April 30, 2009
Notre Dame, Ind – Tim Brown, 1987 Heisman Trophy winner and two-time All-American, today was named to the National Football Foundation’s College Football Hall of Fame.
Brown was one of 16 former college players and two coaches named to the 2009 College Football Hall of Fame Class, as announced in New York by Archie Manning, chairman of the National Football Foundation.
The ’09 class will be inducted at the 52nd annual awards dinner on December 8, 2009, at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel in New York City. The players and coaches will be enshrined at the Hall of Fame in South Bend in summer 2010.
Brown becomes the 43rd former Notre Dame player inducted into the College Football Hall of Fame. The Irish have six former coaches in the Hall and the 49 total enshrines are the most of any NCAA institution, the most recent being Lou Holtz in 2008.
The first wide receiver to be awarded the Heisman Trophy, Brown became the seventh Notre Dame player to be heralded as the most outstanding player in the nation in 1987. He set 19 school records during his Irish career and earned the nickname “Touchdown Timmy.”
Brown’s head coach, Lou Holtz, called Brown the most intelligent football player he had ever been around and was later quoted as saying, “I can’t imagine that there’s anyone else who can have such a major effect on a football game in as many ways as Tim Brown can.”
For his career, Brown averaged 116.8 all-purpose yards per game and totaled 22 touchdowns. He totaled a then-school record 2,493 receiving yards with 12 receiving TDs and averaged 18.2 yards per catch. Brown averaged 23.4 yards on 69 career kickoff returns with three returned for TDs and averaged 13.2 yards on 36 punt returns and three TDs.
The two-time All-American (1986, 1987-unanimous) set a single-season record with 1,937 all-purpose yards as a junior in 1986. As a senior, Brown ranked sixth nationally with 167.9 all-purpose yards per game and also was awarded the Walter Camp Award.
Brown led all Irish receivers as a sophomore in 1985 with 25 catches for 397 yards and three TDs and started 10 games. As a freshman, he set the freshman record with 28 receptions (since broken by Duval Kamara in 2007 and Michael Floyd in 2008). Selected in the first round (sixth overall) in the 1988 NFL Draft by the Los Angeles Raiders, Brown played 16 seasons with the franchise, earning him the title Mr. Raider. He holds the NFL rookie record for most combined yards gained (2,317) and became the oldest player to return a punt for a touchdown in 2001. A member of the NFL 1990s All-Decade team, he was named to nine Pro Bowls and hauled in an NFL record 75 receptions in 10 straight seasons.
Born Timothy Donell Brown on July 22, 1966, Brown grew up in Dallas, Texas, and attended Woodrow Wilson High School where he played football, basketball and track as well as served as vice president of his senior class and sports editor of the school newspaper. Brown graduated from Notre Dame with a Bachelor of Arts degree in sociology in 1988.
Brown is the national chairman of Athletes & Entertainers for Kids and currently resides in DeSoto, Texas.