• Defensive end/linebacker
• Palm Beach Gardens High School, Palm Beach, FL (Head Coach Tim Tharp)
• 6-3, 223 pounds
• Runs a 4.8 in the forty
• Rankings: Rivals #51 of 70 (3 stars), Insiders #111 of 127 (2 stars)
• Recruiting coach: Charley Wiles

Virginia Tech fans aren't foolish enough to sit around waiting for the next Michael Vick. They know lightning like that won't strike twice. But they are still searching for the next player who most resembles another Hokie great of the recent past. They are still searching for the next Corey Moore.

Palm Beach Gardens (Palm Beach, Florida) defensive end Mike Brown (6-3, 223) is the next recruit to fall under that scrutiny. He and fellow defensive end recruit Chris Ellis are the 2003 recruits upon whom falls the burden of expectations, and the hopes of the Hokie Nation that at least one of them will turn out to be the next Corey Moore, a defensive end who can pressure the QB, stop the run, and alter the outcome of a game by himself.

Corey Moore had a number of qualities that made him great, not just on the field, but off of it. On the field, he was fast, he was relentless, and he never let up. Off the field, he was well-spoken, well-educated, and he loved Virginia Tech and the Hokie football family with all his heart.

Mike Brown has the chance to be the next Corey Moore. At 6-3, he's three inches taller than Corey Moore, and with a 4.8 forty, he's not as fast as Moore, who once ran a 4.38.

But he's got all the other qualities Moore had, including a little bit of a wild side, a crazy edge that gives him an advantage if he focuses it properly.

Palm Beach Gardens (PBG) coach Tim Tharp knew of Mike Brown before he ever met him, because the high school coaches hear about kids as they come up through the rec leagues. He finally met Brown a year before Brown was to attend PBG.

"He came over for a track meet for one of the junior high schools that use our track," Tharp explains. "One of the junior high coaches introduced me to Mike, and I looked at him, and I said, 'Holy cow.' He was a rangy kid, 6-1, 6-2, very athletic-looking. We knew if he filled out the frame he had, that he would be a heck of a player.

"We were excited about him coming over, and he was good enough to be a varsity player as a ninth-grader. He's a four-year letterman, and in my five years, we've only had five kids who were able to do that."

As a ninth-grader, Brown played primarily at defensive end, but the coaches moved him around a lot to try him at different spots and see how he did. He made a few plays, but his sophomore year, he moved into the starting lineup and was an instant hit.

"He had a lot of big plays as a tenth-grader," Tharp says. "We played a lot of teams that liked to throw the ball around, and he made a lot of big plays, mainly sacks. He wasn't strong against the run as a tenth grader. He was also playing opposite another kid that went to Iowa State, Cephus Johnson, so that helped, because teams couldn't stop them both."

Colleges immediately started sniffing around, checking to see if the sophomore was legit, and during his junior year, Brown proved he was. He piled up an impressive 115 tackles and 22.5 sacks, playing in a tough district that sent three teams to the playoffs in Florida's 5A classification, the second biggest classification in the state.

In his senior year, Tharp moved Brown to linebacker, where he had 112 tackles, 7 forced fumbles, 1 interception, and 5 sacks. "We went to a 50 scheme, and we had a couple kids who could play end, but only one kid who could play LB. We made a judgment call on where to put Mike, and depending upon who we were playing, we put him at end or linebacker. If we were playing a passing team, we'd have him on the end and coming. If we were playing a running team, we had him up. We moved him around. It was out of necessity. He did a good job, but in my opinion, he's an end, not a linebacker.

Brown likes both linebacker and defensive end, and the Hokies will try him out at defensive end first. After playing three seasons at defensive end, the year at linebacker gave him a new perspective and allowed him to keep playing the game the way he likes to play it: all-out.

"When I moved to linebacker," Brown says, "it was a new experience, it was a new kind of vision, because you're standing up in the middle of the field. I saw a lot of things I'd never seen before. At defensive end, you're lining up outside, and unless they run a sweep at you or they drop back to pass, you're basically out of the play.

