PISCATAWAY – Andre Dixon’s mom stood waiting for Tim Brown at the dining hall this morning.
She works in the Rutgers’ cafeteria, the one where the Scarlet Knights eat breakfast every morning. Every morning, Brown nods or waves hello. Because he nods and waves hello to most everyone – and because he met her son, a Connecticut tailback, at a barbecue last summer.
Today, though, Andre Dixon’s mother needed more. She motioned for Brown to stop and she pulled out a blue fleece scarf. “Jazz 6″ ran down one side, “UConn” rode down the other and as she put it around Brown’s neck, she said, ”Andre wanted you to have this.”
“The tears just came down my face,” the Rutgers senior wideout said a few hours later, as he sat quietly by a window on the third floor of the Hale Center. “It’s the respect of those guys, the class of those guys – UConn is a great program. It’s just a great program.”
It was Brown who stuck a dagger in UConn’s reeling heart Saturday, taking a short slant 81 yards for a game-winning touchdown with 32 seconds to play and the Huskies thinking they’d honored their slain teammate, Jasper “Jazz” Howard. It was Brown who’d ruined UConn’s first game home since Howard was stabbed in the wee hours of Oct. 18, outside a school sponsored dance and after the best game of his career.
Rentschler Field overflowed with “6″ signs and “6″ t-shirts and “6″ buttons Saturday – and then it was Brown who deflated the whole thing, with the six fingers he thrust toward the sky from inside UConn’s end zone.
And still, it was Brown Dixon thought of in the aftermath of that hurt, Brown he told his mother to seek out and Brown he felt should have his own fleece scarf. Right now, after this, Dixon told his mom, “Tim’s our teammate too.”
“He knew how I felt about Jazz. I know how he felt about Jazz,” Brown said, pausing a minute as he choked back tears he said still haven’t stopped falling.
Brown was as much best friend of – and to – Howard as Howard’s own Husky teammates, having grown up alongside him on Miami’s 62nd Street. They met in their Pop Warner days and they worked out together at the Shack Gym right up until this past summer, with Brown saying it was Howard who pushed him, “when I didn’t want to go anymore. He just kept making sure I worked hard.”
Their cousins are in a rap group, 6-2 Entertainment, together, they ate at each other’s houses almost as much as they ate at their own and they’d both marked this Halloween meeting between Rutgers and UConn in bright red, mentioning it in every one of their thrice-weekly conversations. They also talked about getting out of the cycle of Miami violence they knew and about being fathers, Brown already one, Dixon about to become one.
Somewhere in this past week, the Huskies read all that. Somewhere, Dixon heard Brown had wanted to go to Howard’s funeral last Monday and when the Scarlet Knight wasn’t able to, sent his mother, brother, two sisters and his Papajohns.com Bowl game jersey instead. Somehow, the Huskies running back from New Brunswick found out Brown kept telling people how moved he was by the whole UConn team’s attendance at Howard’s funeral and so he told his mother to give Brown what the Huskies all wore there.
“I’m so proud of those guys going down there and showing their support of him and his family,” Brown said. “It was a very emotional game for me. I was just trying to stay focused and now I’m just trying to stay focused. I just have to keep going out there and playing my hardest.”
And he really has been. He’s been a steadying force and a more-than-dependable target for Rutgers’ freshman quarterback Tom Savage. With five catches, two touchdowns and 162 yards, Brown is the new Big East Offensive Player of the Week and up for AT&T’s All-America National Player of the Week. His 811 receiving yards rank ninth in the country, his highlight-reel catches have officially proven that small frame belies a real toughness and he’s shown a seriousness of purpose even before these past two weeks forced a reason onto it.
Brown took out the gold teeth he’s sported since high school before the season. He stopped writing “Showtime” and his own name, “Deuce” on his eyeblack. He’s asked people to stop calling him “Timmy” and when someone told him Monday that Savage just did it, he rolled his eyes and said, “I’m really out of the Timmy stage.”
He is. And he’s not the only one who recognizes it.
Aditi Kinkhabwala has written a regular column for SI.com and been published in Sports Illustrated.
Great Stuff Aditi – thanks for sharing.
Absolutely awesom article, very moving Aditi. It also how far “Tim” has come and has matured from a young man into a responsible adult. There are times I criticize Schiano’s on field coaching decisions but as far as a leader, role model, advisor to young men and mentoring them into adulthood you’d be hard pressed to find better.
Enjoyed the article as always Aditi!
This is a great read!! Article clearly demonstrates the character of these student athletes, wisdom of their parents, and determination of their coach’s and professors to turn them into men.