Never has such a loser on the football field also been such a winner on it, and beyond.
The football gods were not kind to Tim Brown’s gridiron career as far as providing the right timing for team prosperity:
• As a three-year varsity member of Woodrow Wilson High in Dallas, Texas (1981-83), Brown saw his squad finish 4-25-1. The school that produced 1938 Heisman Trophy winner Davey O’Brien (TCU) won one game in Brown’s sophomore campaign, two in his junior year, and one as a senior.
• In Brown’s four seasons at Notre Dame (1984-87), the Irish were 25-21, including 0-2 in bowls. He was part of the lone consecutive losing seasons at the school in 1985 under Gerry Faust (5-6) and 1986 with Lou Holtz (5-6). Amazingly, the season after Brown graduated from Notre Dame in 1988, the Irish won the national title.
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Brown is the 43rd former member of the Fighting Irish to be elected to the College Football Hall of Fame.
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• The No. 6 pick in the 1988 NFL Draft, Brown became a part of the only franchise (Oakland/Los Angeles Raiders) that reached a Super Bowl in the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s. Alas, the Raiders floundered during his 16-year stint with the organization. In the 10 years from 1991-2000, they failed to make the playoffs seven times and recorded only one playoff victory. In 1997, the year Brown caught a career-high 104 passes, Oakland finished 4-12 before hiring head coach Jon Gruden.
• The year after Gruden departed Oakland, he led Tampa Bay to the Super Bowl title with a 48-21 victory versus Brown’s Raiders.
• When Brown joined Gruden at Tampa Bay in 2004, the Bucs finished 5-11 – slightly better than the 4-12 mark of Brown’s final Raiders team the previous season.
Amid the rubble, Brown was the glimmering diamond. On the football field, he is Notre Dame’s lone Heisman Trophy recipient over the past 44 seasons, or since 1965. His 1,937 all-purpose yards in 1986 remain a single-season school record, with his 1,847 during his Heisman year in 1987 No. 2. His nine Pro Bowl appearances tie Alan Page for the most ever by a Notre Dame alumnus.
Off the field, where he is now involved in entrepreneurial and broadcasting endeavors, he has been a model citizen. Often characterized as the “anti-Raider” for his clean-cut living, Brown was still confident and brash enough to clash with Oakland’s mercurial owner Al Davis, or tell a religious teammate that it was fine to read the Bible – but he damn well better start learning the playbook, too.
Despite playing for one of the worst teams in the Dallas area, Brown couldn’t help but be noticed by the major powers throughout the country. His five official visits were to Notre Dame, Nebraska, Oklahoma, nearby SMU and Iowa.
“The lack of success by our high school team helped me in a way because it made me play harder than ever each week,” Brown said. “I figured that if I wanted to get a college scholarship I would have to make each play count and take nothing for granted. Every time I touched the ball I said to myself that I better do something good with it or I’d never make it anywhere.”
The powerful SMU Mustangs were the favorites to land Brown, who wanted to stay close to home. Of course, a little bait helped. Brown was offered an exorbitant amount of money by wealthy SMU alumnus Sherwood Blount, and he also would be provided his dream car, a 280Z.
The cash would have been a significant boost for the Brown family that had six children and lived in a small house in lower-middle class East Dallas. Brown’s parents, Eugene (a cement finisher) and Josephine, had worked hard all their lives, but there was disappointment in the household when it was realized that Tim’s purpose for college revolved around material possessions. A furious older brother Don, seven years Tim’s senior, admonished him and in effect told him “don’t come home” if he decided on SMU (which eventually would receive the NCAA’s “death penalty” several years later).
“I was pushing Notre Dame because it had the most to offer,” Don Brown said. “We all knew it would give Tim something down the road besides a chance to play football.”
“If I had gone somewhere else and been in the same position as far as football, I don’t think I’d be in the same position as far as life,” Tim Brown said. “…People know that when you come from Notre Dame you don’t get handed anything. You work for everything.”
Painfully shy and homesick during his freshman year, Brown couldn’t function in his first day of practice.
“The coaches had to let me go inside,” Brown recalled. “I was a mess.”
Still, he made enough of an impression to field the opening kickoff that year in the opener against Purdue. Nervous, if not petrified, Brown lost a fumble to set up Purdue’s first score in its 23-21 upset (the Irish defeated the Boilermakers 52-6 the previous season). It was maybe the most inauspicious opening play ever for a Notre Dame football player.