"Linebacker was a better position for me, because I like to hit. I'm in the middle, linemen coming at me, and fullbacks, and stuff like that. That's what I like. I like to go home with a headache every night."

Tharp says of Brown, "He's a tremendous pass-rusher off the edge. His first step or two is probably as quick as any I've ever seen, coming off the edge. Technique is part of it, speed is part of it, but his greatest strength on the field is his desire. He's just relentless. Chasing down plays across the field from the backside � he doesn't take plays off. He'll die out there before he'll take a play off."

Mike Brown comes from a solid family. His mother and father, neither of which are college graduates, are described by Brown as "real religious people." They have built a large family of five kids that range in age from 34 to 4 years old. Mike has a 34-year old brother, an older sister who teaches English at Palm Beach Gardens ("They had put me in her class initially, one time, but I switched out," Brown says with a good-natured laugh), a 17-year old sister, and a 4-year old, adopted brother.

Doing well in school and qualifying to play football in college were never an issue with Brown, who got off on the right foot. "My mom stayed on me about academics, so I've always been strong there," he says. "I come home, do my homework, eat dinner, watch a little TV or something, and go to bed. That's always been my routine."

With that family background, and with Coach Tharp emphasizing the team aspect of the game, Brown never got a swelled head, even after he started getting scholarship offers as a tenth-grader.

Rutgers was the first team on board.

"I know [Rutgers head] Coach [Greg] Schiano, he's a friend of mine," Tharp says, "and they were recruiting one of our outside linebackers. We sent some film up on the kid, and they called us and said, 'Our defensive line guy wants to know who number 21 is.' I told them it was Mike Brown, and they said, 'We're going to offer him right now. Can you get him on the phone?' So they offered him as a tenth grader. They were the first team to offer him.

"I mean, he got a ton of interest. He had six or eight early offers on the table: NCSU, UNC, Missouri, Central Florida, South Florida, Rutgers, a couple others."

Brown remembers a list of "Boston College, UCF, Missouri, and Eastern Michigan. It was the middle of my junior season [when a lot of offers were made]. When the letters first started coming in, I was excited, because you think college, college, college, you see it on TV, but I didn't really look too far forward to the fact that I was playing for a college scholarship instead of playing for fun."

The attention didn't deflect Brown from maintaining his focus as a team player. Tharp saw to that.

"He was excited about the offers, but you know, as coaches, we're always trying to stay in front of him about it. We're just big-time team-oriented. Although Mike was one of our two highest-recruited kids, you're always trying to say, 'Mike, listen, have fun with it, but don't forget to keep it in perspective with the schoolwork and what we're trying to accomplish as a team.'

"He did a great job of handling it, but as it goes on, the pressure gets turned up, and it gets tough, and he had some struggles with it, mainly in, you know, telling adults no. Telling them, you spent all this time on me, but I'm not interested. He backed out of a trip to Rutgers, which is a tough thing to do."

Florida was the school that Brown yearned to receive an offer from, the one place he would have gone to in a heartbeat, having been a Gators fan since he was a kid. But the Gators never showed much interest, nor did Miami or Florida State.

Tharp knows why. "A lot of the Florida schools were off of him because he wasn't a 4.6 (forty) kid, and I'm, like, 'You guys have got to be kidding me' But I know that Virginia Tech lives and dies with guys like Mike. Maybe he's not a 4.6 guy, he's a 4.8 guy, but there's a lot of intangibles that Virginia Tech sees in players that the Miamis of the world and the Floridas of the world don�t fool with. They [Florida schools] feel they can get the kid that's 6-4, 225, and runs a 4.5 or 4.6."

There's no inside story or no great connection that led to VT recruiting Brown. This was just a case of VT defensive line coach Charley Wiles, who recruits the area, doing his homework and knowing that Brown was a player to watch. Tharp, who has been at Palm Beach Gardens since 1998 and has started to develop a relationship with Wiles over that time, provided Brown's name to Virginia Tech, and Wiles monitored him and kept in touch with him, eventually offering him a scholarship after his junior year.

