February 9, 2021 • 23 mins
Following his Super Bowl win, Jim Duncan fell in love with a woman he met in South Carolina. But financial obligations soon sapped his joy for the game, and those who knew Jim say his personality began changing in unsettling ways. They speculate that for a rising star playing arguably the most dangerous position on the football field, head injuries might have begun to take their toll on Jim.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Long Shot is a production of McClatchy Studios and I
Heart Radio. Previously on Return Man, It is coming to
Duncan a real threat. You have such a great speed
witness he could break one of a close game, and
you went, I want to jafter. Guys on the team
we run working on the day and don't just extra money.
(00:21):
You know, they look like we were so we were
trying to make a living of like by war. How
can you tell black people to be non violently and
at the same time condone the sinning of white killers
as well? What are you gonna call this book? Speedy?
From the cotton fields to Glory? He would have done
some good things in life. I was told repeatedly during
(00:50):
my reporting that Jim Duncan could be quite friendly and generous.
And you've been led eight kids, got going out having
been raised in poverty, he knew how it felt to
go hungry. You got the blowing it with what you
got to do. But in all the time I've looked
into Jim's life, I've been struck by how few people
(01:10):
said they really knew him that well. I just remember you,
the lanky cup guy, and I do remember being a
good guy. H Jeff Beaver was the quarterback for the
Capitol Colts team Jim played on. That always seemed a
(01:31):
little odd. It's a word that came up more than
once during interviews with his former teammates. Yeah. Ways, but
I just thought, everybody, you know, we all got a
long way and him on a great way by Jim Duncan.
As long as he did what he needed to do
in the field, that's all I was interested in. Eddie
Hinton was the cultural receiver who faced Jim every day
(01:52):
in practice. That didn't make sense to me, But you
know who was out of Saint Yeah you thinking, Yeah
for the next day look out at the Kansas City
forty nine yard line. I knew that Jim had had
some personal problems, but hey, we all Bill Curry was
(02:14):
the cold center and team captain during Jim's time in Baltimore.
Really good NFL team. You don't have a bunch of
really well adjusted Sunday school guys. But no one knew
just how far Jim would fall. Jim had some problems,
but I didn't remember what they were, and I did
not get involved. From the Herald, McClatchy studios and I
(02:36):
Heart Radio, this is return man. I'm brought McCormick and
this is part three The Burden nine. He's Robs O'Brien.
(02:56):
That one offseason, Jim's life changed dramatically off the field.
Over the summer, he visited a friend from his college
days named Lawrence Acker. Duke Acker as he was known.
Your name had come up as a friend of his
and wondered if he had like a little while to
talk about him. Acker is in his seventies now and
lives down in Greenville, South Carolina, not far from Lancaster.
(03:20):
How did you guys meet? Was it in Greenville? You
know what I'm talking about? Right? Did you call him
butch maybe? Or a speedy He declined to lend his
voice to this podcast, but he told me that Jim
was a devoted and committed friend. He said that even
with all his football success, Jim turned his attention to
life outside of sports. He and Acker decided they would
finance a South Carolina franchise of a popular whig store
(03:42):
Jim had seen in Baltimore. Duke knew two women in
Greenville he thought would be perfect to run the business.
So the plan was for the women to go to
Baltimore for a little while to learn the ropes at
the store. Then they'd returned to open the new franchise
in Greenville. I found a couple more photos that I thought,
even one a seat, and I actually emailed these two
this morning. One of those women was twenty year old
(04:06):
Alice Marie Young, and over time Jim began to look
at her as more than just a business partner. Maryland
State has Um had a yearbook online that was like,
I think a sophomore year, so it was younger there.
I thought it was a great picture him though. Alice
declined to lend her voice to this podcast, but we
sat down together multiple times in the lobby of a
(04:27):
hotel near Greenville, and we spoke there for nearly four hours.
This is a Monday night football broadcast from like nineteen
and seventy was on YouTube. They showed like who he
was matched up against. I just stopped it and took
a picture that was interesting. Alice is in her seventies
now and still lives near Greenville. It's the hometown she
thought she'd be going back to during the fall of
(04:48):
seventy one after the training in Baltimore was finished, But
once she got to Charmed City, Jim called an audible.
He lived in Sutton Place in Baltimore. Um nice place, looted.
Jim asked her to stay and move in with him
at his Sutton Place apartment in Baltimore. The two had
only known each other for a few months, so it
may have been an impulsive thing for Jim to ask,
(05:09):
but Alice was just as taken with him and happy
to be impulsive right back. By that fall of seventy one,
a new NFL season was underway. Jim made plenty of
money with the Colts, so Alice didn't have to work.
She waited there in Baltimore for Jim to come home
(05:30):
from practices and road games. One of the things that
I've learned about him is that he compartmentalized his life.
