Young kids with positive male role models have something to live for, somebody who is proud of them, somebody who cares about their well-being.
DONALD MILLER
The majority of the college football preseason publications had me as their Heisman Trophy frontrunner for 1987. Notre Dame even pitched in by creating “Heisman Hankies” that were mailed to the media. What most got people’s attention, however, was Sports Illustrated. The magazine editors put me on the August 31 cover along with the headlines “Notre Dame’s Mr. T” and “Tim Brown: Best Player in the Land.” It was pretty heady stuff for a guy who not too long before hadn’t even thought about playing college football.
The funny thing was that Sports Illustrated was (and still is) famous for having a cover jinx—if you appeared on the cover, bad things were supposed to be around the corner. Plenty of guys on the team said to me, “You can forget about winning the Heisman now.”
Which, in a way, is exactly what my teammates and I did. Notre Dame hadn’t had a good season for a long time. We knew we had the potential in 1987 to do something special. Everybody else was talking about the Heisman, but in the locker room, it was hardly mentioned. The focus wasn’t on winning awards but on winning games, which was just the way I wanted it.
To help us keep our focus in the right place, Coach Holtz called me into his office before the season. Now that I was a senior, I looked forward to the chance of being a team captain. We had only three captains, one each for offense, defense, and special teams. I saw it as a prestigious honor, and since the players voted on the title, it was a sign of their respect. So I was taken aback when Coach Holtz said, “Tim, I don’t want you to be a captain this year.”
He explained that I was about to get a world of media attention, and as a senior and team leader, I would surely be voted in by the players. But he thought it would be better for the team if someone else was in the position. There would be one more guy who felt especially important to the team and who would have a chance to talk to the media. It would also take some pressure off of me, putting me in a better position to just concentrate on playing well and helping the team.
I wasn’t too excited about the idea at first, but the more I thought about it, the more it made sense to me. It was an example of the way Coach Holtz was always looking at what was best for each of his players and for the team as a whole.
We opened against Michigan in front of a hundred thousand fans in Ann Arbor. We were ranked No. 16 and Michigan No. 9. Late in the first quarter, we recovered a fumble in Michigan territory. Three plays later, Terry Andrysiak launched a pass toward me in the left back corner of the end zone. The pass was high, and two other defenders were on me. My confidence was so high at that point, however, that I expected to make the catch. Somehow I jumped a foot higher than the other guys and brought it down for an eleven-yard touchdown. We went on to upset the Wolverines, 26–7. It was a great start to the season.
The media hype only intensified for our next game. Now ranked No. 9, we would face No. 17 Michigan State in our home opener and seventy-second consecutive sellout. The Spartans featured running back Lorenzo White, also a Heisman candidate, so the night contest was billed as a battle of Heisman contenders. It turned out to be the game everyone seems to remember from my college career.
We got a break on the opening kickoff when Michigan State’s receiver caught the ball inside the one yard line, took a step back, and downed it. He thought he was already in the end zone, but instead we had a safety and a 2–0 lead. Later in the quarter, we added a field goal. We were up 5–0 when another Spartan drive stalled and they lined up on their forty yard line to punt. Little did I know how big the next few minutes would be for our team and for me.
When I’m waiting for the ball on a punt or kickoff, I don’t hear individual voices, but I hear the buzz of the crowd. I’ve always been pretty good at tuning out the noise around me to concentrate on the task at hand. When I pull the ball in and lock it in place against my forearm—left arm if I’m running left, right arm if I’m running right—the buzz disappears. Everything goes silent except for me thinking, Time to get this thing done.
What happens to my ears also happens to my eyes. I’m not seeing the crowd or even the sidelines. It’s tunnel vision. If we’re set up to return on the right side of the field, I’m looking right for that hole to open up. It’s helpful to have good peripheral vision, though, because I do see the guys coming at me from the side.
In that first second or two after I catch the ball, I try to help my blockers by taking a step or making a fake in the opposite direction than I really plan to go. If I can get the other team leaning the wrong way for even a moment, it slows them down as they try to cut back and makes it easier for our blockers to get a good angle on them.
