Which athlete starred in Nike’s famous “Bo Knows” advertising campaign?

Bo Jackson starred in Nike’s famous “Bo Knows” advertising campaign.

The campaign celebrated Jackson’s unusual success in two major professional sports. He played baseball for the Kansas City Royals and football for the Los Angeles Raiders, and Nike used that dual-sport identity as the central idea of the advertisements.

The commercials showed Jackson attempting or discussing a range of athletic activities, with the repeated phrase “Bo Knows” becoming one of Nike’s best-known advertising lines. The campaign helped turn Jackson into a major sports-marketing figure in the late 1980s and early 1990s.

Deion Sanders is another athlete famous for playing professional baseball and football, which makes him a plausible confusion. However, Nike’s “Bo Knows” campaign specifically centered on Bo Jackson and his cross-sport reputation.