As each has received a gift, use it to serve one another.
1 PETER 4:10 ESV
Out of the ’hood and onto the hill. For me, life was pretty good when our family moved from the little fourplex in South Dallas to our two-bedroom house on a hill in East Dallas. It was a much better neighborhood, not high class by any means, but an area where a kid could roam around until nine in the evening, or even ten in the summer, without anyone worrying about it.
I was entering second grade and made a bunch of new friends, both in the neighborhood and at Mount Auburn Elementary. We did all kinds of things together—bicycle races, improvised games, bicycle jumps on ramps we built ourselves. Those ramps never held up very well. Whoever was brave enough to go first often ended up getting slammed in the face by a board. One of my new friends, Mike Alexander, had the first video game I’d ever seen, Atari’s Pong. No kid today would waste his time on something so basic, but we used to play that thing for hours.
Our walk to school every morning was more than two miles, which we did in all kinds of weather. We went down the street and across the bridge over Interstate 30, cut through Tenison Park, walked by the swimming pool and Samuel Recreation Center where I spent so much time in the summer, and then down a long street. We had the routine down.
At Mount Auburn, I acquired the typical skills in reading, writing, and ’rithmetic. But the most important lesson I learned might have been on the playground grass. We didn’t play organized team sports. It was all just messing around. But the first time someone tossed me a football and everyone started chasing me, I found out that I was faster and had better moves than most of the kids. They couldn’t tackle me.
It was a little scary to have everyone trying to get me, but it was fun too—especially since they couldn’t catch me.
My brother, Wayne, was actually the one who sparked my interest in football. Before we moved, he’d been a high school running back at Samuel High School—a good one. He and my dad always watched the Cowboys on TV, so I started joining in and picked up nuances of the game from both of them.
Wayne liked to take me out in the yard and throw a football at me. Not with me, but at me. He decided he needed to toughen me up, so he fired that ball as hard as he could at his little eight-year-old brother to see if I could catch it. It was torture at the time, but the more we did that, the better I developed what he called “soft hands.” Within two or three years, I started catching those fireballs. Wayne seemed to lose interest in our football sessions after that.
In sixth grade, the principal at Mount Auburn said he had been watching me and thought I was an athlete with exceptional hand-eye coordination. He wanted to teach me how to play golf, but I didn’t take him up on it. At eleven years old, I didn’t think of myself as an athlete, and learning how to swing a golf club sounded like the craziest idea I’d ever heard.
Then for seventh grade I entered J. L. Long Middle School and played on my first football team. I was never a big guy, but always just a little faster than the rest. I soon realized that what I’d discovered in grade school was still true—when people came at me, I had a natural ability to make them miss. The coaches noticed that too. They loved watching me return punts and kickoffs, and started getting me the ball on plays from scrimmage as well. We watched films of our games—in Texas, even middle school football is serious business—and when I saw myself easily eluding guys on the other team, it gave me more confidence.
I still remember a play from one of our early home games. Seventh graders don’t have great throwing arms, so we didn’t pass very often, but we did on this play. I caught a short pass from our quarterback and ran laterally. A guy was trying to catch me from behind and another opponent was coming straight at me to make the tackle. I did a little dip with my head to fake the defender in front of me, and these two guys crashed into each other while I scored a touchdown. It was like something you’d see on a cartoon.
Later, when we watched that play on film, our coach said, “Tim, that was pretty nice.” It got me thinking that I could do something special out there. When you run like that, those guys can’t touch you, I told myself. You keep doing that and see how that works for you.
I also played basketball and ran track in middle school. I did more of the same when I moved across the campus from J. L. Long to Woodrow Wilson High School. I was pretty good as a point guard for the Wildcats, earning all-district and state honorable mention honors. In track, my events were the 400 meter the 4 × 100 meter relay, the mile relay, and the long jump. I lettered in track all four years of high school and qualified for regionals in the 400 and long jump my senior year. Sports just seemed to come easy for me.
Athletics weren’t my only interest, however. I loved math and English, which some of my friends thought was weird, and I was also intrigued by a field that seemed to have a bright future: computers. I became sports editor of the school newspaper. My freshman year, I even played bass drum in the marching band.
My dad was still making comments such as “When you end up in jail, don’t call me,” so I was more determined than ever to show him how wrong he was about me. I studied hard and my grades were always good. There were times, in fact, when I went up to one of my teachers during class and said, “I finished my assignment early. Can I get more work?”
That probably made me seem even stranger to my friends.
Despite that, and even though I was a quiet kid, I seemed to be popular with my classmates. Woodrow, as we called it, was more than 60 percent white at the time. The white kids lived in the Lakewood area, which was a different stratosphere in terms of economics. Those kids lived in nice homes, often drove cars their parents gave them, and always seemed to have money in their pockets. You could say that the whites and blacks at Woodrow lived in two different worlds, but it wasn’t a tense situation at all. Even though my dad was often saying things like “You don’t want to work for the white man,” I seemed to get along with them better than most of my friends. I never looked at white kids as different, and they never treated me as different.
