THEOTIS BROWN IS TAKING HEART : Forced to Retire From NFL, Ex-Bruin Works With Youth

Visiting the dressing room of the Kansas City Chiefs, one can’t help but notice a lean, handsome, athletic-looking man walking among the players. His 6-foot 2-inch frame easily carries a muscular 225 pounds that give him the look of a running back, the look of a man who could break open a football game with one explosive move.

But he doesn’t dress for practice with the others.

Theotis Brown is a running back.

He doesn’t dress for practice because he had a heart attack two years ago, and although he is only 29 and doctors gave him an OK to return to football in what should be the prime of his career, he decided not to take the chance.

“Sure I miss it, I miss it more than you can imagine,” Brown said as he watched men who were once his teammates prepare for work. “But I get a great thrill just being surrounded by these athletes, and to realize that I spent six years in the National Football League as one of them gives me a tremendous feeling of satisfaction. It doesn’t make up for what I’m missing, but it takes up a lot of the slack.

“Athletics has been my way of life since I was in high school in Oakland, all the way through UCLA and pro ball. It’s not an easy thing to give up, but I felt I had to, for myself and my family.”

Brown is working for the Chiefs’ community services department and coordinates the team’s Academic Corps, which involves player-student relationships in nine inner-city Kansas City high schools.

“I’m working with kids, and it may be a worn-out cliche, but it’s true that the kids of today are going to be our leaders of tomorrow. What I would like to do, down the road, is host a kids’ talk show with athletes, politicians, businessmen, people who’ve made it, as guests with the kids asking the questions.”

Brown founded the Chiefs Academic Corps based on a program he developed while playing with the St. Louis Cardinals in 1979 as a second-round draft choice.

“It started when I bought tickets for some kids to come see the Cardinals play,” Brown said. “I worked with several schools in selecting the kids and found working with the teachers was very rewarding and thought it would be a neat idea to expand on it. When I came here, it all worked out.

“I was an inner-city kid myself and I know there’s been a void in reaching the kids in the inner-city and I think this is one way we can reach them. The nine players who represent the Chiefs in the schools are all college graduates, and the kids see positive role models on and off the field who are willing to give up time and share their knowledge and experience.

“A lot of kids have tunnel vision about athletes. They see the glamour side, the big cars, lots of money, all the attention. They don’t realize that players have personal lives, wives, children and other involvements. And disappointments, too.

It’s a eye-opener for a lot of kids to find out that everything doesn’t go right all the time for athletes, that most of them are on top because they overcame obstacles somewhere along the way.”

Brown, his wife, Chris, and son Theotis III--”We call him Trey; if he’d been Theotis IV, we’d have called him Quad”--are living in Kansas City, but Theotis admits they are living for the time they can return to California.

“My wife grew up in Orange County, in Los Alamitos,” he said, “and it was not to her liking when I informed her that as a professional football player I would be moving around the country. First it was St. Louis (two years with the Cardinals), then Seattle (three years with the Seahawks) and then here to Kansas City.

“We enjoy it here. The people have been great to us, but once you’ve lived in Southern California, I think you always want to go back.”

Chris Brown is a psychologist studying for her doctorate.

“She gets a lot of practice,” Theotis said. “I’m her best patient.”

Brown, who still ranks third in UCLA’s all-time rushing statistics behind Freeman McNeil and Wendell Tyler, with 2,914 yards, was stricken during an off-season workout at Arrowhead Stadium Feb. 5, 1985. He had played two racquetball games with teammates that morning and had ridden a stationary bicycle for a short time when he began to feel ill and went home.

His wife insisted that he go to the hospital that night, and when he did, doctors said he had suffered a severe heart attack. Brown spent 17 days in intensive care before being released to recuperate at home. He sat out the entire 1985 season and improved enough to receive medical clearance to resume playing. Shortly before the Chiefs opened camp this season, however, Brown announced his retirement.

“It was a tremendous blow,” he said. “No doubt, I took the eight count, but I wasn’t knocked out. I got up and I’m back on my feet now.

“I’m fortunate to be able to work around the Chiefs and be in my old environment, but before long I want to stretch out and get on with what I hope will be my future. As a sports commentator, a talk show host, like I said, preferably with kids, or a singer. I trained to be a communicator at UCLA (majoring in theater arts) and even with the football I’ve always done something along that line.”

While he was in St. Louis, Brown was part of the “Ottis and Theotis” radio show with fellow running back Ottis Anderson, and in Los Angeles while at UCLA he filled in for Bud Furillo when the KABC sports commentator had heart surgery.

“Isn’t it ironic, in a way, that I took the Steamer’s place when he had his heart attack, and then a few years later I had one?” he said. “I’d like to go back to L.A. and do a radio show with Furillo. We could call it the ‘Salt and Pepper Show.’ ”