"Charley Wiles started recruiting him as a junior, actually spring of his sophomore year," Tharp says. "I didn't know how serious they were about him at first, but he stayed with him, he contacted him, and he never got off of him. Virginia Tech never floundered."

While he hoped for an offer from Florida that would never come, Brown set his sights on Michigan, Virginia Tech, UCF, and Boston College. He made his first official visit to Virginia Tech on the weekend of November 29th, 2002, the weekend that the Hokies defeated Virginia in frigid, windy weather the likes of which Brown had never seen before. But that didn't scare him off.

"That was my first time seeing snow, actually," he laughs. "It was nice."

He went to Michigan two weeks later, and you might think that the mighty Wolverines, steeped in tradition and sporting a stadium that holds 100,000-plus, would make Virginia Tech look small-time. Not necessarily. From a facilities standpoint, the Hokies stacked up against the Wolverines pretty well.

"You could say Michigan's a bigger program, because the stadium is bigger and all that," Brown says. "But the weight room is about the same as Virginia Tech's. Comparing them, there's not really a big difference."

Perhaps even more surprising is that Brown felt the Hokies had the edge when it came to his planned major of Business Finance. "I like Virginia Tech better academically, because I can get in my major my freshman year there. As for Michigan, I would have to wait until my junior year."

Brown still had trips to UCF and BC planned for January, and that was how things stood heading into Christmas of 2002.

Tharp started to hint over Christmas that Brown should make his decision.

"I really thought he was leaning towards Michigan," Tharp remembers. "I grabbed him aside one day after Christmas break, when we were at an all-star luncheon for a local all-star team, and I said, 'You know, you really need to think about what you're doing here. You've gone to Virginia Tech, you've gone to Michigan, you've got UCF and Boston College on the docket. Do you really think it's a smart thing to risk going to the University of Michigan to take a trip to Central Florida or Boston College?'"

Brown's answer surprised Tharp a little. He paused for a moment, thought about it and said, "No coach, not really, but you know, I'm not interested in Michigan. I think I want to go to Virginia Tech."

"So I rephrased my question," Tharp says, "using Virginia Tech instead of Michigan. If the bottom falls out, would you be happy going to BC or UCF, knowing what you know about Virginia Tech? That got the wheels turning, and he really started leaning to Tech."

Some time went by, and Brown still hadn't called Virginia Tech and told them he was coming. The night of January 8th, Brown talked things over with his parents, who had been heavily involved in the recruiting process -- "They were probably more into it than I was," Brown says with a chuckle -- and he decided that it was time to commit to Virginia Tech.

"I was like, all right dad, we're going to commit," Brown says. "And he said, 'I'll call them as soon as I can.' "

The next morning, Jan 9th, things took an interesting twist. The Florida coaching staff called Tharp up in his office, told him they had changed defensive coordinators, and the new coach had seen some film of Brown and wanted to talk to Mike and take a look at him.

Tharp called Brown into his office that morning. "I knew Mike had always wanted to go to Florida, so I called him out of class, and as I'm sitting there talking to him, and I'm telling him about Florida, his eyes begin to light up a little bit. And then the phone rings, while Mike is in the office, and Coach Wiles tells me, 'I got good news. Mike's dad called me about fifteen minutes ago and told me Mike's committing to us.'"

"Really?" Tharp said to Wiles. "Well, I don�t know if Mike knows that or not."

Tharp briefed Wiles on the Florida situation and then I told him, "I've got Mike sitting right here, and we'll talk about it and call you."

Tharp hung up the phone, talked to Brown, and told him to go home, talk to his parents, and decide what was best for him. "I told him that if he felt like he wanted to play at Florida, then he should take that trip. I told him that if he felt like he wanted to play at Virginia Tech, then he needed to tell Florida they were too late."

Tharp told Brown not to take long, telling him, "You need to talk to Coach Wiles tonight, after that discussion, and let him know exactly where you stand."

