His Own Horror Movie : Tape of Injury Reminds Brown How Far He’s Come

Somewhere in a closet at home, tucked away with baby shoes and prom photos, is the videotape of Hartwell Brown’s first college football game. Stanford vs. Washington, 1990.

On it, you can see Brown play nervously after being sent in at linebacker for the Cardinal. You can see his confidence rise as the game goes on. And you can see that block, the one that reduced the ligament in his right knee to fettuccine.

You can see that and cringe.

“It’s pretty sickening,” Brown said. “You can see my leg from the knee down stay put. It doesn’t budge, while the whole rest of my body falls back.”

Brown immediately knew it was bad. Being a premed major at the time, he realized how serious it was when doctors told him he had shredded his anterior cruciate ligament.

He saw his future: reconstructive surgery, long hours of rehabilitation and lots of pain, and then maybe, just maybe, he could return at full strength.

Now, 1 1/2 years later, that video is a reminder to Brown of just how hard he worked to get back.

His season begins Wednesday when Stanford plays Texas A&M; in the Pigskin Classic at Anaheim Stadium. It’s his second year back from the injury and the first without the knee brace.

That stayed at home this fall, as did the video.

“I used to watch it to learn,” Brown said. “I wanted to make sure that situation didn’t happen again. I wanted to be prepared to deal with that block.”

Obviously, he’s dealt with it all fairly well to this point.

Brown will not be a starter at outside linebacker for the Cardinal Wednesday. It’s not likely he will start anytime this season.

It has nothing to do with his injury. The knee, rebuilt and rehabilitated, is just fine. But when you back up Ron George, you spend a lot time with helmet in hand.

George, a senior, is an All-American candidate at outside linebacker.

“It’s amazing the things Ron can do,” Brown said. “I’m trying to learn from him.”

Brown, a 6-foot-3, 230-pound junior, will wait his turn, playing mostly on special teams or on those rare occasions George needs a breather.

“Obviously, right now, he’s playing behind a guy who is a hell of a football player,” linebacker Coach Keena Turner said. “But we expect big things from Hartwell when he’s in there.”

Brown can be patient. He’s waited this long.

His freshman season was typical, at least for a while. Brown had been heavily recruited out of Los Alamitos High School in 1989 and was called the best defensive player in the Far West by some publications.

Like most freshmen, he sat, watched and absorbed the game at this higher level.

But when injuries depleted the Stanford linebacker ranks, Brown was thrown to the wolves--or, rather, the Huskies. He was sent in during the first quarter against Washington.

“It was quite a jump for me,” Brown said. “I was playing a new position and was out there against Washington, which was a Rose Bowl team that year. I was just trying to do something to help the team. It was tough.”

Brown started getting the hang of it. The jitters were gone by the second half.

“I got a sense of what was going on,” Brown said. “I was getting more and more acclimated as the game went on. Then . . . “

While being blocked by the tight end, Brown was undercut by the guard. He fell in a heap.

“I never saw it coming,” he said. “If I had just been a split-second faster.”

Brown needed complete reconstructive surgery, which entailed taking part of another tendon and and replacing the anterior cruciate ligament.

He knew the odds.

“The best-case scenario would be return and move as well or better,” Brown said. “The worst-case scenario would be to never play again.”

Brown went to work under the direction of Fernando Montes, the Stanford strength coach.

It was grueling. Morning sessions were spent running in a four-foot pool, with Brown hooked up to a harness. The other end was attached to a weight machine. Then came squats and weightlifting and, then, back to the pool.

Tough?

“It was the most intense thing I’ve ever been through,” Brown said.

Brown almost broke and might have if not for Montes.

“Hartwell got into that self-pity thing for a while,” Montes said. “We had an interesting chat at poolside one day. I more or less told him he’d better get his butt in gear and stop feeling sorry for himself.”

Said Brown: “Fernando makes you do things harder.”

Brown completed the eight-to-10-month rehab plan in six months. By the fall of 1991, he was ready to play football again.

“That’s a credit to his work,” Montes said. “He put in the time and did things to get there faster.”

Brown had to wear a brace to protect the knee last season. He played mostly on special teams, with an occasional play or two on defense.

He finished with only four tackles. Still, he was playing.

“I was very fortunate that it turned out to to the best-case scenario,” Brown said.

Brown, who will play without the brace this season, impressed Turner and first-year Coach Bill Walsh during spring practice.

He showed no signs that the injury had affected his mobility. In fact, Brown was actually clocked faster in the 40-yard dash then he was before the injury--4.7 compared to 4.8.

“If people hadn’t told me he’d had a knee injury, I would have never known,” Turner said.

If Turner still finds it hard to believe, there’s video evidence.

“I haven’t brought it out in a long time,” Brown said. “Maybe when I’m older, I’ll show it to my kids and tell them, ‘Don’t let this happen to you.’ ”