Auburn football legend Bo Jackson to have procedure to fix year-long hiccups
Auburn football legend and famed two-sport athlete Bo Jackson says he will have a medical procedure to solve a chronic hiccup he has suffered with for nearly a year.
Jackson told WJOX-FM in Birmingham that the strange medical phenomenon is what kept him away from the dedication of the statue to Frank Thomas that was held at Auburn during its spring football game last month.
"I wasn't [at the ceremony] because of dealing with hiccups," Jackson said.
"I've had the hiccups since last July. I'm getting a medical procedure done at the end of this week, I think, to try to remedy it. I've been busy sitting at the doctor's poking me, shining lights down my throat, probing me every way they can to find out why I've got these hiccups. That's the only reason I wasn't there."
Jackson said that doctors were unable to give him a clear diagnosis or cause of the condition and noted that the customary fixes have not solved the problem.
"I have done everything," Jackson said. "Scare me, hang me upside down, drink water, smell the ass of a porcupine. It doesn't work."
Bo Jackson at Auburn and beyond
Jackson had a legendary career at Auburn, running for 4,303 yards and scoring 43 touchdowns in the regular season.
In 1985, he had four 200-yard rushing games in a 1,786-yard campaign — still the second-best performance by any rusher in SEC history — and won the Heisman Trophy, what he called his greatest single honor.
That's saying something when you consider the full-scale athlete Jackson was.
Prior to playing at Auburn, Jackson was seriously pursued by the New York Yankees, who chose him in the second round of the 1982 MLB Draft out of high school.
Jackson elected to play for Auburn instead, finishing with the SEC's fourth-most all-time career yardage mark, two consensus All-American honors, and averaging 6.6 yards per carry in his collegiate career.
Jackson was also a member of the Auburn baseball team, where he posted a .338 career batting average in 90 games.
Tampa Bay picked Jackson as the No. 1 overall selection in the 1986 NFL Draft, but he didn't sign with the Buccaneers franchise, instead going to the Kansas City Royals baseball team, which selected him in the fourth round of the 1986 MLB Draft. His baseball career ended at age 32 after the strike-shortened 1994 season.
He played four seasons in the NFL with the Los Angeles Raiders, racking up 3,000 all-purpose yards and 18 touchdowns before a hip injury shortened his career.
(WJOX)
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