But even a love struck twenty year old couldn't help.
But notice Jim had a funny way of keeping her
in the dark. Being the time that it was, it
was easier for him to keep things to himself. You
guys nowadays would have face time, text email. Whatever. Whatever
(05:53):
his issues, it may not have helped that Jim season
began with sky high expectations. The second alright, Jim Duncan,
that's the right quarterback and immediately fell to earth coming
up Hart Jim Ducan from his right cornerback position. Jim
missed almost the entire preseason with an ankle injury and
never seemed to fully recover. Lambs trailing to Botall Jim.
(06:16):
He started the first three games that year, but by
November Jim was clearly struggling. He looked lost trying to
cover an l A Ram receiver in this Monday night
game going touchdown. Duncan is complaining it was out of bounds.
Duncan is complaining because he wasn't covering. A news story
from that year said Jim was beaten in one on
(06:37):
one coverage six times during a close loss to the
Cleveland Browns. Jim told the reporter quote, after that, all
the lines started coming together. Another alarming story from that
season was reported by the Philadelphia Inquirer. One of Jim's teammates,
Roy Hilton, told the Inquirer that the two got into
(06:58):
an argument over a card game that turned into a
fist fight, which was surprising enough for a guy who
was said to be so likable. Hilton told the paper
that Jim left the room after getting punched, and when
Hilton left soon after Jim was waiting for him outside
with a loaded gun. The Inquirer wrote that other Colts
players took the gun from Jim before anything happened. No
(07:22):
one I interviewed for this podcast could confirm that happened.
And Hilton has passed away. But I asked Upton Bell
about it. He's the Colts executive who helped draft both players,
so he never got confirmation from Hilton. Now, and I'd
asked Eddie Hilton, and by Hilton was thought a bullshitter. Yeah,
Hilton was a man of few words. If Hilton seven,
(07:43):
I believe it. If true, it would mean that by
late nineteen seventy one, Jim was in a dangerous place.
We'll be right back. Throughout the rest of Jim's Ugly
V Football season, Alice remembers his behavior at home becoming
(08:06):
increasingly odd. Sometimes it was little things like the two
sets of curtains he insisted on using to keep the
bedroom pitch black. But Alice told me that sometimes the
episodes were more frightening. It's another one of those things that,
as much as you want to get into it, did
he like become like abusing? She told me, Jim was
(08:27):
never abusive, but that he would sometimes grab her with
a fire in his eyes that came out of nowhere. Clearly,
the Colts noticed it too late. That nineteen season, team
executives told Jim they were sending him to a doctor
to be tested for something that could explain his looking
lost on the field and his erratic behavior off of it.
(08:48):
I talked to a ct expert at UM Southern count
and you know, there are seven year old NFL players
that have died that they were able to do the
autopsy on the brain and they found that they had
ct Today, listeners will recognize similarities between Jim's worsening mental
state in a neurodegenerative disease called chronic traumatic encephalopathy or CTE.
(09:13):
Researchers at Boston University examined the brains of one hundred
and eleven deceased NFL players. They found signs of the
disease ct and a hundred and ten. Jim's confusion on defense,
his impulsiveness and aggressiveness at home, even light sensitivity. They're
all symptoms broadly associated with CTE, which in recent years
(09:35):
has become increasingly associated with repeated hits to the head
that NFL players suffered doc getness, but whoting it was
auto bounds. Dunt get his complaining because he wasn't covering.
Since we've known that people exposed to many concussions developed
brain changes, and those brain changes couldn't lead them to
(09:56):
be demented, just like someone with Alzheimer's disease, but a
much younger age. Jeff Viktorov is an associate professor of
clinical neurology at the University of Southern California. He wrote
a groundbreaking textbook on concussions and traumatic en cephalopathy. Ten
years ago, we knew that NFL full players or others
who exposed multiple concussions during adulthood would be at risk
(10:20):
for various kinds of bad brain change. In the last
ten years, we now know that if a kid started
playing football before age twelve and then joined the NFL,
he's much more likely to suffer those brain changes. What
that means, if you kind of do the math, is
(10:42):
that almost every boy who plays football before age twelve
has to experience some degree of permanent brain damage. High
school football players typically have five brain rattling experiences every season.
Damas today is cheap, we'll kick it off you're guys
(11:06):
had all the Baltimore coach number thirty five Jim dum
ball game is under way. Many of Duncan's former college
and proteinmates told me horror stories about their own football
related head injuries. You know they wouldn't wear those things
like the corn field Eddie Hitton, the Colts receiver Jim
(11:32):
Face in practice, talked about getting hit so hard in
the game for the next few downs. He saw two
footballs on every play, and the quarterback and throw the ball.
