Early Life
Brown grew up in Massillon, Ohio, where he moved with his family from Norwalk, Ohio when he was nine. His father, Lester, was a dispatcher for the Wheeling and Lake Erie Railroad. Massillon was a shipping and steel town obsessed with its high school and professional football teams, both called the Tigers. Massillon's main rival at both levels was nearby Canton, Ohio, at the time a bigger and richer town. When the professional teams folded in the 1920s, the rivalry between the high school teams took center stage.
Brown entered Massillon Washington High School in 1922. Although he played football as a child, Brown was undersized for the game at less than 150 pounds and at first focused his athletic energies on the pole vault. Harry Stuhldreher, who went on to be one of Notre Dame's legendary Four Horsemen, was then the high school quarterback. But Massillon coach Dave Stewart saw Brown's determination to be a good vaulter despite his small size and brought him onto the football team; as a junior in 1924, he took over as the starting quarterback. Massillon posted a win-loss record of 15–3 in Brown's junior and senior years as the starter.
Brown graduated in 1925 and enrolled at Ohio State University the following year, hoping to make the Buckeyes team. He never got past the tryout phase. After his freshman year, he transferred to Miami University in Oxford, Ohio, where he followed Weeb Ewbank as the school's starting quarterback. Under Coach Chester Pittser, Brown was named to the All-Ohio small-college second team by the Associated Press at the end of 1928. In two seasons at Miami, Brown guided the team to a 14–3 record. He married his high school sweetheart Katie Kester a the following year. Brown had taken pre-law at Miami and considered studying history on a Rhodes Scholarship, but after college he instead took his first job as a coach. On Stewart's recommendation, Severn School, a private prep school in Maryland, hired him in 1930.
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