By Bob Hertzel
MORGANTOWN — Perhaps the tipoff on all that is Jarrett Brown came on Monday night in the Puskar Center, just four days before he was to take the field for his final home game as a West Virginia Mountaineer.
Here he was, starting quarterback of a team that had gained national prominence during the season, entering the home stretch of what has been one of the most difficult journeys any talented college football player has every had to take, and requests for an interview with him totaled exactly:
ONE!
Oh, the media had gathered around Carmen Connelly, a seldom used slot receiver who had caught passes in high school from Pitt quarterback Bill Stull; it had crushed around tackle Don Barclay and encircled punter Scott Kozlowski.
But somehow, after Brown had finished his meal at the team’s training table, had slipped into his letter jacket and headed for interviews, there was only one person waiting, one who had requested him.
And, in some ways, that’s the way it should be for Jarrett Brown is sort of like that comfortable old easy chair that’s taken for granted in your living room, right up until you’ve had a tough day at work, your feet are barking and your back is aching.
That’s when he comes in handy.
Brown crawled into an easy chair of his own in the study center, the trademark smile lighting up his corner of the room. Even though Pitt was closing in, even though his career was now rounding third and heading for home, he said the emotions hadn’t hit him yet.
“You have to reflect back,” he said, “and it’s been a long four years.”
Four years of being behind Patrick White, believing he could play, yet playing sporadically when White was injured or the game was out of hand.
“What did I get out of those four years?” he said, almost a rhetorical question but not one we would let float by rhetorically. We repeated it for him.
He talked about how he is leaving with a degree, and how important that will be after football. He talked about how it is time to prepare for the real world, just in case.
“Sometimes,” he said, “we forget the reason we are here at school.”
Football paid for school and he paid for football. There were injuries, as there must be, there was a concussion that always remains in the back of your mind, so to speak.
Brown had some wonderful moments on the football field, also some moments he’d like to forget.
He learned at West Virginia that life is what you make it, not what you want it to be.
If there was one thing he will take out of West Virginia, however, it can be summed up in a single word.
“Patience,” he said.
In truth, he showed endless patience, waiting his turn, waiting so long without saying so long.
It began, he noted, with Coach Rich Rodriguez recruiting him. He came here because Rodriguez convinced him that this would be a championship program, and it was.
But it was White’s program and Brown thought often of leaving.
“Coach Rod played a part in making me want to stay,” he said. “I thought we were going to be really good. I did not see him leaving.”
One can only imagine the effect it had on Brown to see his mentor, the man who had brought him here and sold him on staying, walk out on it all.
Brown’s turn came. He became a starting quarterback, put big numbers on the board, but somehow he never changed from the kid who walked through the doors of the Puskar Center as a freshman. He kept his feet on the ground and the smile on his face.
“Some guys they get conceited, get big heads. That says something about that person,” Brown said.
Brown never bought into that aspect of college football fame.
“I’ve always been pretty content with where I am and who I am. I’ve been humble,” he said.
And now the days are growing short. On Thanksgiving night, after the team dinner, the seniors give their speeches. It is always an emotional, heart-wrenching time when grown men cry and let their teammates inside themselves to see the real person.
It is a time that gets to Bill Stewart, the head coach, for one.
“I don’t know how I’m going to hold up when our seniors talk,” he said. “When they look at you, and tears are coming down their faces, and they say ‘Thank you’ for recruiting me and giving me a shot when no one else did — it’s tough.”
Brown said he isn’t sure what he’ll say, but somehow you know he’s going to steal the show.
E-mail Bob Hertzel at bhertzel@hotmail.com.
