I missed this little bit of trivia in high school poetry class. Jack Kerouac was once a star fullback on his high school football team before he broke his leg while a freshman at Columbia University during practice.
Speaking of writers and sports, I love this popular anecdote about Kurt Vonnegut.
Back in the mid-1950s, he was employed by Sports Illustrated, briefly. He reported to work, was asked to write a short piece on a racehorse that had jumped over a fence and tried to run away. Kurt stared at the blank piece of paper all morning and then typed, "The horse jumped over the fucking fence," and walked out, self-employed again.