Those blockers are crucial to a successful return. A lot of the guys on Notre Dame special teams were walk-ons, players without a scholarship who loved the game and the Fighting Irish so much that they came out anyway. Kickoffs and punts were usually the only times they played. Without guys like Tom Galloway and Pat Eilers doing their jobs, I’d have been on my back real quick. Nobody would have been talking about Tim Brown’s amazing kick returns.
On kickoffs, I didn’t want to just catch the ball and start running. When the ball was high in the air, I could tell where it was going to land, so I’d run to within a couple yards of that spot. About two seconds before the ball came down I’d yell, “Go, go, go, go!” That was the signal to my blockers to start running. I did the same thing, running a step or two, so that when I caught the ball I was already cranking up to full speed. The timing had to be just right. I needed to be seven to ten yards behind our wedge of blockers. If they got too far ahead of me, it was easy for the coverage team to go around them and nail me. If the wedge was too close, I’d run into my guys and the blocks wouldn’t work.
But we had it down to a science, which is why we were so good on kickoff returns those last couple of years at Notre Dame. In college, and also when I got to the pros, I knew exactly how I wanted us to do it, and the coaches allowed us to do it that way because they understood it would make us more successful.
Punts were a little different in that I was usually alone back there. My punt return technique actually changed under Coach Holtz. Before he arrived, I’d always caught punts with my feet flat on the ground and evenly spaced. But when I dropped a few balls during one of my first spring practices with him, he jumped in to catch a punt and show me what he wanted—feet staggered and arms extended so I could bring the ball in against my body. He actually broke a finger on that catch, but I don’t think he cared. He was committed to showing me how to get it right.
On punts, our blockers took their positions along the line of scrimmage and tried to slow down the coverage team from the start. Sometimes we had a specific return called ahead of time that worked just the way it was supposed to. Sometimes I improvised depending on what I saw.
Against Michigan State, it turned out to be a little of both.
I caught the Michigan State punt on our twenty-nine yard line. We had a right return called, so I moved laterally to the right, faked a cut up the middle, and kept going right. Then I turned it up the field and escaped from a couple of guys who tried to bring me down.
I was already past most of the Spartans at this point and running full speed near the sideline. A defender moved toward me at the Notre Dame forty-five yard line. I cut inside to get by him. There was only one Michigan State player left in front of me, and one of my teammates blocked him. Touchdown. The play had worked exactly as designed.
We were up 12–0 and I was out of gas. It was a seventy-one-yard run.
I was still shaking hands and sucking oxygen from a mask on the sideline when our defense stopped Michigan State after just three plays. Somebody came up to me and said, “Tim, it’s time to go.” I had to be out there for another punt.
I knew how tired I was. I told our special teams coach, George Stewart, “You guys need to block this. I can’t go.” So the coach called for a block, with all our guys rushing the kicker and no one running back to help me. My plan, if the punter got the kick off, was to signal a fair catch.
Greg Montgomery was a strong punter for Michigan State, and his kick moved me back several yards to our thirty-four yard line. That gave me more room to do something, so I thought, Catch the ball and run out of bounds. I pulled the ball in and ran left, aiming toward the sideline.
But a defender cut me off. I didn’t want to do it, but there was a little hole up the middle, so I cut between the guy on my left and two other defenders who both dove and missed me.
Now I was motoring. All my guys who’d gone for the block were running back my way, picking off Michigan State players one by one. It was crazy. Suddenly there was just one man to beat—Montgomery, the punter. Even as exhausted as I was, there was no way I was going to let a punter tackle me. I put a move on him at the twenty and was on my way to the end zone.
I slowed down those last few yards. I had nothing left. In the end zone, I flipped the ball to the ground and one of the guys in the Notre Dame band jumped into my arms. Pretty soon the whole team was jumping on me. I wasn’t thinking that we now had a huge lead in the first quarter or that in two minutes I’d returned two punts for touchdowns or that I’d tied an NCAA record for scoring punt returns in a game. All I was thinking was, I can’t breathe.
We won that game, 31–8, and I gained 275 all-purpose yards. Suddenly everyone seemed to believe the Heisman was mine to lose. I just wanted to keep winning football games.
We did knock off Purdue the next week to go 3-0 and move up to a No. 4 national ranking. But even though I had my best receiving effort of the season in our next game, with six catches for 156 yards, we stumbled against Pittsburgh. We fell behind 27–0 in the first half and saw Terry Andrysiak get knocked out for the rest of the regular season with a broken collarbone. The final score was 30–22.