I saw kiland I've reached and maybe always seem granted
right one. Jim would have been especially vulnerable to head injuries.
Jim Duncan numb the thirty five vat FO Baltimore. He
played offense, defense, and special teams from childhood through college,
(11:55):
so he was on the field almost the entire game.
In the NFL, he was best known for returning kickoffs,
perhaps the game's most dangerous play. They hit the sleep
under the corner that dot, that's time Doting will come
out with him. Tackler's from the opposing team charged sixty
yards at full speed to hit him as hard as
they could. He is beyond the point of five Baltimore's
(12:16):
wall verst than that at their own by seven dog.
It's almost guaranteed any child or adults who rattles his
brain enough to say, WHOA, I lost it there for
a second has had an injurious impact on the part
of the brain that controls emotions. Your subject may have
(12:39):
experienced significant changes in an ability to understand what was
threatening and not threatening, what he should respond with violent
behavior too, and all that would be a normal and
expected reaction to multiple concussions. No one can say for
(13:00):
sure that Jim was suffering from CTE. Diagnosing that requires
preserving the patient's brain within twenty four hours of their death,
and no one did that in Jim's case. CTE wasn't
even a diagnosable condition until the early two thousand's. But
in hindsight, for Alice, that would explain a lot. It's
completely reasonable. He was twenty six at least, probably played
(13:22):
fifteen years and may have played, you know, probably around
there fifteen years of football. A lot of things on
your brain equipment is rudimentary. It pains me that there's
no way to prove it, but I really feel there,
and I mean, you've just given me even more She
told me quote that would explain his actions and the
changes in him. I've heard from other women who have
husbands who went through the same things, especially when the
(13:45):
women say that they couldn't live with them anymore. They
got to the point that they had to move away
having gone through a lot of things with Jim. That
is what I saw. All the evidence is there. Jim
(14:06):
played in eleven games for the Colts that seventy one season,
but he only returned three kicks that year, and he
fumbled twice. The Colts never got an official diagnosis for
what they thought was wrong with him, at least none
that Alice heard that off season. In early nine, the
Colts traded Jim to the New Orleans Saints for an
offensive lineman and draft picks. In a few months, Jim
(14:29):
would report to training camp with the Saints, but in
the meantime, he and Alice headed back to South Carolina.
In late January two, Jim and Alice moved into one
of the bedrooms of the house he built in Lancaster.
His mother, Ellerie Clyburne, lived there, along with a handful
of Jim's youngest brothers and sisters, including Moral United Clyburne.
(14:53):
Jim's youngest brother, who recently had been born, Carl mar
who came off the bench following Andrew D Johnny United.
He was the last of Jim's seven siblings. In honor
of the greatest season of Jim's life and the two
quarterbacks who had helped engineer it, Jim chose the name
for his youngest brother. There's a great failing to the
side on the wedding side, and that I just set
(15:14):
about Jim. That Orange Bowl in Miami must have felt
farther away than ever. And Acker, Jim's partner in the
whig business, told me quote, although I felt like I
was his best friend, I don't know that I knew
exactly where his head was all the time. For months,
the two had forged ahead with trying to launch that
(15:34):
whig shop. They'd renovated a storefront in a Greenville strip
mall and bought inventory, paying for at least half of
it with Jim's money. Exactly how much was spent is
another piece of this story without an easy answer. It's
also not clear Jim's family and friends understood what his
financial situation really was, and that it probably wasn't as
(15:57):
good as they thought. Defense that wait for the Baltimore
Colt Jim doctor on the right side as a taxi
squad player in nineteen sixty eight. Jim was paid so
little he needed a second job in the off season.
In Baltimore, Jim made about fifteen thousand dollars a season
(16:20):
in nineteen sixty nine, nineteen seventy and nineteen seventy one.
That's about a hundred thousand a year in today's dollars.
Jim also earned a fifteen thousand dollar bonus for winning
the nineteen seventy Super Bowl, So in total, Jim was
paid a little more than sixty thousand dollars by the Colts,
or a max of about four hundred thousand in today's money.
(16:43):
We were very free with his money. You know, at
that time he made like a thousand, which was a
lot of money. In seven one of my early conversations
with Jim's brother, Elroy, underscored how generous Jim was and
how much confusion there was about his finances. He most
(17:03):
of the time when he was the daddy, you know,
all arrest I was. He took care of me when
I was in college. You know, in the pro whether
Jim misled people about his money didn't have a firm
grasp on it himself or was just the subject of
wishful thinking. He had already bought his mother a house
(17:25):
in Baltimore. Jim had lived in a high rise on
Park Avenue and bought a Lincoln Mark three luxury car.
