VFL and Current NFL Official Terry Brown Set to be Inducted into Greater Knoxville Sports Hall of Fame

Whether it's a sunny September Sunday in Green Bay, a chilly late October Monday night in New England just before winter takes hold, or a bone chilling January night in Kansas City before the AFC Championship game, former Tennessee football player Terry Brown – who will be inducted into the Greater Knoxville Sports Hall of Fame on Thursday – stops to reflect on how he got to this point in his life.

Growing up as a multi-sport athlete in Macon, Ga., Brown participated in football, basketball, baseball and track and field. He landed on his two best sports, football and basketball.

A quarterback on the football team and a two-guard in basketball, Brown played on the JV and varsity basketball teams until the end of his 10th grade year when his coach wanted him to quit football to focus on basketball full-time.

"He approached me with that and I chose not to at that point," Brown said. "And so, he decided he wasn't going to play me much which forced me to make a decision. I just decided to stick with football because I was getting letters in both basketball and football for college."

One of those letters was from the University of Tennessee and Vols' defensive coordinator Bobby Jackson. After making the 300-mile journey north to Knoxville, Brown redshirted his first year in 1982. With Alan Cockrell as the starting quarterback when he arrived on campus, defensive backs coach George Catavolos approached Brown about changing positions.

"He knew I was an athlete and doing this right before spring, the year 1982," Brown said. "He came and asked me, would I be interested? Initially, I wasn't that eager because I wanted to play quarterback. That's what I played all my career. But yet, I wanted to play in the game. I didn't come to Tennessee to sit on the bench."

After initially being dead set against letting Brown switch, head coach Johnny Majors relented and let him practice at both quarterback and defensive back.

"My very first game, I'll never forget it. We're playing Pittsburgh, there was an All-American receiver by the name of Dwight Collins. It was always my philosophy that I was not going to get beat deep. This guy, Collins, was a world class sprinter and All-American in football. There was a long pass down my sideline which I was running stride for stride with him, well Reggie White hits the quarterback as he was throwing the football.

"The ball was in the air and I'm stride for stride with this receiver trying to make sure he doesn't beat me deep. Well, the ball ended up falling a little bit short from where we were and he ended up catching the ball on the five yard line because I overran the ball a little bit and he ended up falling into the end zone as I'm tackling him. I got beat that time and vowed never to get beat again by a receiver deep. I always remember that first time I got beat for a touchdown."

While he remembers the first time he got beat for a touchdown, the game that sticks out most is the 1985 meeting in Knoxville against Bo Jackson and top-ranked Auburn Tigers. The Vols defeated the Tigers 38-20, and in Brown's words, "we beat them like we owned them".

The '85 season is special in a lot of ways and Brown remembers the team coming together before the season even began, growing together, putting trust in one another and getting to know one another. That togetherness proved to be the catalyst as the Vols won the SEC Championship and beat No. 2 Miami in the Sugar Bowl, 35-7, forever becoming the "Sugar Vols."

Brown's dream to play in the NFL was cut short by the NFL Player's Strike in 1987, which saw him return to Tennessee to finish his degree. At the same time, he noticed he was having issues with his neck.

"In 1991 or 1992, it began to give me a little bit more issues, and by that time the playing days were over," Brown said. "That's when I went to a doctor and he identified that I did have a ruptured disc and that one more hit could have been my last one. That I could have been dead or paralyzed."

Brown had surgery to repair the disc in 1994.

While he was learning about the ruptured disc, Brown had begun to referee basketball games at the high school level, needing a break from football. After several years of only refereeing basketball, he was reeled back in by football to earn a little extra money and get back to the game he loved.

He spent a couple of years at the high school level before being recruited to move up to college. Hired by the Southern Conference in 1998, he refereed games for two seasons and was hired by the SEC in 2000.

"2002 is when the NFL approached me about training for the NFL," Brown said. "I know the guy who ended up scouting me later, once I got into the NFL, told me that he just happened to be at a game I was working, Vanderbilt at TCU."

Shortly after, the NFL was sending him to Europe to referee games and get experience at the professional level, and in 2006 he was hired by the National Football League.

After his neck injury, Brown had blotted out his dreams of playing in the NFL. When he became an official, he never considered he would reach the professional ranks. Life however, had other plans, the fire was relit and his love for the game began to burn again.

Now entering his 14th season as an NFL official in 2019, Brown still has goals to reach and dreams to live out. He has refereed in every NFL stadium and has numerous playoff games under his belt, including the 2019 AFC Championship Game between Kansas City and New England, and has his sights set on refereeing the Super Bowl.

When Terry Brown steps onto the field for pregame warm-ups, he reflects. He thinks back to his own days as a player, he takes in the pageantry and tears up when there is a military fly over and thinks about why he keeps coming back.

"For love of the game."

University of Tennessee Athletics

VFL and Current NFL Official Terry Brown Set to be Inducted into Greater Knoxville Sports Hall of Fame

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