones had to get his offensive linemen to drag Barry Sanders to the TV studio to get into Ward here's another anecdote about Barry Sanders humility no remember how I said he missed the NFL rushing title by just 10 yards his rookie year well that was basically by choice and the final game of the season Sanders had an outstanding day he rushed for 158 yards of three touchdowns and as the gang wound down and everybody knew Barry was 10 yards behind Chris oh yeah so when the Lions got the ball back late head coach Wayne thought SAS Sanders he wanted to go back in the game to get the 11 yards he needed to win the titles Sanders responds now I'm good you can let the other guy go ahead and play but Sanders comes up as Christian Okoye when was the NFL rushing idle for 1989 he didn't care about the Russian time he'd had a good day and his team was winning that's all that mattered how about another a little while back Sanders former teammate Carl painter told the Detroit Free Press a cool story about the time he went shopping with Sanders early on in his career according to painter the manager of a shoe store offered Barry a pair of $180 sneakers for free in exchange for his autograph however Barry preferred his old worn sneakers so he signed the new pair for the manager in exchange for nothing and how about one more after Sanders sign what was at the time the most lucrative contract in NFL history back in 1997 he finally decided to reward himself by buying a new car and buy a new car I mean it was actually a used Jaguar with 38,000 miles on it Barry Sanders had just cashed a check for 11 million dollars but was reportedly thrilled he got such a great deal on a youth Jay now while Barry was cheap with himself he was very generous with others the same guy who turned down free sneakers and drove used cars bought Rolexes for every one of his office supplies Aster's was deceased and he would do that again several more times during his career and that's the kind of guy Barry Sanders was humble generous simple easygoing very little taste for flashy things and knowing all that it's hardly surprising the all-time rushing record wasn't going to keep him on the field didn't want to play so why didn't Sanders want to play and at the time of his retirement Barry refused to elaborate on that however in 2003 finally came clean that year Sanders co-authored an autobiography with longtime friend Mark McCormick of the Wichita Eagle it was called Barry Sanders now he's seen his story and his own words in the book Sanders detailed the real reasons why he lost his love for playing football and basically it all blows down to the fact that the Detroit Lions suck like they didn't suck like the Cleveland Browns suck they didn't go for him 44 over a three-year stretch or anything but something during Barry's 10 years with the team the Lions won 10 games or more just three times they won seven games or less five times and they had three seasons where they just five games and that was all with the best running back in the universe you can imagine how terrible they would have been without him by the end the air he was just tired of losing and eventually he came to the realization that management just didn't care about winning and as he himself put it in his book that realisation trivialized everything all the hard work he put in during the off-season all his childhood dreams of winning the Super Bowl it was all meaningless because the Lions weren't doing things to win football games and that's what Barry Sanders really wanted to do win football games later in the book Sanders says some records did mean something to him he cared about the 2,000 yards season and about the 14 consecutive 100-yard game but he said the more the Lions lost the more he lost interest in chasing Walter Payton's career rushing record so why didn't Barry Sanders share his feelings about lions management at the time of his retirement why did he wait four years because he's too classic he didn't want to make his retirement about tearing people down as they explained in his book he didn't want to take shots at people as left so instead he's tanked the franchise's that suck the will to play right out of them which is really pretty admirable I actually do that before every football season football means nothing to me now unfortunately while Sanders didn't trash the Lions publicly on his way out of town things still got a little ugly between them in the front office after Sanders retired the Lions demanded he give back 5.5 million half of the signing bonus they gave him in 1997 Sanders said he would do it but only if the Lions were released or traded the Lions refused then they sued and ultimately an arbitrator ruled in February of 2000 that Sanders would have to pay back 7.3 million stay retirements so yeah things were a little frosty between the Lions at Barry for a long time after that however the relationship started to thaw in 2015 when the team fired longtime president timeline not long after that new team president Rob wood was able to coax Sanders into making a few appearances at team events and in 2017 would formally hire Barry Sanders the greatest line of all time to be a team ambassador now finally after years of silence Barry Sanders is around the team he interacts with fans he attends it's all exactly as it should the only thing missing is a Barry Sanders statue outside of for field but you have to think it's just a matter of time [Music]

Channel: TPS

Views: 836,545

Keywords: Barry Sanders, The REAL REASON, The REAL REASON Barry Sanders RETIRED EARLY, Barry Sanders RETIRED, why did barry sanders retire, what happened to barry sanders, detroit lions, american football, national football league, nfl, fb, barry sanders highlights, barry sanders jukes, barry, sanders, detroit, lions, nfl records, what if barry sanders didnt retire

Id: aNAu3oMckPA

Length: 13min 42sec (822 seconds)

Published: Thu Mar 21 2019

Reddit Comments

[u/sosapicasso]

thank goodness those fucks took that big ugly ogre 2nd overall .

[u/markievegeta]

Thank goodness for Rod Wood hiring Barry.

[u/[deleted]]

I DON'T LIKE THIS GUY YELLING AT ME

WHILE I LOOK UP HIS NOSE

Enjoyed his video regardless.