Brown Puts His Life Back on the Track

Suppose you were one of the most devastating outside threats in the whole of the National Football League.

Pretend for a minute, you led the team in yards per pass reception last year. That you set a team record when you ran back a kickoff for a touchdown for the fourth time last season and that it was a 95-yard return against the Washington Redskins, no less.

What if you returned two kickoffs in one game for touchdowns, one on a run of 98 yards and the other of 86? What if you were the fastest man in professional football, as proven time and again, in sanctioned meets against the likes of Willie Gault, Herschel Walker and the other registered whippets of the pro game?

Are you going to run away from all this to take on a track meet in which the best you could do even four years ago, when you were a vigorous 23, was finish fourth?

Doesn’t this smack of the rich kid from Long Island running away to join the circus? A duke’s wife eloping with the gamekeeper? A guy quitting his job at the bank to go date cocktail waitresses and follow the horses?

Has Ron Brown taken leave of his senses? Is he going to leave all that nice, sure football money there to get in a high-stakes game where you might not even have a barrel to go home in?

Look. Consider this: Ron’s specialty is the 100-meter dash. Granted, he’s one of the best in the world at it. But at Rome last year, the Jamaican-Canadian, Ben Johnson, shaved--no, tore--one full 10th of a second off the world record (set at high altitude, at that) when he streaked to a 9.83-second clocking in the World Championships.

That kind of performance can be expected to discourage entrants in the event, not inspire a rush to join it, to set other sprinters to look for other jobs, not quit them. I mean, Johnson not only obliterated the record, he beat Carl Lewis in the process.

Was Ron Brown giving up his job with the Rams to go chase Ben Johnson into world records? To, so to speak, feed the elephants?

Oddly enough, far from discouraging him, the 9.83 was what actually inspired Brown to chuck his football career and get his life, so to say, back on track.

“It was thrilling,” he recalls. “I was just going out the door when I saw this 100 final coming up on TV. I said ‘Hey! Wait a minute! Let’s watch this!’ I did. It made the back of my neck prickle. I thought, ‘Wow! What must it be like to be ‘the world’s fastest human?’ ”

His employers actually helped him make the decision. Unwittingly. The Rams, canny negotiators, observing that Brown’s four-year contract had lapsed, actually dangled less money for a renewal. I mean, where was he going to go--the Olympics? (Snicker, snicker.) He was going to go chase Ben Johnson, was he? Stop, you’re killing me!

Free agency is a bit of a myth in football. If a team signs a free-agent player of Ron Brown’s caliber, it gives up two first-round draft choices or so.

So, Ron Brown set in motion a series of events that would get him off the goal line and back on the starting line.

The Rams yawned. A negotiating ploy, they privately assured themselves. Brown would be back. He was just trying to up the ante. A bluff. He’d be back. After all, what was he going to do, buck a 9.83 and Carl Lewis, too? Get outta here!

Well, they thought that about Ron Brown five years ago, too. No one believed him then, either. Drafted out of Arizona State University by the Cleveland Browns and offered a million-dollar contract, Brown said he was passing it up to run in the Olympic Games. For nothing.

“Money isn’t everything,” Brown told them.

Yes, it is, Ron, they told him. You’ll find out.

Well, now, it’s four years later and Ron still isn’t convinced.

He got his gold medal in the ’84 Olympics but in the relay, not in the 100. He finished fourth in his individual event.

But it was that finish that persuaded Ron Brown to come back. Even troubled by inflamed tendons in the Olympic 100, he had still finished only a step behind Ben Johnson.

He had out-timed Johnson in most of the heats the day before. He had gone into the Olympics as the last man to have beaten Carl Lewis and he beat him twice that season.

When he chose to return to track, he had a tougher jury than football’s to convince that his change of careers was sincere. Brown had to persuade the International Amateur Athletic Federation of his good faith. His track record, so to speak, stood him in good stead. He had spurned football before. His fixation was established. It was clear that Ron Brown would rather be on an Olympic victory stand than a Super Bowl end zone.

Are his goals Quixotic? Well, Ron Brown starts his second career June 5 in the Pepsi Invitational meet at UCLA, where he’ll meet Carl Lewis, no less, and Mark Witherspoon, current American titleholder in the sprint.

Is 27 too late to change directions? Ron shakes his head.

“People think the 100 is an event where you just throw yourself out there and just streak. It isn’t. It’s a race where you use your experience. You just kind of reach up and dial in a time and a pace and a cadence.

“There’s a lot going on. I don’t want to say it’s cerebral, but experience counts. You have to know how to get your rhythm and what rhythm to get. You’ve got to have a love for it.”

On that score, Ron Brown stands head, shoulders and spikes above the rest. He has given up more for his true love than anyone in the lists. Let’s hope it’s requited and that the old bawd doesn’t leave him for another after he has given up the home, car, ring and the chance to do a dance in the Redskin end zone again next year, all for her.