Two phone calls define the life and times of James Brooks.

He thought the first one was a joke. The other, a recent hello from Bengals President Mike Brown telling him he was in the club's Ring of Honor, was a punch line.

A zinger of validation. Those Riverfront Stadium steps he used to run during his relentless offseasons turned out to lead to the top of Paycor Stadium.

"I would say it's an honor, and I just want everyone to know I was a good player," Brooks says.

Classic J.B. All 5-10-180-pounds-just-hand-the-ball-to-the-referee-after-the-touchdown of him.

"No dancing," Brooks says. "Just go to the sidelines and rest."

A good player?

During the 1980s, Brooks rarely rested and always wanted the ball more. He wasn't just a Mighty Mite buzzing out of the backfield infesting the Astroturf every so often. One hike through Pro Football Reference reveals a matchup mastodon in the land of the giants during his eight seasons in Cincinnati as one of the NFL's most dominant running backs and pioneering weapons.

With a game as complete and as tough as any Bengal ever, Brooks' 4.8 yards per carry led all backs with at least 1,000 runs, and his 10.1 yards per catch led all those with at least 3,000 receiving yards in that stretch of 128 games.

"He was a good receiver. Good runner. But the thing the numbers don't say that needs being said is he was an exceptional pass protector," Mike Brown says.

"Even at his size, he was fully effective. He did it with just the right form every time. He was very quick. He would explode into the guy. He might have weighed half of what the other guy weighed. He got him just right. He could block good rushers even at his size. Brooks was a very fine player. It's good he's recognized. He deserves it. He earned it."

Brooks earned it through a 365-day work ethic long before the NFL calendar yielded something called voluntary workouts.

A favorite of Bengals legendary strength coach Kim Wood, Brooks scaled Riverfront's steps twice a week in the offseason. "I started at one end zone, finished at the other. Every row. Top to bottom. Instead of squatting weights, I ran steps."

Fellow Ring of Honor member Boomer Esiason once called Brooks a 6-4 linebacker in a 5-10 body. In one weight room session, Brooks saw Pro Bowl wide receiver Cris Collinsworth bench press 300 pounds one time. After Brooks did it five times, "I told him he better get a little heavier than that … It was just a joke."

"I enjoyed taking pride in the weight room," Brooks says. "Kim wanted to do it the right way. He said if I'm doing it the right way, everybody should be doing it the right way. 'Get up here and show them how to do it.'"

From 1984-91, Brooks had a Canton zip code at One Riverfront Stadium. The three running backs who gained more yards from scrimmage than Brooks during those seasons, Eric Dickerson (12,221), Roger Craig (10,080), and Marcus Allen (9,523), went to the Pro Football Hall of Fame. And, Brooks churned his 9,459 yards on just 1,641 touches, far fewer than Dickerson's 2,603, Craig's 2,149, and Allen's 1,909.

"One thing about me," Brooks says. "Confidence. I have that. Running the ball, catching the ball, I can do that like it's nothing. I just believed in myself."

Even at 67 years old and 34 years after his last touch, he reminds you that belief was a must. Nobody else believed, he says. Even his siblings in a family of 12 towered over him. One brother was 6-4. Another was 6-3. The baby sister, he says, was six feet and went to Texas to play college basketball.

"The neighborhood where I come from, I played against older kids all the time," Brooks says. "Everybody said I was too small. I was trying to show everybody that you were wrong because I can play."

Brooks transferred that Napoleonic chip on his shoulder from the neighborhood in Warner Robins, Ga., to the heart on his sleeve.

First at Auburn, where he split carries with Joe Cribbs. Then to the Chargers, where for the first three seasons of his NFL career he took a back seat to Pro Bowl running back Chuck Muncie and Hall-of-Fame quarterback Dan Fouts' record-breaking pass offense as a third-down back and returner despite being a first-round pick.

"We had so many running backs," says Brooks of his spot on head coach Don Coryell's roster.  "He put me in there on the goal line, and Dan would just let me go. He'd throw the ball out there and let me go one-on-one."

Reports of his unhappiness in the San Diego sporting press may or may not have reached Bengals founder Paul Brown in the spring of 1984. Mike Brown isn't sure who approached whom, but he credits his dad for long-admiring Brooks and then pursuing him when Bengals all-time touchdown leader Pete Johnson turned 30.

J.B. thinks he caught P.B.'s eye when he caught the Bengals in a blitz during the Monday Night Freezer Bowl Rematch in 1982 when the Chargers repaid the Bengals for that loss in the previous AFC title game by 50-34. Tucked in a game where the teams rolled up the most yards ever, Brooks had a career night. His first NFL 100-yard game was part of the onslaught, but it was one of his three touchdowns that did it, Brooks believes.

His 48-yard hiccup the middle on second-and-20 as the Bengals all-out blitzed to keep it a 33-27 deficit.

"I ran a draw play," Brooks recalls. "A straight shot up the middle. I think that got their attention."

Makes sense. Paul Brown invented the draw play.

"When my father was impressed by a player, it stayed in his memory," Mike Brown says. "If they did it against us, that was about all the proof he needed."

A year and a half after that big game came the first phone call.

