We know Michael Jordan, the greatest basketball player of all time, was good enough at baseball that he was able to play it professionally in the minor leagues for a couple of seasons.
And now, based on what one of his former coaches is saying, it seems Jordan may have had the physical tools to play pro football, too.
North Carolina head coach Roy Williams, who was an assistant under Dean Smith during Jordan’s college career at UNC, told Colin Cowherd on his radio show The Herd that the six-time NBA champ ran a blistering 40-yard dash while he was in his sophomore season with the Tar Heels.
“I’ll never forget this, his sophomore year, he ran the 40-yard. Me and coach [Bill] Guthridge and our trainer Mark Karns. We all three had hand stopwatch,” Williams said. “We’re not professional timers by any means, but he crossed the line, I looked and I said, ‘Wow. Coach Guthridge, what’d you get?’ He looked at me and Mark said, ‘I got 4.39.’ And coach Guthridge said, ‘I got 4.38.’ I said, ‘Michael, we missed your start, made a mistake. Come on, I need you to run it again.’ He said, ‘Too fast for you, huh?’ He goes back to the line, runs it again, and all of us got below 4.4.”
To put that in perspective, only four players ran faster 40-yard dashes than Jordan’s unofficial 4.38 at this year’s NFL combine and his time was faster than current NFL stars like Mike Evan, A.J. Green and Amari Cooper. Plus, Jordan did it while measuring 6-foot-6 and weighing nearly 200 pounds.
With those stats, he certainly would have been worthy of a late-round flier, especially when you factor in that his vertical jump likely would have been off the charts.
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