He'd even given away a prize possession for any football player,
the championship ring each Colt received for winning the nineteen
seventy Super Bowl. That giant fourteen carrot gold ring had
a nearly one carrot diamond on top, surrounded by a
white gold horse shoe embedded with seven blue sapphires. It
(17:48):
was probably worth about two thousand dollars at the time,
and Alice said he just gave it to his aunt.
I really wonder if he was having money problems, because
I don't think a Super Bowl ring with disappearance about
at time. It was another way Alice was kept in
the dark. He was able to keep things from his brother,
his mom, from you, and I think he carried all
(18:08):
of it, all of it. Jim gave the Lincoln Mark
three to Elroy, and once Jim and Alice moved back
to Lancaster, he bought a smaller Canary yellow black top
VW Bug. But that wig business seemed to drag Jim
deeper into a financial hole. There were stories that I
found that said he had lost a lot of money.
(18:30):
Did Jim like invest a lot in that company? When
I asked Acker about how much Jim might have lost,
he told me, quote, I'm not a money type man,
so I can't really say he lost some money and
I lost some money. But at one point in Jim
told a reporter he lost as much as sixty dollars
in that business, which would have been nearly all of
(18:52):
his NFL earnings right there. I don't want to be
accusatory or anything. Did I mean, did you keep up
with him much after the business to work out? Or
did you guys kind of just go your separate ways.
There's a long history of pro athletes sinking money into
failed businesses, often run by their friends. But when we spoke,
Acker clearly disputed any implication he might have taken advantage
(19:13):
of his friend. He told me, quote, I can tell
you without a doubt, there wasn't a whole lot of
money lost in the venture. Hell I bought as many
lunches and dinners as he did we'll be back in
a moment. For James Edward Duncan and Alice Marie Young,
(19:35):
April Fool's Day two was no joke. Alice had become
one of the few remaining rays of light in Jim's
life as his football career started spiraling. By all accounts,
Jim lavished gifts on his family and friends, maybe Alice
most of all, and she'll remember the red, white and
blue dress Jim gave her that spring for the rest
(19:55):
of her life. That April one in Lancaster, they'd row
from the house Jim had built at the end of
Islam Street to the courthouse at the center of town.
Jim and Alice had known each other for less than
a year. Alice was twenty one years old, and Jim's
life had become a whirlwind. Alice told me that just
about the only person at the courthouse that day was
(20:17):
the probate judge. Jim hadn't even told her why he'd
asked her to wear that special dress, or why he'd
brought her to the courthouse in the first place. Finally,
Alice told me Jim had simply said, we're going to
get married today. As she remembers it, it wasn't really
a question. I thought it would have a witness on
her living. Alice show me their marriage license. The witness
(20:40):
appears to have been that judge's secretary. Okay, Sandra, Yeah,
Sandra Estridge was your witness. Romantic. As rough as the
prior NFL season had been for Jim with the Colts,
according to Alice, he was in rush to report to
(21:01):
the Gulf Coast. So you lived in Lancashire, so in
seventy two, like after you've gotten ready. They had been
living on a street with Jim's family for the previous
few months, which would put a strain on any couple,
but Jim's reluctance to play for the Saints, or maybe
just play football anymore at all, became another source of
(21:21):
ongoing arguments. Alice told me she was far less worried
about Jim leaving football than she was about the two
of them making a life together some place other than
in that family home in Lancaster. But for Jim's family,
his quitting the game would mean the end of those
NFL paychecks for him and the relatives he'd been supporting.
Oh yeah, and and you know you think that your
(21:43):
brother makes four times more than he makes. That's a
simple misunderstanding. Alice told me. She said to Jim, quote,
you make up your mind what you want to do.
Leave front of the corner. Duckling will come out whatever.
It's fine with me, whether you play football or not,
but let it be your to Asian. The storm clouds
(22:03):
were engulfing Jim's life and the stunning end was approaching
for more than just his NFL career. And I'm part
four of Return Man. He made something kind of thing
with about ideas never realized and having money would create
so many problems. They're nothing bad that I could tell
you about what other than he could love one el
(22:27):
Ray told me that Jim had a kid. Did you
know that he was dating a few of the local
white girls. It was something that some people were obviously
threatened by. I'm working on a story. Have you got
some time to talk? I'm Brett McCormick. Return Man is
(22:48):
a production of The Herald, McClatchy Studios and I Heart Radio.
It's produced by Matt Walsh, Karat Tabor Cotta, Stevens, Rachel Wise,
and David Coburn. The executive produce Surfer. I Heart Radio
is Sean Titone. For lots more on this story, go
to Harold online dot com slash return Man. If you
have any additional information about Jim Duncan's life or death,
(23:11):
email us at return Man at Harold online dot com.