We got back on track in the next few weeks, defeating Air Force and USC. We also stopped Navy, 56–13. Unfortunately, I also broke the tip of my ring finger in that game. In the first half, I’d moved to block a defensive end and got my hand caught in his jersey, ripping the nail right off. I went to the locker room, and the trainer told me my finger was broken.
I thought I might be done for the day, but the trainer had other ideas. He pulled out a syringe and said, “You might want to look the other way.” He stuck that needle into my finger where the nail had been, numbing the pain, and put a splint on it. Then he said, “Get back out there, big boy.”
That’s when I realized I must be a little crazy to be playing the game of football.
Earlier that season, during a practice, I’d also injured my right shoulder. For the rest of the season, when someone hit me in that spot my shoulder went numb and I had to come out for a few plays. I started wearing extra padding in my shoulder pads, which made me look bigger and heavier than I really was. It bothered me the rest of the year, but we never mentioned it to the media. We didn’t want teams targeting my shoulder to try to put me out of the game.
We took a 6-1 record into our game against Boston College and it turned out to be a dogfight. We were down 17–6 at halftime and 25–12 in the third quarter. Tony Rice came off the bench to spark us at quarterback, and Mark Green ran for 133 yards in the second half. He scored the game-winning touchdown with 5:25 left to play.
It was also one of the best games of my college career. On our first play from scrimmage, we ran a play action fake. Even though I was well covered, quarterback Kent Graham hit me in stride and it turned into a fifty-seven-yard gain. On our next drive, I caught three passes for forty-five yards. I had a great day returning kickoffs, finishing with 132 yards on five attempts, and added 126 receiving yards on five catches, 15 rushing yards, and 14 punt return yards. My total of 294 all-purpose yards broke my Notre Dame record.
Our next game, against eleventh-ranked Alabama, was my last at Notre Dame Stadium. After four great years, I didn’t want it to end. That day was emotional for me from start to finish. I was the last player introduced to the crowd of almost sixty thousand as I came out of the locker room. I cried on the way to the field, cried during the game, and cried after the game. One former teammate, ’86 graduate Dave Butler, pulled me aside just before kickoff and said, “Tim, enjoy the moment. Enjoy all of this, because it will never be again.”
If that wasn’t enough motivation to play well, there was also the fact that Alabama had stuffed us the year before, 28–10. We definitely wanted to return the favor.
The game was close after the first quarter, 3–3, but then we took over with seventeen consecutive points, eventually winning, 37–6. I had a good day with four catches for 114 yards and 225 all-purpose yards. It was a highly satisfying way to close out my career on campus. Our hopes for a national championship were still alive.
And then came Penn State.
That next Saturday in Beaver Stadium was bitterly cold, with twenty-five-mile-an-hour winds and a wind chill of eight to twenty degrees below zero. For too much of the game, the way we played felt about as cold as the conditions. We fell behind early in the second half, 21–14. Late in the game, however, Tony Rice led us on a sixty-two-yard drive for a touchdown. We were down a point with thirty-one seconds left.
Lou gathered the seniors on the sideline and explained that a tie would take us out of the running for the national title. This was before the days of overtime in college football. He asked us what we wanted to do. It was an easy call. We all said to go for the win.
The conversion play was a quarterback option to the right. Quarterbacks are taught to take it to the end zone if they see an opening, and Tony thought he saw one. I was running with Tony on the play. If he’d faked a run and pitched to me, I would have had an easy path to the end zone. But Tony cut in toward the end zone and a Penn State defender stopped him just short of the goal.
I really don’t blame Tony. A team lives and dies on those snap decisions by the quarterback. When I see Tony at different events today, though, I still often say—mostly joking—“If only you’d pitched the ball.”
The loss to Penn State was a huge disappointment. It locked us into a trip to the Cotton Bowl on New Year’s Day, which in a way meant that our final regular-season game against second-ranked Miami didn’t matter. That shouldn’t have made a difference in our effort. You should always give everything you have when you step onto a football field. But for whatever reason, the team didn’t play its best against a very good football team. I turned in the worst performance of my college career, dropping three passes. We lost, 24–0.