Yet by the end of the season, Brown set a Notre Dame freshman record with 28 catches, a mark that stood until 2007. He caught three straight passes for 59 yards to aid an 11th hour 18-17 victory against Navy, and he closed the regular season with the first of his 22 career scores (five others were called back because of a penalty) on a 15-yard shovel pass from Steve Beuerlein in a 19-7 victory over eventual Rose Bowl champ USC. It was Notre Dame’s first victory at Los Angeles in 18 years.
Brown’s sophomore year, Faust’s last at Notre Dame, was highlighted by a 93-yard kickoff return for a touchdown to begin the second half in a 27-10 conquest of Michigan State. It was the first of his six career touchdowns via the return game. However, his reception total dropped to only 25, and there was a perception that his skills weren’t being maximized.
Enter Lou Holtz. In the spring of 1986, one of Holtz’s first comments was, “the only way our opponents are going to keep the ball out of Tim Brown’s hands is if they intercept the snap from center.” Brown nearly doubled his receiving output and also carried 59 times as a running back to complement his return skills. Despite Notre Dame’s 5-6 mark against a brutal schedule, there was not a better player in the country at the end of the season than Brown.
In the final three games, the Irish played national champ Penn State, at SEC champion LSU and at archrival USC. Against the Nittany Lions, Brown snatched a career-high eight passes (two for touchdowns) and returned a kickoff 97 yards before it was called back because of a penalty. The Irish lost that heartbreaker to the Nittany Lions, 24-19. The following week at LSU, Brown tallied on a 96-yard kickoff return, but the Irish lost again, 21-19.
In the finale at USC, Brown put on a scintillating show as the Irish rallied from a 37-20 deficit. In that watershed 38-37 victory for Holtz’s program, Brown returned a kickoff 57 yards to set up one touchdown, caught a 49-yard pass for to propel a second TD march and returned a punt (only the second of his career) 56 yards to position John Carney’s 19-yard field goal as time expired.
As the front-runner for the 1987 Heisman, Brown thrust Notre Dame into college football’s spotlight once again under Holtz, and he virtually clinched the coveted award in the first two weeks during 26-7 and 31-8 victories against Michigan and Michigan State, with the latter going on to become the Rose Bowl champs that season.
Of Brown’s 137 career receptions at Notre Dame, his most spectacular was the 11-yard score at No. 9 Michigan to open his senior year. Quarterback Terry Andrysiak floated a pass deep into the corner of the end zone where the tightly-covered Brown out-leaped two defenders and managed to stay in-bounds while hanging on to the ball and enduring a heavy fall.
The ensuing week saw his signature moment. A Notre Dame player hadn’t returned a punt for a score in 14 years, but in a span of 2:01 against the Spartans, Brown returned consecutive punts 71 and 66 yards for touchdowns to ignite a blowout.
More important was the fact that Brown made Notre Dame relevant again on the national scene with an 8-1 start, the first eight-win campaign for the Irish in seven years. He excelled in a 26-15 victory against Pac 10 champ USC, produced a career high 294 all-purpose yards in a 32-25 comeback win versus Boston College, and added 225 more in a 37-6 drubbing of Top 10-ranked Alabama.
Although the Irish imploded at the end of the year with losses at Penn State (21-20), Miami (24-0) and in the Cotton Bowl to Texas A&M (35-10), Brown was the runaway Heisman pick with 1,442 points, easily out-distancing Syracuse quarterback Don McPherson (831), Holy Cross’ two-way player Gordie Lockbaum (657) and Michigan State running back Lorenzo White (632).
When asked at the ceremony whether Notre Dame’s name helped him win the award, Brown replied: “I’m not going to apologize for going to Notre Dame. I did it to better myself as a person.”
In the spring of 2005, Brown returned to campus when new head coach Charlie Weis invited him – along with Joe Montana, Joe Theismann and Chris Zorich – to serve as an honorary coach for the spring game. Theismann and Zorich also are in the College Football Hall of Fame. (Montana can’t be nominated because he wasn’t a first-team All-American in college, one of the requirements to be on the ballot.)
“That was probably one of the biggest thrills I’ve had in a long time,” said Brown, who had pondered working in an administrative capacity for Weis before realizing the time constraints wouldn’t make it feasible. “It almost makes me think about coaching. Being on the sidelines and having young kids come up to you and say, ‘Teach me your stance,’ it was a blast for me.”
Now he knows how others felt watching him play – win or lose.
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