To continue supporting this kind of work, visit Harold online
dot com slash Podcasts and consider a digital subscription. And
for more podcasts from my Heart Radio, visit the I
heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to
your favorite shows
Long Shot is a production of McClatchy Studios and I
Heart Radio. Previously on Return Man, It is coming to
Duncan a real threat. You have such a great speed
witness he could break one of a close game, and
you went, I want to jafter. Guys on the team
we run working on the day and don't just extra money.
(00:21):
You know, they look like we were so we were
trying to make a living of like by war. How
can you tell black people to be non violently and
at the same time condone the sinning of white killers
as well? What are you gonna call this book? Speedy?
From the cotton fields to Glory? He would have done
some good things in life. I was told repeatedly during
(00:50):
my reporting that Jim Duncan could be quite friendly and generous.
And you've been led eight kids, got going out having
been raised in poverty, he knew how it felt to
go hungry. You got the blowing it with what you
got to do. But in all the time I've looked
into Jim's life, I've been struck by how few people
(01:10):
said they really knew him that well. I just remember you,
the lanky cup guy, and I do remember being a
good guy. H Jeff Beaver was the quarterback for the
Capitol Colts team Jim played on. That always seemed a
(01:31):
little odd. It's a word that came up more than
once during interviews with his former teammates. Yeah. Ways, but
I just thought, everybody, you know, we all got a
long way and him on a great way by Jim Duncan.
As long as he did what he needed to do
in the field, that's all I was interested in. Eddie
Hinton was the cultural receiver who faced Jim every day
(01:52):
in practice. That didn't make sense to me, But you
know who was out of Saint Yeah you thinking, Yeah
for the next day look out at the Kansas City
forty nine yard line. I knew that Jim had had
some personal problems, but hey, we all Bill Curry was
(02:14):
the cold center and team captain during Jim's time in Baltimore.
Really good NFL team. You don't have a bunch of
really well adjusted Sunday school guys. But no one knew
just how far Jim would fall. Jim had some problems,
but I didn't remember what they were, and I did
not get involved. From the Herald, McClatchy studios and I
(02:36):
Heart Radio, this is return man. I'm brought McCormick and
this is part three The Burden nine. He's Robs O'Brien.
(02:56):
That one offseason, Jim's life changed dramatically off the field.
Over the summer, he visited a friend from his college
days named Lawrence Acker. Duke Acker as he was known.
Your name had come up as a friend of his
and wondered if he had like a little while to
talk about him. Acker is in his seventies now and
lives down in Greenville, South Carolina, not far from Lancaster.
(03:20):
How did you guys meet? Was it in Greenville? You
know what I'm talking about? Right? Did you call him
butch maybe? Or a speedy He declined to lend his
voice to this podcast, but he told me that Jim
was a devoted and committed friend. He said that even
with all his football success, Jim turned his attention to
life outside of sports. He and Acker decided they would
finance a South Carolina franchise of a popular whig store
(03:42):
Jim had seen in Baltimore. Duke knew two women in
Greenville he thought would be perfect to run the business.
So the plan was for the women to go to
Baltimore for a little while to learn the ropes at
the store. Then they'd returned to open the new franchise
in Greenville. I found a couple more photos that I thought,
even one a seat, and I actually emailed these two
this morning. One of those women was twenty year old
(04:06):
Alice Marie Young, and over time Jim began to look
at her as more than just a business partner. Maryland
State has Um had a yearbook online that was like,
I think a sophomore year, so it was younger there.
I thought it was a great picture him though. Alice
declined to lend her voice to this podcast, but we
sat down together multiple times in the lobby of a
(04:27):
hotel near Greenville, and we spoke there for nearly four hours.
This is a Monday night football broadcast from like nineteen
and seventy was on YouTube. They showed like who he
was matched up against. I just stopped it and took
a picture that was interesting. Alice is in her seventies
now and still lives near Greenville. It's the hometown she
thought she'd be going back to during the fall of
(04:48):
seventy one after the training in Baltimore was finished, But
once she got to Charmed City, Jim called an audible.
He lived in Sutton Place in Baltimore. Um nice place, looted.
Jim asked her to stay and move in with him
at his Sutton Place apartment in Baltimore. The two had
only known each other for a few months, so it
may have been an impulsive thing for Jim to ask,
(05:09):
but Alice was just as taken with him and happy
to be impulsive right back. By that fall of seventy one,
a new NFL season was underway. Jim made plenty of
money with the Colts, so Alice didn't have to work.
She waited there in Baltimore for Jim to come home
(05:30):
from practices and road games. One of the things that
I've learned about him is that he compartmentalized his life.
But even a love struck twenty year old couldn't help.
