Mister T

It's funny, but while he's waiting for the football—turning point-over-point, stripe-over-stripe—Notre Dame's Tim Brown hears like Radar O'Reilly: the band, the cheerleaders, his teammates hollering his name, the "oooohhhh" a crowd makes just before the ball is kicked and the sudden hush that comes when the people realize a human jet pack like Brown is waiting underneath it. Then, the instant he catches it, his hearing goes dead, as if someone had turned a switch.

Is there any single vignette in sports as rare and tingling as a kickoff returned for a touchdown? A grand slam, perhaps? Last year major leaguers hit 82. Last season in the NFL, seven kickoffs were returned for touchdowns. A triple play? Slightly rarer—five last year in the majors—but a triple play lacks the dulcet anticipation, the stand-on-your-seat-ness of a kick-off. When people see Brown waiting for a kick, they put down their beers and clear off their laps. This is a moment plump with possibility, like being in a room with a piano and Vladimir Horowitz.

Since Anthony Davis brought back six for USC in the early 1970s, nobody in college football has returned more kickoffs for touchdowns. In fact, TB has a chance to KO AD's six. He had one his sophomore year, then two last year—95 yards against Air Force and 96 against LSU—plus a 97-yarder against Penn State that was called back because of a clip.

Brown seems to have been born waiting at the goal line. Playing for a high school team in Dallas that won exactly four games in his three years, he returned six kickoffs and three punts for touchdowns and tallied 16 more TDs on runs from scrimmage as a tailback and on receptions. His average touchdown was 45.9 yards, if you can grasp that. The guy scored every 12th time he touched the ball.

Brown runs 40 yards in 4.31 seconds, is as good a bet as any to win the Heisman Trophy—he'd be the first nonback since Irish receiver Leon Hart in 1949 to claim the prize—and even if he doesn't, he figures to be more fun to watch than the guy who does.

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Even under oversized shoulder pads, Brown looks 30 mph over the speed limit. His pads are bulkier because Notre Dame used Brown last year the way sportscaster Keith Jackson used the word "hoss"—nearly to exhaustion. He played tailback, wide receiver, flanker and kick and punt returner. That is still not as many helmets as he wore at Wood-row Wilson High, where he played all those positions plus quarterback, fullback, cornerback and safety, frequently in the same game, occasionally on consecutive plays. "Put it this way," says his high school coach, Richard Mason. "If Tim Brown didn't get on the bus, I didn't get on the bus."

And now Brown waits for the ball, or rather, doesn't wait for it, which is the secret. Brown gets a running start into the ball (it usually deflects off his face-mask, he says). He likes his blockers to get a head start, too, so he hollers "Go!" before he catches it and then hopes he does catch it, because otherwise he is all alone with just an odd-hopping ball and 11 angry men. It's a feeling he knows. The first time Brown went back for a kickoff as a freshman he fumbled and lost the ball, setting up a Purdue field goal, which turned out to be the winning margin for the Boilermakers.

If he catches it, Brown and his blockers are already approaching full speed before most return men have planted their first step. The return play called on the sideline tells Brown where his first move is up the field. After that, he's on his own. That's when the fun starts.

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