RR: Dave, I want to give you an opportunity to tell your story, and I guess maybe the best way to do that is for me to just ask you a question. When you were young did you dream of, everydream that you’d wind up in the National Football League? would be a professional football player.
DB: When I was real young, something like 8 or 10 years old, all the other kids were allowed to play football but my father wouldn’t let me play football. I wasn’t football, and plus the other thing was that unless I got good grades I couldn’t do anything other than go to school.
RR: So you had a strong family that believed in your education and wanted you to be healthy and was concerned that you might get injured or something in football.
DB: That is correct.
RR: By the time you were 15 things began to change in your life.
DB: My father felt I was big enough to play, so I was allowed to play. I had played baseball all the up to that point and basketball.
RR: Now I know you played through high school and of course you went to the University of Michigan and you were the number one pick by the Pittsburgh Steelers. Was that in 1976 or 7? (75) 75. The number one pick of the Pittsburgh Steelers. When you got to the Steelers right out of college and wound up, you know,in the Super Bowl. What did that do to Dave Brown? All during my first year playing football, bantam league, in high school and college, you know, all we ever did was win. So I think in college I lost, in high school I lost four games, in college I only lost two games. So I hadn’t been used to losing at all.
RR: So you were ready for the tradition of winning with the Pittsburgh Steelers. the expansion draft in 1976, God moved me from there to Seattle, and we lost 12 games in the first year and only won two. And God let me know that it was only because of His grace that I was able to be fortunate enough to be playing on one of these teams.