But notice Jim had a funny way of keeping her
in the dark. Being the time that it was, it
was easier for him to keep things to himself. You
guys nowadays would have face time, text email. Whatever. Whatever
(05:53):
his issues, it may not have helped that Jim season
began with sky high expectations. The second alright, Jim Duncan,
that's the right quarterback and immediately fell to earth coming
up Hart Jim Ducan from his right cornerback position. Jim
missed almost the entire preseason with an ankle injury and
never seemed to fully recover. Lambs trailing to Botall Jim.
(06:16):
He started the first three games that year, but by
November Jim was clearly struggling. He looked lost trying to
cover an l A Ram receiver in this Monday night
game going touchdown. Duncan is complaining it was out of bounds.
Duncan is complaining because he wasn't covering. A news story
from that year said Jim was beaten in one on
(06:37):
one coverage six times during a close loss to the
Cleveland Browns. Jim told the reporter quote, after that, all
the lines started coming together. Another alarming story from that
season was reported by the Philadelphia Inquirer. One of Jim's teammates,
Roy Hilton, told the Inquirer that the two got into
(06:58):
an argument over a card game that turned into a
fist fight, which was surprising enough for a guy who
was said to be so likable. Hilton told the paper
that Jim left the room after getting punched, and when
Hilton left soon after Jim was waiting for him outside
with a loaded gun. The Inquirer wrote that other Colts
players took the gun from Jim before anything happened. No
(07:22):
one I interviewed for this podcast could confirm that happened.
And Hilton has passed away. But I asked Upton Bell
about it. He's the Colts executive who helped draft both players,
so he never got confirmation from Hilton. Now, and I'd
asked Eddie Hilton, and by Hilton was thought a bullshitter. Yeah,
Hilton was a man of few words. If Hilton seven,
(07:43):
I believe it. If true, it would mean that by
late nineteen seventy one, Jim was in a dangerous place.
We'll be right back. Throughout the rest of Jim's Ugly
V Football season, Alice remembers his behavior at home becoming
(08:06):
increasingly odd. Sometimes it was little things like the two
sets of curtains he insisted on using to keep the
bedroom pitch black. But Alice told me that sometimes the
episodes were more frightening. It's another one of those things that,
as much as you want to get into it, did
he like become like abusing? She told me, Jim was
(08:27):
never abusive, but that he would sometimes grab her with
a fire in his eyes that came out of nowhere. Clearly,
the Colts noticed it too late. That nineteen season, team
executives told Jim they were sending him to a doctor
to be tested for something that could explain his looking
lost on the field and his erratic behavior off of it.
(08:48):
I talked to a ct expert at UM Southern count
and you know, there are seven year old NFL players
that have died that they were able to do the
autopsy on the brain and they found that they had
ct Today, listeners will recognize similarities between Jim's worsening mental
state in a neurodegenerative disease called chronic traumatic encephalopathy or CTE.
(09:13):
Researchers at Boston University examined the brains of one hundred
and eleven deceased NFL players. They found signs of the
disease ct and a hundred and ten. Jim's confusion on defense,
his impulsiveness and aggressiveness at home, even light sensitivity. They're
all symptoms broadly associated with CTE, which in recent years
(09:35):
has become increasingly associated with repeated hits to the head
that NFL players suffered doc getness, but whoting it was
auto bounds. Dunt get his complaining because he wasn't covering.
Since we've known that people exposed to many concussions developed
brain changes, and those brain changes couldn't lead them to
(09:56):
be demented, just like someone with Alzheimer's disease, but a
much younger age. Jeff Viktorov is an associate professor of
clinical neurology at the University of Southern California. He wrote
a groundbreaking textbook on concussions and traumatic en cephalopathy. Ten
years ago, we knew that NFL full players or others
who exposed multiple concussions during adulthood would be at risk
(10:20):
for various kinds of bad brain change. In the last
ten years, we now know that if a kid started
playing football before age twelve and then joined the NFL,
he's much more likely to suffer those brain changes. What
that means, if you kind of do the math, is
(10:42):
that almost every boy who plays football before age twelve
has to experience some degree of permanent brain damage. High
school football players typically have five brain rattling experiences every season.
Damas today is cheap, we'll kick it off you're guys
(11:06):
had all the Baltimore coach number thirty five Jim dum
ball game is under way. Many of Duncan's former college
and proteinmates told me horror stories about their own football
related head injuries. You know they wouldn't wear those things
like the corn field Eddie Hitton, the Colts receiver Jim
(11:32):
Face in practice, talked about getting hit so hard in
the game for the next few downs. He saw two
footballs on every play, and the quarterback and throw the ball.
I saw kiland I've reached and maybe always seem granted
right one. Jim would have been especially vulnerable to head injuries.
