Luke Ford

NEWS: The Hall of Famer has long been dogged by accusations that he physically abused women. Perhaps the most notorious charge came after his football career, in 1968, when police say Brown threw model Eva Bohn-Chin off the second-floor balcony of his Los Angeles home. Charges against Brown were dropped after Bohn-Chin, who was found on the ground below the balcony, insisted she slipped. Brown did pay a small fine for hitting a deputy sheriff investigating the incident.

Fewer people remember 18-year-old Brenda Ayres, a high-school dropout who in 1965 accused Brown of assaulting her in a Howard Johnson motel near Cleveland’s University Circle. Brown testified during his trial that he knew her and she visited his room. But he said he never assaulted her or had sex with her as she alleged. A jury acquitted Brown.

There have been more accusations that Brown demonstrated violent behavior off the field. CNN.com has a timeline about Brown’s life that notes many of his troubles, including a 1999 domestic disturbance with his wife, which led to Brown’s arrest. He was accused of making threats toward her. On the 9-1-1 tape from the incident, his wife said Brown threatened to kill her, a claim she later recanted, according to the CNN timeline. A jury found Brown guilty of hitting his wife’s car with a shovel during the incident. He was fined $1,800 and sentenced to three years’ probation and one year of domestic violence counseling, according to CNN.

Over the years, Brown has dismissed the accusations as largely a creation of the media.

“I don’t always claim to be the person who’s done the right thing, but the media’s singled me out as the most brutal cat that ever lived,” Brown told People Magazine in 1991. “I try to treat women with respect. The ones that know me like me and trust me.”

In a 1994 interview, A Plain Dealer Publishing Co. reporter asked Brown about his treatment of women.

“I’m not going to go over all that dried-up s— about women I supposedly beat up. … Anything I did regarding the law is part of the record,” Brown responded.

Brown never had trouble getting past the accusations – a benefit of the era when football was still largely just a sport, not the family-friendly entertainment and cultural juggernaut it tries to be today. He also never faced social media, which could have exploited the accusations against him and forced the NFL’s reawakening sooner.