Penn State Sports Magazine
Issue link: https://comanpub.uberflip.com/i/1315054
FINISHING KICK After leading the Lions in rushing as a sophomore, Brown has been forced to give up football due to a recently discov- ered heart condition. Photo by Steve Manuel A RUNNING BATTLE With Journey Brown forced to give up football and Noah Cain out for the season, the Nittany Lions have had to revamp their backfield on the fly. The results so far have been mixed ith a little over three minutes to play in Penn State's Cotton Bowl matchup against Memphis, Jour- ney Brown took a handoff deep in the backfield, scooted to his right and, after getting hit at the line of scrimmage, fell forward for a 2-yard gain. It was one of the shortest carries of the day by the red- shirt sophomore running back, but it wasn't just another of the 159 plays that the two teams ran in their back-and- forth offensive slugfest last December. This play was significant. The short gain gave the Nittany Lions a hard-fought first down, allowing them to keep their offense on the field and de- prive the Tigers of the precious seconds they needed to attempt to rally back from a 14-point deficit. Penn State went on to win, 53-39, and Brown was a big reason for its success, rushing for 202 yards on just 16 carries in a star-making performance. His 2-yarder in the waning minutes of the fourth quarter was quickly forgotten, the nation's video ed- itors understandably shifting their focus to his spectacular tackle-shedding touchdown runs of 32 and 56 yards as they assembled their highlight packages. But it made a difference in the Nittany Lions' 11th win of the season, and it capped an effort that seemingly foretold an even brighter future – both for Brown and for the Lions' entire offense. With three running backs returning, two more four-star prospects set to join the back- field in the off-season, and a veteran of- fensive line coming back virtually intact, Penn State was poised to have one of the top ground games in the Big Ten, maybe the country, in 2020. But there was a second and far more dispiriting reason why that play mat- tered: It was the last carry of Brown's competitive football career. While taking part in a testing regimen that Penn State instituted over the sum- mer in response to the COVID-19 out- break, he was found to suffer from a heart condition called hypertrophic cardiomy- opathy. The condition, which is often passed down genetically and is uncon- nected to COVID, is characterized by a thickening of the heart muscle. It can cause shortness of breath and chest pain and disrupt the heart's electrical system, leading to arrhythmias. Even in otherwise healthy people, it can pose serious con- cerns. So Brown was held out of action as Penn State began its 2020 season, his sta- tus to be determined by the results of fur- ther medical testing, which Penn State had sought in an effort to confirm its ini- tial diagnosis. In November, those tests | W >>