That, along with my success as an athlete, probably had something to do with me being voted vice president of my senior class. I was also voted most likely to succeed and best looking (don’t know how to explain that one). Overall, my high school experience was great.
There was one other interest that captured my attention during high school, and for better or for worse, it would be a recurring theme in the years to come.
I discovered girls.
By the time I was sixteen, I was head over heels for a pretty, funny, popular girl I’ll call “Christy.” She lived only a couple of blocks away, and I spent as much time with her as I could. During the school year, my routine was the same on Mondays, Tuesdays, and Thursdays, the evenings we didn’t go to church. After classes I had practice for whatever sport was in season, followed by dinner by myself at home, which was usually whatever my family hadn’t finished earlier in the evening. (I like dark meat today because I developed a taste for it as a teenager—dark chicken meat was usually all that was left for me to eat.) Dinner was followed by a homework session. Then I was off to Christy’s.
If I wasn’t with Christy, I was usually hanging out with my good friend Harold Saunders. On the weekends, Christy, Harold, his girlfriend, and I often went out together—dances, movies, whatever. We had a lot of fun together.
I should probably credit Christy for developing the sprinting ability I showed on the athletic fields. My weeknight curfew was 10:00 p.m., and I always stretched it to the limit when I was with her. As soon as my watch said 9:50, I was out the door.
That first street was not at all well lit—it was almost totally dark. Between my fear of whatever was out there in the night and my fear of Dad’s reaction if I got home late, I was motivated to move! I would get into the middle of the street and run wide open that first hundred yards. I booked it every time, scared for my life.
I learned a lot in high school, not only about what my teachers were trying to get across but also about myself and what that might mean for my future. During my first year on the Woodrow football team, the Dallas Morning News did a story about me and other standout high school players with the headline “Sophomore Sensations.” I was from a family of athletes, so my sports achievements weren’t a big deal at home. Besides Wayne’s success in football, Ann was all-district in track and eventually became a college All-American in volleyball, while Gwen was all-district in volleyball. But that headline got me thinking about possibilities down the road. Maybe my ability as an athlete could help me get a college education.
People were starting to tell me that I had amazing talent, but I didn’t want it to go to my head. I knew better than to take credit for it. I understood because of what I’d been taught at church: God had given me a gift.
Some might wonder why God would bless someone with athletic ability or if He expects us to use that ability. They might ask how playing football, for example, does anything to help others or advance God’s purposes. Some in my church, as a matter of fact, were asking that question as my football career developed. Not openly, but I could hear the whispers that I was wasting my time or, worse, I couldn’t play football and belong to God at the same time.
That was hard for me to hear, and I know those kinds of comments can be discouraging for any young man trying to figure out his place in life. Sooner or later, most of us start asking ourselves, “What are my skills? How am I supposed to use them? What does God want me to do with my life?”
For me, the key to answering those questions is having a spiritual connection to God. When you’re in tune with Him, reading His words in the Bible and praying, you’re in a position to get the answers you need. Go ahead and ask Him to give you the gifts He has in mind for you and to make it obvious what they are. They may not be the talents that others have, but that’s okay. We’re not all born to be preachers or missionaries or musicians at the front of the church. Maybe you’re skilled at repairing cars or balancing a budget. Each of us is unique and each of us has a place in God’s plan.
In my case, though I might not have been able to put it into words at the time, I sensed that God had a purpose for the athletic ability He’d given me. I didn’t know what that purpose was, but I didn’t question the direction He seemed to be pointing. I believed that somehow there would be a way for me to use my talent to serve others and bring glory to Him.
I’ve also come to realize that athleticism isn’t my only talent. What was true for me in high school when I was around the white kids has remained true during the rest of my life: I have the ability to be comfortable and relate well with people from all walks of life. As I deal with men and women in the sports world, in entertainment, in business, and in the spiritual community, that’s been a tremendous asset. Again, I know it isn’t anything I’ve done. It’s a gift God has given me, and I’m tremendously grateful for it.
Your gifts are probably entirely different from mine—the ability to listen well, to multitask, to find solutions to complex problems, to work with children or machines, encouragement, empathy. Whatever they are, ask God to reveal them to you, and don’t be afraid to embrace them. He’s given them to you for a reason, even if you can’t see it right now. I believe that if we use the talents God gives us to the best of our abilities and dedicate our efforts to Him, He’ll be pleased with the results.
We had winning seasons when I played football and basketball in middle school, but that wasn’t the case at Woodrow. In our best football season while I was there, we won just two games. We had a few decent players—including tackle Lionel Douglas, quarterback Benny Tovar, and running and defensive backs Vincent Pride and Monty Martin—just not enough of them. Other schools had much more depth.