On May 29, 1984, someone named Sam Wyche was telling him he had been traded to the Bengals. Just the thought of Cincinnati sent a 59-below wind chill through Brooks. As a rookie in The Jungle he would one day rule, his early fumble on a kick return in the Freezer Bowl that decided the AFC championship led to the Bengals' insurmountable 10-0 lead.

"I had never heard of Sam," says Brooks, who can be forgiven since many of his new teammates had never heard of Wyche when he was named the Bengals head coach a few months before.

"I thought it was a joke … When I played in that Freezer Bowl, I said I will never want to come back to this place because it is too cold … It doesn't get that cold in the south … Then my agent called and said, 'You've been traded.' … I had no idea that Sam was such a good offensive coordinator."

Fast-forward to that second phone call a few weeks ago, and you know how good of an offensive mind Wyche is still regarded six years after his death.

"I thanked Mike for jump-starting my career," Brooks says.

The popular Pete Johnson, the man Paul Brown feared turning 30, carried just 87 more times and retired after '84. As every Cincy schoolkid knows, Brooks went on to become the Bengals' all-time leading rusher before Corey Dillon, a star on the Super Bowl XXIII team, and a four-time Pro Bowler.

Not to mention the perfect player of interchangeability and versatility that helped made Wyche's revolutionary no-huddle offense a stroke of genius and a snapshot of 21st-century playbooks.

Decades before Marshall Faulk and Christian McCaffrey baffled defensive coordinators coming out of the backfield to present a myriad of matchup problems, guys like Brooks and the Hall-of-Famer Craig helped take the West Coast offense spawned by Paul Brown and Bill Walsh at Riverfront to the next level.

"Sam knew how to use my talents," Brooks says. "I could go inside. I could go outside. It was the opportunity. Look at all the weapons we had. Eddie (Brown). Tim McGee. The offensive line. Anthony (Munoz). Max (Montoya). I probably had the best offensive line that played with the Bengals."

The quintessential Wyche-Esiason-Brooks game surfaced on Oct. 7, 1990 in Anaheim, where Esiason threw for 490 yards without wide receiver Eddie Brown for a Bengals record that stood for 31 years before Joseph Lee Burrow. To get that overtime victory over the Rams, Wyche seamlessly moved Brooks and tight end Rodney Holman in and out of their positions to wide receiver.

Brooks caught a career-high 109 yards, and Esiason hit him with two touchdowns as the Bengals charged to 4-1. But the AFC Central wasn't claimed that year until the last two games of the year at Riverfront, when Brooks turned to the ground and stunned the Oilers with a career-high 201 yards and then wore down the Browns with 84 in the finale.

"(Wyche) put us in situations where they would have to double me, and somebody else is going to be open," Brooks says. "Great opportunity because now you cover me with two people. We've got other people that can do things and do it well. You put a linebacker and safety in the pass game on me, that puts the defense in a bad situation."

They had to double him, Brooks says. "I could beat a linebacker or a safety like that … Putting a linebacker or safety on me was a waste of time."

The gigantic numbers say it's so. Brooks' 27 touchdown catches as a Bengal are nearly double the next best by any NFL running back during that eight-year run. Gary Anderson, Neal Anderson, and Kelvin Bryant are the runners-up with 14 each.

Still, with echoes of what he told the press the day of the trade - "I do want to gain 1,000 yards. I think every running back wants to do that. But my main goal is to win" - Brooks' favorite moment is a victory.

Another AFC title game in The Jungle. Seven years after getting frozen out of the Super Bowl. This one in a balmy 31 degrees. Esiason's lone touchdown pass went to Brooks, but he had just six yards on the ground and 21 in the air. Rookie running back Ickey Woods carried the day with 102 yards and danced into Bengals lore.

Doesn't matter for Brooks, the non-dancer. The Bengals kept the ball for 39 minutes (including the last eight) with 50 runs, and it was made sweeter by blowing up the NFL's bid to outlaw the no-huddle the night before the game.

"When we played Buffalo and kicked their butt to go to the Super Bowl," says Brooks of that 21-10 win over the Bills that is his No. 1 moment. "We wanted to show them we are the best.

"We called our sugar huddle where we stayed close to the line of scrimmage. That's the great thing about it. We didn't have to change anything. We're not trying to trick you. We're just going to beat you at the line of scrimmage, and we can do anything we want. I can go outside. I can be in the backfield. Our offensive line made it go. They opened the holes and we were there."

Icy Riverfront is long gone, but on Nov. 1 another Cincy crowd is set to salute Brooks with the warmest welcome ever when he and Bob Trumpy are inducted into the Ring.

Those taller siblings are going to be there. So is his son Zach Brooks, a freshman to-be at Depauw University in Greencastle, Ind., where he's set to play cornerback and long jump for the track team after his high school career at Covington Catholic High School across the river from Paycor in Kentucky.

Zach and his wife Angela, a retired teacher, are some of the biggest reasons why Brooks, more than 40 years later, still makes periodic visits to Auburn to get closer to his degree. He figures he's about five to 10 hours shy. No matter that he turns 68 in December.

"It's just something my mom wanted me to do as a kid growing up in the south," Brooks says. "I said I was going to do it. I'm going to stick by my word. To show my son the right direction."

That's in the direction straight up the stadium steps to the Ring. You better look quickly.

"I'm not one of these guys that you've got to see me," Brooks says. "My play speaks for itself."