What Can Brown Do for Bruins? Quite a Bit

When his coaches told Trey Brown he was going to get his first extended opportunity at cornerback against Arizona State last month, he showed no real emotion. He simply vowed that he would try his best not to let the team down.

But when family and friends back home in Overland Park, Kan., learned that the redshirt freshman would play most of the second half against the Sun Devils, they were overjoyed. Several ordered the game on pay-per-view and watched as intently as if it were Kansas State-Nebraska.

When Brown made the first big play of his college career -- an interception at midfield of a pass by Andrew Walter -- they cheered and high-fived.

That, though, was only the start. Brown finished with seven tackles, four of them solos, and broke up another pass. He was beaten late in the game for a touchdown by receiver Derek Hagan but was later told he had earned the starting nod at right cornerback the next week against Stanford.

That’s when it became as clear as the sky over Tempe, Ariz., that the soft-spoken, hard-hitting Brown, at 19, had arrived on the major-college football scene, just as Pacific 10 Conference football had arrived deep in the heart of Big 12 country.

“The instant Trey got his interception, my phone just rang and rang -- I must have had 15 consecutive calls, which tells you something about Trey,” recalls Theotis Brown, Trey’s father and a star Bruin running back in the late 1970s who went on to play in the NFL. “If you can convert people [in the Kansas City area] into UCLA fans, you’re doing your job.”

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Hard work, on and off the field, has been Trey’s trademark since he was a child. It’s part of what happens when you’re the only son of a father who plays football for a living, and when both parents stress the importance of good grades and proper values.

“We want him to be successful in life, not just athletics,” says Theotis, 47, a salesman and part-time host of a TV sports show in Kansas City. “We want him to be a positive influence in society.”

Theotis rushed for 2,914 yards as a Bruin and ranks seventh all-time at UCLA. As a pro, he played for the Kansas City Chiefs, Seattle Seahawks and St. Louis Cardinals.

Trey, who also played basketball and baseball at Blue Valley Northwest High in Overland Park, said he was never pressured to follow in his father’s footsteps.

“I could have been playing marbles, and both my parents would still have been backing me up,” he says, proudly.

In high school sports, Trey excelled not so much because of his talent, but because of what his father calls a “dogged determination” and an intensely competitive nature.

He earned all-league honors as a running back and defensive back as a senior, rushing for 1,133 yards and 10 touchdowns. He was all-state as a defensive back.

Ed Fritz, who coached Trey in basketball, recalled the time Brown volunteered to switch positions and guard a player who had scored 15 points in the first half of a district championship game.

“We were down by 11 points at the half, and the guy didn’t score the rest of the game and we won by 10 points,” Fritz said.

Brown loved all three sports, but most schools wanted him for football, including Kansas State and Oklahoma State of the Big 12. At 5 feet 9 and 190 pounds, he was a natural fit at defensive back.

There were no hard choices, though, once UCLA expressed interest.”I was a Bruin since I was born,” Brown says.

Theotis Brown III, Trey for short, says his father puts no expectations on him and that the only ones that matter are his and his coaches’.

His father agrees but adds, jokingly, that he wishes his son would show a little more enthusiasm after games. When Theotis congratulated Trey after his performance against the Sun Devils, for example, Trey responded with a simple “yeah.”

“I said, ‘Yeah?! This is your dad talking, at least you could give me some verbiage and say something.’ But I guess he’s always let his actions do his talking.”

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It’s late Saturday afternoon at the Rose Bowl and the Bruins are in the locker room, celebrating a surprising 21-0 shutout of Stanford, bouncing back from a disappointing loss to Arizona State and improving to 5-3.

Brown’s contribution has been even more noteworthy: eight tackles, six of them solos, two tackle-assists and a pass breakup on third and eight deep in Cardinal territory. On special teams, he threw the block that freed Maurice Drew on a 68-yard punt return for a touchdown.

Brown says, simply, that it “feels good” to be helping his team. Others are not so reticent. Drew, for instance, said he had complete faith that Brown would put a perfect block on the last player standing between him and the end zone on the punt return.

“Trey Brown’s a hustle player,” Drew says with a broad smile. “He does what he has to do for a win. If he has to sell his body out, he’s going to do it. That’s what I like about him. We have a lot of other guys out there too that sell their bodies out on special teams. A lot of people don’t know that, but guys like Trey Brown are why our special teams have picked up since last year.”

They know it in Overland Park.