Jim Duncan numb the thirty five vat FO Baltimore. He
played offense, defense, and special teams from childhood through college,
(11:55):
so he was on the field almost the entire game.
In the NFL, he was best known for returning kickoffs,
perhaps the game's most dangerous play. They hit the sleep
under the corner that dot, that's time Doting will come
out with him. Tackler's from the opposing team charged sixty
yards at full speed to hit him as hard as
they could. He is beyond the point of five Baltimore's
(12:16):
wall verst than that at their own by seven dog.
It's almost guaranteed any child or adults who rattles his
brain enough to say, WHOA, I lost it there for
a second has had an injurious impact on the part
of the brain that controls emotions. Your subject may have
(12:39):
experienced significant changes in an ability to understand what was
threatening and not threatening, what he should respond with violent
behavior too, and all that would be a normal and
expected reaction to multiple concussions. No one can say for
(13:00):
sure that Jim was suffering from CTE. Diagnosing that requires
preserving the patient's brain within twenty four hours of their death,
and no one did that in Jim's case. CTE wasn't
even a diagnosable condition until the early two thousand's. But
in hindsight, for Alice, that would explain a lot. It's
completely reasonable. He was twenty six at least, probably played
(13:22):
fifteen years and may have played, you know, probably around
there fifteen years of football. A lot of things on
your brain equipment is rudimentary. It pains me that there's
no way to prove it, but I really feel there,
and I mean, you've just given me even more She
told me quote that would explain his actions and the
changes in him. I've heard from other women who have
husbands who went through the same things, especially when the
(13:45):
women say that they couldn't live with them anymore. They
got to the point that they had to move away
having gone through a lot of things with Jim. That
is what I saw. All the evidence is there. Jim
(14:06):
played in eleven games for the Colts that seventy one season,
but he only returned three kicks that year, and he
fumbled twice. The Colts never got an official diagnosis for
what they thought was wrong with him, at least none
that Alice heard that off season. In early nine, the
Colts traded Jim to the New Orleans Saints for an
offensive lineman and draft picks. In a few months, Jim
(14:29):
would report to training camp with the Saints, but in
the meantime, he and Alice headed back to South Carolina.
In late January two, Jim and Alice moved into one
of the bedrooms of the house he built in Lancaster.
His mother, Ellerie Clyburne, lived there, along with a handful
of Jim's youngest brothers and sisters, including Moral United Clyburne.
(14:53):
Jim's youngest brother, who recently had been born, Carl mar
who came off the bench following Andrew D Johnny United.
He was the last of Jim's seven siblings. In honor
of the greatest season of Jim's life and the two
quarterbacks who had helped engineer it, Jim chose the name
for his youngest brother. There's a great failing to the
side on the wedding side, and that I just set
(15:14):
about Jim. That Orange Bowl in Miami must have felt
farther away than ever. And Acker, Jim's partner in the
whig business, told me quote, although I felt like I
was his best friend, I don't know that I knew
exactly where his head was all the time. For months,
the two had forged ahead with trying to launch that
(15:34):
whig shop. They'd renovated a storefront in a Greenville strip
mall and bought inventory, paying for at least half of
it with Jim's money. Exactly how much was spent is
another piece of this story without an easy answer. It's
also not clear Jim's family and friends understood what his
financial situation really was, and that it probably wasn't as
(15:57):
good as they thought. Defense that wait for the Baltimore
Colt Jim doctor on the right side as a taxi
squad player in nineteen sixty eight. Jim was paid so
little he needed a second job in the off season.
In Baltimore, Jim made about fifteen thousand dollars a season
(16:20):
in nineteen sixty nine, nineteen seventy and nineteen seventy one.
That's about a hundred thousand a year in today's dollars.
Jim also earned a fifteen thousand dollar bonus for winning
the nineteen seventy Super Bowl, So in total, Jim was
paid a little more than sixty thousand dollars by the Colts,
or a max of about four hundred thousand in today's money.
(16:43):
We were very free with his money. You know, at
that time he made like a thousand, which was a
lot of money. In seven one of my early conversations
with Jim's brother, Elroy, underscored how generous Jim was and
how much confusion there was about his finances. He most
(17:03):
of the time when he was the daddy, you know,
all arrest I was. He took care of me when
I was in college. You know, in the pro whether
Jim misled people about his money didn't have a firm
grasp on it himself or was just the subject of
wishful thinking. He had already bought his mother a house
(17:25):
in Baltimore. Jim had lived in a high rise on
Park Avenue and bought a Lincoln Mark three luxury car.
He'd even given away a prize possession for any football player,
the championship ring each Colt received for winning the nineteen
seventy Super Bowl. That giant fourteen carrot gold ring had
a nearly one carrot diamond on top, surrounded by a
white gold horse shoe embedded with seven blue sapphires. It
(17:48):
was probably worth about two thousand dollars at the time,
and Alice said he just gave it to his aunt.