The call from Florida threw Brown into a quandary. His father had already called, on Brown's instructions, and given Virginia Tech his commitment. But the Gators were his childhood favorite.

"I was like, man, I don't know what to do," Brown recalls. "I went and saw my linebacker coach and sat in his office and talked to him about it to see how he felt about it. I called my mom to see what they thought about it. Basically, I was looking for somebody to help me out!" He laughs at the memory.

"They told me that if I really wanted to take a visit to Florida, I should do it. Florida was the only school I would have gone to other than Virginia Tech. So I had to make sure that Virginia Tech was really where I wanted to be, so I was going to take a visit to Florida, and if that didn't change my mind, then that [Virginia Tech] was the school I was going to go to. That was my intention when I was in Coach Tharp's office."

Brown left school January 9th intending to take that Florida visit, despite his father's phone call to Wiles, but after meeting with his family again that night, he put thoughts of the Gators behind him and did what he felt was right. "We talked about Florida and Virginia Tech and the coaches and what-not, and we just felt more comfortable with the decision we had already made. I wouldn't have felt right taking the trip to Florida."

So the next morning, January 10th, Brown went into Tharp's office, told him Florida was out of the picture, and he was definitely going to VT.

Brown's rationale for choosing the Hokies over Michigan and interest from Florida? "Basically, I can say it was the coaches. When I went on my visit, I got real close, and I got to meet a lot of people, and the coaches they were really straightforward with me and didn't pressure me into committing. I had a good time.

"I like the players. I felt that I'd fit in and get along with the players that were there and any players that come in the future. I had a good time on both my visits, but I just felt more a personal connection to the Virginia Tech coaches and players. The atmosphere was different. Certain places, you just know that's where you want to be."

But if Florida had called one day earlier, before his dad called Charley Wiles, Brown is honest about what he would have done. "One day earlier? I would have gone [on a visit to Florida]."

If that sounds like the decision of a kid with character, Tharp says that Mike Brown has done a lot of growing up in the last four years.

"He not only matured on the field," Tharp says, "but off the field, too. The strides he made off the field are his greatest success story. By the time he left out of here as a senior, the kid was the leader of the team. And I mean by action and by deed, off the field and in the classroom and everywhere else. He was never a bad kid, just immature. But the light bulb went on for him.

"One of the greatest things to see in him is where he was coming in as a ninth-grader, and where he is going out, as a twelfth-grader. And I mean off the field. He knows who he is and what he needs to do, as far as leadership, setting an example, and class work. He's not a kid you're going to have to be worried about."

But early in his high school career, Brown had a bit of an attitude, and Tharp says there were a few times that Brown landed in his doghouse.

"I was always a good player," Brown says, "but when I was younger, my attitude and temper was a little quicker, and I couldn't really take constructive criticism. With my attitude, I would say something back [to the coaches], and we'd have run-ins and stuff like that. So I had to get out of that."

Brown cites one incident as an example. "There was a two-a-day or something like that. We were jogging, and normally, in our conditioning, when we jog, I've got the most endurance, so I'm lapping people and stuff like that. But it was hot and I had a cramp, real, real bad, so I wasn't running like I usually do. One of the coaches said something to me about dogging it and not caring, and I started arguing with him and got in trouble for it."

These things happened off and on, and although there wasn't a watershed moment, Brown did grow out of it gradually. "I guess it was a little bit of talking to my mom, and the coaches, and me just realizing it over time, that my attitude would eventually get me in trouble. Once you get into college and the pros, you can't say stuff like that to coaches, because you're replaceable."

Each year, on the last Thursday practice of the regular season, the PBG football team holds what Tharp calls a "shoe-burning ceremony." They grab an old sneaker or cleat, set it on fire, and gather around it. Each senior player then gets up and says a few words of their choosing to the younger players.

"Some kids don't say much," Tharp explains, "but others like Mike, who have experienced the highest highs and the lowest lows, have a lot to say. Mike talked about his whole career, the mistakes he made, and how he started doing the right things."