December 5, 1987, was one of the most nerve-wracking days of my life. I was in New York City’s Downtown Athletic Club, waiting for the announcement of the winner of the twenty-five-pound bronze statue known as the Heisman Memorial Trophy Award.
I’d finished 1986 with 1,937 all-purpose yards, a Notre Dame record. I came close to that in 1987, totaling 1,847 all-purpose yards. But my modest finish to the season left some people speculating that it would be a close vote, most likely between me and Syracuse quarterback Don McPherson.
CBS was airing the announcement. Before the ceremony, broadcaster Jim Nantz came up to me and said, “No matter what happens, you’ve had a good season.” Oh, man, I thought. I’m not going to win. If anyone knows, Jim Nantz knows. A few minutes later, broadcaster James Brown slipped beside me and said, “Hey, you really deserve this award.” Wow, I thought, maybe I did win it. I really had no clue, but now that the season and striving for team goals was virtually over, I realized how much I did want to walk away with that trophy.
The time came for us to sit in the front row and hear the results. Five players had been invited to New York: me, McPherson, Lorenzo White, Gordie Lockbaum of Holy Cross, and Craig Heyward of Pittsburgh. I sat somewhere in the middle of those guys. It wasn’t as big a production then as it is today. Before I knew it, the club official at the podium was saying, “The fifty-third winner of the Heisman Trophy is . . .” He paused for about two seconds, but it felt like two hours. “. . . Tim Brown of the University of Notre Dame.”
I won!
Oh, Lord, I’ve got to get up and speak.
One of the biggest reasons I was known as a quiet leader in high school and college was that I had a very noticeable lisp. If I didn’t have to, I didn’t open my mouth. My family never said much about it, and my high school friends didn’t make a big deal out of it either. My teammates at Notre Dame were another story. They teased me endlessly by calling me Sylvester, as in Sylvester the Cat from Looney Tunes, by repeating Sylvester’s famous “Sufferin’ Succotash” line, or by inserting stuffed Sylvester animals in my locker. It wasn’t until I reached the pros and a woman I was dating told me a speech therapist could take care of my lisp that I corrected it.
Needless to say, at the Heisman ceremony, I was less than eager to stand in front of America and make a speech. I kept my remarks short and got off the stage. Even so, it was a great moment. From the podium, I could see my mom and dad in the audience. They’d flown up with me for the ceremony, and it was pretty special to think about all they’d done to support me and to know how proud they had to be feeling right then.
Lou Holtz was there too. Even now, I don’t have the words to express the impact he had on my life. Before he came to Notre Dame, I’d never even thought about playing football professionally. When a man comes into your life and shows you something about yourself that you didn’t know was in you, it’s remarkable. The apostle Paul did that for Timothy, encouraging him to preach and teach and reminding him, “Do not neglect your gift” (1 Tim. 4:14). Paul was a mentor to Timothy, ready to point out the gifts of his protégé and willing to help develop those gifts and pass on his knowledge.
Lou Holtz did the same for me, as well as for a whole lot of other guys. That’s what a mentor does. I’ll always be grateful that he inspired me to believe in myself.
For the last game of my college career, I was coming home. Dallas hosts the Cotton Bowl every year, and back then it was in the stadium named the Cotton Bowl. We were up against Texas A&M, the Southwest Conference champions coached by Jackie Sherrill. There was a lot of talk in the media about the Heisman Trophy winner finishing his career in his hometown. I certainly wanted to play well in front of my family and home fans.
The start was promising. I ran the opening kickoff back thirty-seven yards and finished the drive by catching a seventeen-yard pass from Terry Andrysiak for a touchdown. Early in the second quarter, we added a field goal to take a 10–3 lead. A few minutes later, we were looking for another score, but an Aggie made a leaping interception in front of Andy Heck in the end zone.
From that point on, we couldn’t do anything right. I caught six passes for 105 yards in the first half, but none in the second. We gave up the ball three more times on offense and suddenly couldn’t seem to stop them on defense.
It got worse. In the third quarter, a Texas A&M player tackled me on a kickoff. Then he grabbed my towel from my belt and ran toward the sideline, waving it like a lasso. I was already frustrated with the way we were playing. Now I was mad. The girlfriend of one of my teammates had gone to the trouble of making and shipping these towels to us before the game. Mine was blue with gold letters that said “Mr. T 81.” I wanted that towel back.