I really wonder if he was having money problems, because
I don't think a Super Bowl ring with disappearance about
at time. It was another way Alice was kept in
the dark. He was able to keep things from his brother,
his mom, from you, and I think he carried all
(18:08):
of it, all of it. Jim gave the Lincoln Mark
three to Elroy, and once Jim and Alice moved back
to Lancaster, he bought a smaller Canary yellow black top
VW Bug. But that wig business seemed to drag Jim
deeper into a financial hole. There were stories that I
found that said he had lost a lot of money.
(18:30):
Did Jim like invest a lot in that company? When
I asked Acker about how much Jim might have lost,
he told me, quote, I'm not a money type man,
so I can't really say he lost some money and
I lost some money. But at one point in Jim
told a reporter he lost as much as sixty dollars
in that business, which would have been nearly all of
(18:52):
his NFL earnings right there. I don't want to be
accusatory or anything. Did I mean, did you keep up
with him much after the business to work out? Or
did you guys kind of just go your separate ways.
There's a long history of pro athletes sinking money into
failed businesses, often run by their friends. But when we spoke,
Acker clearly disputed any implication he might have taken advantage
(19:13):
of his friend. He told me, quote, I can tell
you without a doubt, there wasn't a whole lot of
money lost in the venture. Hell I bought as many
lunches and dinners as he did we'll be back in
a moment. For James Edward Duncan and Alice Marie Young,
(19:35):
April Fool's Day two was no joke. Alice had become
one of the few remaining rays of light in Jim's
life as his football career started spiraling. By all accounts,
Jim lavished gifts on his family and friends, maybe Alice
most of all, and she'll remember the red, white and
blue dress Jim gave her that spring for the rest
(19:55):
of her life. That April one in Lancaster, they'd row
from the house Jim had built at the end of
Islam Street to the courthouse at the center of town.
Jim and Alice had known each other for less than
a year. Alice was twenty one years old, and Jim's
life had become a whirlwind. Alice told me that just
about the only person at the courthouse that day was
(20:17):
the probate judge. Jim hadn't even told her why he'd
asked her to wear that special dress, or why he'd
brought her to the courthouse in the first place. Finally,
Alice told me Jim had simply said, we're going to
get married today. As she remembers it, it wasn't really
a question. I thought it would have a witness on
her living. Alice show me their marriage license. The witness
(20:40):
appears to have been that judge's secretary. Okay, Sandra, Yeah,
Sandra Estridge was your witness. Romantic. As rough as the
prior NFL season had been for Jim with the Colts,
according to Alice, he was in rush to report to
(21:01):
the Gulf Coast. So you lived in Lancashire, so in
seventy two, like after you've gotten ready. They had been
living on a street with Jim's family for the previous
few months, which would put a strain on any couple,
but Jim's reluctance to play for the Saints, or maybe
just play football anymore at all, became another source of
(21:21):
ongoing arguments. Alice told me she was far less worried
about Jim leaving football than she was about the two
of them making a life together some place other than
in that family home in Lancaster. But for Jim's family,
his quitting the game would mean the end of those
NFL paychecks for him and the relatives he'd been supporting.
Oh yeah, and and you know you think that your
(21:43):
brother makes four times more than he makes. That's a
simple misunderstanding. Alice told me. She said to Jim, quote,
you make up your mind what you want to do.
Leave front of the corner. Duckling will come out whatever.
It's fine with me, whether you play football or not,
but let it be your to Asian. The storm clouds
(22:03):
were engulfing Jim's life and the stunning end was approaching
for more than just his NFL career. And I'm part
four of Return Man. He made something kind of thing
with about ideas never realized and having money would create
so many problems. They're nothing bad that I could tell
you about what other than he could love one el
(22:27):
Ray told me that Jim had a kid. Did you
know that he was dating a few of the local
white girls. It was something that some people were obviously
threatened by. I'm working on a story. Have you got
some time to talk? I'm Brett McCormick. Return Man is
(22:48):
a production of The Herald, McClatchy Studios and I Heart Radio.
It's produced by Matt Walsh, Karat Tabor Cotta, Stevens, Rachel Wise,
and David Coburn. The executive produce Surfer. I Heart Radio
is Sean Titone. For lots more on this story, go
to Harold online dot com slash return Man. If you
have any additional information about Jim Duncan's life or death,
(23:11):
email us at return Man at Harold online dot com.
To continue supporting this kind of work, visit Harold online
dot com slash Podcasts and consider a digital subscription. And
for more podcasts from my Heart Radio, visit the I
heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to
your favorite shows
Host
Alex Andrejev
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