Brown remembers exactly what he talked about during this year's ceremony, his last at PBG. If you ask him about it, it comes out almost in a stream of consciousness.

"I just told everybody stuff that I'd been going through in high school, with the girls, and teachers, and being respectful, and get to class. I tell them not to be jerks in the hallways and stuff like that, because once you get to a certain level on the team, as a captain or whatever, you've got to change your mindset, do the right thing, and be an example, you know what I'm saying? That's what teachers expect of you. And they're surrounded by a good group of coaches that really care about them. I know they care about them, because they hung in there with me when I was going through my little phase or whatever. Keep their head up, be smart, and keep their mind on something bigger."

Brown acknowledges that as a football player, he's a role model, but he says that at such a young age, it can be difficult to shoulder that responsibility. "It's hard. Sometimes I see myself as a role model, but at the same time, I'm a person, too. I might get upset just like the next person. If I do something [bad] at school, everybody thinks I'm a role model, and it seems like a big deal. But if someone else does the same thing, it's not a big deal. It gets hard sometimes.

"My little [4-year-old] brother keeps me doing the right thing, because he runs around the house saying, 'I'm Mike! I'm Mike! I play football' He goes to all the football games, and he's real crazy about it. It's all about how you want people to remember you."

You can see that Mike Brown has potential to be a great defensive end, like Corey Moore was. Like Moore, Brown is relentless on the field and doesn't take plays off. Like Moore, he can be well-spoken and civilized, but there's a wild side to him, an aggressiveness that he has had to overcome and tame. But it's an aggressiveness that all the great ones have that can be unleashed on the field to his advantage.

Like many of his peers, he peppers his speech with frequent utterances of the phrase, "You know what I'm saying?" but it's not annoying, and he doesn't use it as a verbal crutch to fill time. Often, when asked a question, he'll pause for a long time before answering, but it's not because he doesn't have anything to say. It's because he's gathering his thoughts and wants to express himself clearly, which he always does.

Brown is open, honest, has a good sense of humor, and is always quick with a laugh, without being a clown. If he develops into a good player, the media will seek him out, and before Mike Brown knows it, he'll be a team leader. He's not a guy who looks for the microphone, but if you converse with him, and he grows to trust you, he'll open up.

Will he be the next great defensive end for Virginia Tech? Only time will tell, but he's got all the tools. It's pretty obvious, that at the very least, Mike Brown will be a solid citizen. The rest is up to him.

Bollweevil Hokie: Mike, What kind of advice/pressure did you have from family and friends?

Mike Brown: The recruiting process is kind of aggravating, actually, and the pressure wasn't really from my family, it was from the coaches. Like I said, Coach Wiles and the coaches down there didn't really put pressure on me, but unfortunately, all coaches aren't like that. Some coaches, if I tell them I don't really intend to go there, will get offended. That's when you really see what they're like.

(Unknown poster): Did you originally worry the distance from VT would be too far, and if so, what was said by the coaches and your family to alleviate your concerns?

Mike Brown: The plan was to go to Florida and stay close to home. Once I went to Virginia Tech and met the coaches and the players, and stuff like that � the reason it was so easy for me to commit to Virginia Tech is because I felt I could go there and be around those people and not get homesick. It's like a family atmosphere.

JLM-Hokie: How does it feel to be in a class with 3 of the top ten LB's (per Tom Lemming) in the country, including yourself?

Mike Brown: It feels good. Every time I log on, look at the computer, or look at the newspaper, and I see my name in the rankings, it's exciting. [pause] Because I worked so hard, and everything is coming true. It's overwhelming at times.

jackofalltrades: Mike, I'm sure the VT coaches mentioned that we've had success with smaller, faster DEs such as Cornell Brown, Corey Moore, and Cols Colas. Did this affect your decision at all?

Mike Brown: They told me that the team from a defensive end perspective is more about speed than size. Coach Tharp and I talked about it a lot, and he told me that he felt that Virginia Tech's style of defense, and what they do with the defensive end, is the best place for me.

ZekeVT: When should we expect to see you on the field and what number do you want?

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