I took off after the guy, collared him, wrestled him to the ground, and took my towel back. Was that the best way to handle the situation? Probably not. It earned me a fifteen-yard penalty for unsportsmanlike conduct. It also fired up Texas A&M even more, to the point where it got dangerous for me. They were looking to put me out of the game, and in the fourth quarter one guy did roll my ankle a little bit on the sideline.
Coach Holtz saw that, and noticed I was limping a little after the play. He called me over. “Son,” he said, “these guys are trying to end your career. I’m not going to let it happen this way. Just take it in.”
I was shocked. “Take it in?” I said.
“Take it in.”
I wanted to say, “C’mon, Coach, bring it on. I can handle it.” But the game was out of hand. When I thought about it, I realized it made no sense to risk a serious injury, especially now that a career in the pros seemed possible.
We lost the Cotton Bowl, 35–10. It was hardly the finish I’d dreamed of to cap my football legacy at Notre Dame. A lot of guys were pretty upset in the locker room. I was disappointed too, but at the same time, I realized this was still the most successful team I’d ever played on. I was proud of what we’d accomplished and how much the football program had improved. I knew Coach Holtz was the right man to lead Notre Dame in the future—proved the very next year when the Fighting Irish won the national title. Considering the way my football career had taken off thanks to his encouragement and mentorship, he’d certainly been the right man for me. The NFL draft was only a few months away, with everyone saying I’d be an early first-round pick. I couldn’t be too unhappy with the way things had turned out.
Besides, I did get my towel back.
Lou Holtz was one of the most influential men in my life at that time, but he wasn’t my only mentor. Despite our falling out when I was almost thirteen, my dad was still someone I looked up to in many ways. My brother, Wayne, was in that same category. He was the first person in our family to graduate from college, and he always seemed able to expound on any subject. I used to think, Man, this guy knows everything.
There was another man who had and still has a tremendous impact on my life. I think of him as my spiritual mentor. His name is Lafayette Whitley Sr., better known to me as Pastor Whitley of our home church in Dallas.
I’ve known Pastor Whitley and attended his church since I was twelve. I appreciate his love for and commitment to God and the church. He has always been consistent in his spiritual approach. He preaches from the Bible and doesn’t embellish his messages with weird interpretations. He’s also always been consistent with me. Whether I was just a teenager or a famous football player, he has treated me the same. That was important to me, especially as my world changed when I moved from high school to college to the pros. I knew my dad wasn’t spiritual. I needed a man to be that spiritual rock for me, someone I could count on to always steer me in a godly direction.
It’s interesting now to look back on who I was that summer before I left home to start my NFL career. I was almost twenty-two and about to come into a great deal of money. I’d worked hard to get my degree and to earn my status as a sought-after football player. Now the selfish part of me was saying it was time to enjoy myself—girls, cars, maybe whatever else came along.
But at the same time, the spiritually mature part of me was saying I needed to visit my pastor and talk about this. So that’s what I did. I sat across from Pastor Whitley in his office at the church. The self-centered part of me wanted to hear, “Tim, go enjoy your life. Have a great time. God understands your heart. I’ll catch you in church when you’re back home.” I secretly wanted his blessing on my plans.
That’s not what happened. Instead, Pastor Whitley said, “God has put you on this platform for a reason. It’s not to catch footballs. It’s for you to bring more people to Him.”
Those weren’t the words I wanted to hear. I thought, C’mon, pastor, help a brother out! Yet that conversation with Pastor Whitley became one of the most important meetings of my life. It set me on a course, and though I took a few detours, it’s still the course I aim to follow today.
I’ve learned that every man needs mentors—people who have gone before you, who can offer you wise counsel, who are willing to say what you need to hear instead of what you want to hear. That may start at home with parents and other family members. But don’t rely just on your family. Seek out folks at your school, in your neighborhood, in your career field, and most important of all, at your church (if you don’t have a church, find one!). I wouldn’t be where I am today without Lou Holtz and Pastor Whitley. They are the kind of people who are motivated to invest their time and pass on their wisdom to others. If you look for them and are open to their teaching, you’ll find those same kinds of people ready to invest in you.