On the football field, my hero was Eric Dickerson, an All-American running back for Southern Methodist University when I was a sophomore. He wore a protective device we called a neck roll, so I started wearing one too. I even tried to lift my knees like he did when I got in the open field. And since he was a running back, that was my preferred position too—although the coaches also used me as a quarterback, receiver, and kick returner. It seemed like I never lined up in the same spot for two consecutive plays. Not until my senior year did I start playing more at receiver. I realized I didn’t have a running back’s mentality. Their approach is to look for four yards, break tackles, and then try to turn it into forty yards. I just wanted to bounce outside and get away. I was always looking for the forty.
Our basketball team didn’t fare much better than the football team. We’d hang in against most teams until the third quarter, then they’d start to pull away. Once that happened, my goal became to make a steal or run ahead on a fast break so I could throw down a dunk. I was a pretty good defender and actually considered myself better on the court than on the gridiron. I dreamed of getting attention from a top basketball program like Duke or North Carolina.
That’s not what happened, though. My life changed during a Thursday night football game during my junior year. Our opponent was Skyline High, the one school we beat every season. I had a big game, scoring touchdowns on a kickoff return, a punt return, a long pass, and a long run from scrimmage.
What I didn’t know was that a Notre Dame coach, Jay Robertson, was in the stands to scout Skyline’s star linebacker Dante Jones. (Dante went on to an eight-year NFL career himself, mostly with the Chicago Bears. Today he lives around the corner from me. Every time I see him, I say, “Thank you, brother.”)
The morning after the game, Coach Robertson was waiting for Richard Mason, our head coach, when he arrived at work. “Who’s this Tim Brown kid,” Robertson said, “and why do I not know anything about him?”
Before that night, no one in the world of college football knew who I was. But the next week, I started getting letters of interest from programs across the country, including Notre Dame.
My brother was a huge fan of Fighting Irish football. He used to get up early every Sunday morning to watch the television replay of the Notre Dame game from the day before. Wayne came over that week when I had my letters spread out across the kitchen table. He picked up the one from Notre Dame and read it.
“If they still want him a year from now,” he said to my mom, “this is where he needs to go.”
I wasn’t so sure. Call me naïve, but I really hadn’t even thought about playing college football. My goal up to that point had been to study at a local junior college for a couple of years, finish up at a nearby four-year school, and then get a job. Suddenly it looked like football might actually pay for my education, which was mind blowing. But leave home? I wasn’t on board with that idea yet. You have to remember how close I was to my family. I hadn’t been away from them before, not even for a single night. I was not excited about moving to another state, even to go to college and play football.
The coaches were excited about me, though. Some of the biggest names in the sport showed up in our living room: Tom Osborne from Nebraska, Barry Switzer from Oklahoma, Hayden Fry from Iowa, Jackie Sherrill from Texas A&M, and yes, Gerry Faust from Notre Dame. There were plenty more. No one could officially offer me a scholarship until I completed my high school football eligibility during my senior season, but their intentions were clear.
Sometimes the offers were for more than a scholarship. I heard about a new house for my parents, a new job for my dad, a college scholarship for Christy, and cars, jewelry, and cash for me, starting at $1,250 a month. That all sounded pretty tempting to a seventeen-year-old. If this was how these things worked, I was open to talking about it, especially if it would help my family. But my parents wouldn’t touch any of that. They wanted nothing under the table. They just wanted me to get a good education.
For a long time, I was leaning toward SMU. They had a great football team and strong academic program, and the campus was only five miles from my house. But then the whispers started about potential NCAA infractions (the NCAA eventually handed the “death penalty” to SMU, terminating the football program for the 1987 season). My parents and Wayne, meanwhile, favored Notre Dame.
Coach Faust visited during the summer before my senior year. My dad was at work, so it was me, Mama, and Wayne with him in the living room. The Notre Dame approach was different. Nothing was said about cash or extra benefits. The emphasis was on academics and how 99 percent of Notre Dame athletes graduated.
My mother surprised me in that meeting. I hadn’t played bass drum in the band since my freshman year, but I discovered she still had a secret desire for me to revert back to my modest music career. She asked, “Is it possible for my son to get a band scholarship?”
I have to give credit to Coach Faust. He didn’t even crack a smile. Instead, he said, “No, I’m sorry, Mrs. Brown, we can’t give Tim a band scholarship. But if he comes to Notre Dame and practices even one day with the team, and then decides he doesn’t want to play football, he’ll still have a scholarship.” That sounded pretty good to my mom. It was the only time we heard that from a school.
Following my senior football season, with my future still up in the air, I visited the Notre Dame campus for the first time. It was January 20, 1984. A recent snowfall had layered everything in a blanket of white. I turned up Notre Dame Avenue and viewed the famous Golden Dome that capped the main administration building. Sunshine glinted off the gilded dome and stately statue of Mary at its peak.
Wow—the picturesque scene took my breath away.
At that moment, I knew. Over. Done. I was joining the Fighting Irish.