Penn State Sports Magazine
Issue link: https://comanpub.uberflip.com/i/1315054
came back, and they echoed the doctors' original conclusions. Brown's football ca- reer was over. "It's heartbreaking," coach James Franklin said. "When we found out about it, we were in shock. You feel physically sick about it, and you're just in shock. You hurt for the kid. Obviously, it's magnified because of all the conversations that were going on nationally about Journey and what he was going to be able to do this season. But the kid has been phenomenal. He's handled it better than anybody I've ever been around. He's going to be very successful. I don't know if he wants to stay in football, or what he's going to de- cide to do, but he's going to be unbeliev- ably successful, and I know our team is going to continue to support him and rally around him. We've been doing it since September." One of the most discouraging aspects of Brown's diagnosis was that he received it just as his football career was taking off. He had been playing the game since he was in the fourth grade, and by his soph- omore year at Meadville (Pa.) High, it was more than just a fun extracurricular ac- tivity. "Football became less of a game for me and more of a lifestyle," he explained recently via social media. Brown com- piled some eye-popping numbers as a wing-T tailback at Meadville, but he was also a state champion sprinter, and he was written off by many as just another track guy playing football. Brown was not one of the marquee recruits in Penn State's Class of 2017, and nothing happened in his first two years on campus to change anyone's mind; he went into his sopho- more season with eight carries for 44 yards. But then, in the second half of the 2019 season, everything began to click. He topped 100 yards against Minnesota, In- diana and Rutgers, and topped 200 in the Cotton Bowl, becoming the school's record-holder for most rushing yards in a bowl game. Along the way, he flashed the speed that everyone knew he had, and also the power and decisiveness that he had developed under the guidance of running backs coach Ja'Juan Seider. His