Heisman No Curse to Brown

In the winter of 1987, a terrible thing happened to Tim Brown, the football player. He won the Heisman Trophy.

Now, ordinarily, this is an honor of great magnitude for an athlete. It is recognition of a college career spent at its highest level. It is, collegiately speaking, the most prestigious award a player can get. It follows you through life. It will always identify you. It will be in your obituary, on your epitaph. It means that for one brief shining moment, you were the best there was.

At least, that was the way it was back in the days when the award was instituted, when it went to the likes of Jay Berwanger, Larry Kelley and Clint Frank. They accepted their trophy and then went on to careers in business or medicine or politics or teaching and wore the Heisman identity like a Phi Beta Kappa key.

But along about that time, pro football had a growth spurt. All of a sudden, the Heisman was merely a kind of steppingstone. You hadn’t really proved yourself.

In the early days, Heisman winners never went into the pros. First of all, it was a $100-a-game lark dabbled in not only by college boys but by ruffians of all stripes, some of whom had never been to college, a few of whom had never even been to high school.

But as the pro game proliferated, the college career became prologue. I mean, when you think of Joe Montana, do you think of Notre Dame, or of the San Francisco 49ers? And, by the way, don’t look for Montana on any old Heisman ballot. Even in his senior year, he didn’t make the top 10.

It’s hard to fathom when the pro career began to be a subtle postscript to the Heisman. Nobody noticed, for example, that in 1936, the year Larry Kelley of Yale won, a guy named Sammy Baugh was fourth in the voting. Or two years later that a guy named Sid Luckman was third.

After the war, it got noticeable. Dick Kazmaier of Princeton won one year. But a guy named Hugh McElhenny of Washington finished eighth. And a back named Ollie Matson was ninth.

A guy named Jim Brown got as high as fifth one year. The year John Huarte won it, Joe Namath was 11th. But that’s nothing. Gale Sayers was 12th.

John Elway was no better than second. Eric Dickerson was third. Dan Marino was ninth one year. The winner last year is playing basketball.

The Heisman, of course, is what it is: a salute to excellence at the college level. But the public usually expects and wants a carry-over. The record shows that Heisman winners Doug Flutie, Vinny Testaverde, Gino Torretta, Ty Detmer and Andre Ware struggled manfully but never really lived up to expectations.

So, when Tim Brown came in, the league was in a typical show-me mood. First of all, they wondered what he was. At Notre Dame, he caught passes, he returned punts and kickoffs, he even carried the ball on some plays. That kind of non-specialization long since had gone out of vogue in the pros as impractical. It’s tough enough to excel at one discipline there.

The Raiders’ Al Davis ignored the doomsayers. He usually does. He is a big fan of the Heisman. After all, he got Marcus Allen and Bo Jackson and Jim Plunkett out of it.

Now, he has Brown. Brown found the NFL no harder to beat than Purdue. He got open, he ran back kicks, he ran the occasional reverse. He pioneered in making the Heisman a bull market again.

Brown was a winner from his first start. The Raiders not only drafted him No. 1, they fought to keep him last winter when Denver offered him everything this side of the Continental Divide.

They knew what they were doing. Brown more or less saved the season for the Raiders on Sunday.

The situation was this: The Raiders, down 2-4 over the season, found themselves down, 10-0, in the first quarter of the game.

They didn’t even get their hands on the ball until there was only a little more than two minutes to play in the first period. If ever there was a time to put their paws in the air or to go to desperation, panic-driven, finger-pointing moves, this was it.

Brown was having none of it. The crowd was growing restive. Boos rent the air when quarterback Jeff Hostetler threw an incomplete pass to James Jett.

Then Hostetler threw to Brown. Brown, as usual, caught it in a crowd. Plucked it out of the ear of a cornerback. It was good for 15 yards and it moved L.A. into Atlanta Falcon territory for the first time. It turned the boos to cheers.

But more than that, it was a morale builder, a wake-up call. A few plays later, L.A. had a touchdown and had turned the game around.

About a minute and a half later, the Raiders got the ball on a half-blocked punt. Three plays later, Hostetler threw to--guess who--for a touchdown. The ubiquitous Mr. Brown. L.A. took the lead for the first time, 14-10.

The Raiders never relinquished it. In the third quarter, Hostetler threw to Brown again for 31 yards and a touchdown, which put the game up where the Falcons could never reach it.

In all, Brown caught eight passes for 130 yards and two touchdowns. That’s a pretty typical day for the Raider wide receiver who last year caught 80 passes for 1,180 yards and seven touchdowns.

The Falcons had been caught in a Brown-out. That first catch was more than just a completion, it was a declaration.

Later, Brown stood in the locker room, dressing swiftly.

“Weren’t you beginning to wonder when the score was 0-10?” he was asked. “Weren’t you pressing just a bit?”

Brown laughed. “Not with 46 minutes left in the game,” he said.

With 46 seconds, maybe.

The first catch put the flicker of hope back in the Raiders’ playbook. The other seven simply kept the Falcons locked in the cellar.

Did Brown have a yardstick by which he measured a successful game?

Brown smiled and said, “I just tell the coaches, ‘Get me seven catches a game and I’ll get you two touchdowns.’ ”

It’s a happy ratio. Delivering the football to Brown is the surest path to victory. The road to the Super Bowl for the Raiders goes through Brown. Go to No. 81 and turn left.

The only trouble is, if he gets any better, they might ask him to send that Heisman Trophy back. He is giving it a good name.