Oklahoma State’s own Barry Sanders turns fifty today. It’s still jarring to watch Sanders’ college film for so many things — things that are hard to explain at all, because the best athletes always present a kind of unsolvable problem, something that is inexplicable for everyone tasked with facing them. See: Superman-era Lakers Shaq, or Reggie White in the NFL, or Federer or Serena Williams, or any other athlete so dominant they work less like a problem, and more like a dilemma.
There are people who could tackle him, for one, which seems like a minor miracle given what a springy, temporarily immortal Barry Sanders could do with his twenty-year-old body.