Burgess Owens

Burgess Owens

Date of birth	(1951-08-02) August 2, 1951
Place of birth	Columbus, Ohio
Career information
Position(s)	Safety
US college	University of Miami
NFL draft	1973 / round: 1 / Pick 13
Career history
As player
1973–1979	New York Jets
1980–1982	Oakland/Los Angeles Raiders
Career highlights and awards
Pro Bowls	first alternate in 1982
Career stats
Playing stats at DatabaseFootball.com

Clarence Burgess Owens (born August 2, 1951 in Columbus, Ohio) is a retired safety who played ten seasons in the National Football League for the New York Jets and the Oakland Raiders. He graduated from Rickards High School in Tallahassee, Florida in 1969, and then attended the University of Miami, where he was an All-American defensive back.

Owens was a first round draft pick of the Jets in 1973. During his rookie season, he returned a kickoff 82 yards for a touchdown against the Denver Broncos on October 28. This was the Jets' only TD scored on a kickoff return during the 1970s. He then became a continuous starting player for the Jets, and was a part of the Raiders' 1980 championship team.

Owens is married with six children and is a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. He has publicly shared about his faith to large audiences.

Owens is the author of an ebook published in August 2012 with the title, It's All About Team: Exposing the Black Talented Tenth. The book examines how the black community has fared since the start of the twentieth century, especially in following the thinking of W. E. B. Dubois and progressive liberalism.

Owens is the author of Liberalism or How to Turn Good Men into Whiners, Weenies and Wimps (2016) which offers a history and analysis of the Black experience in the U.S.A. with suggestions for moving past conventional ideas for moving the Black community forward.