By Jared Fields, Editor in Chief
Spending the previous two years in comfortable retirement, Abe Brown thought he left coaching track and field for good, enjoying his hobbies and helping coach former athletes who asked for his help.
“I just thought that I’d given a lot to the sport, and the sport had given a lot to me,” Brown said. “High-powered athletics and all got to where you almost have to win at all costs or you’ll get fired.”
Brown didn’t know he still had more to offer to the sport.
ACU head coach Don Hood knew he had something to offer, and Brown vividly recalls the phone conversations Hood made trying to get Brown to be an assistant.
In his 15 years as an assistant at Texas A&M, Brown coached four national champions in the hurdles, 49 all-American athletes and 23 conference champions. Add an Olympian and a world champion, and you can begin to count about half the athletes he’s coached in his four decades.
Brown was at the wrong end of a change at Texas A&M University in 2004 when the school hired a new head coach who replaced the existing staff.
A fellow coaching acquaintance, Hood, called Brown in the summer of 2006, asking if he would be interested in coming to Abilene. Hood knew Brown from his days as a student at ACU when Brown was an assistant at Texas Tech. Brown’s deep, penetrating voice and upbeat, energetic personality attracted many people, including Hood.
“My first question was, “Well, why? I mean, you’re not hiring me to win because you’re already, you know, winning!” Brown said.
Indeed, the Wildcat men had just won the NCAA Division II Outdoor Championships for the fifth year in a row and finished second at the national indoor meet that year, breaking a four year streak of championships before that.
“He said, “‘Well Abe, you know, there’s just a lot of other things that are going on in the process of coaching, and winning is not all of it,'” Brown said.
Although Brown’s taste for jewelry and garage sales may seem eccentric, his work ethic and attitude toward life set him apart from other track and field coaches in America.
-A Coach’s Commitment-
“A handshake has been enough for me in a lot of years and when I committed to come here, it’s a commitment,” Brown said.
Because of that virtue – commitment – Brown has earned a reputation as one of the best track and field coaches in the nation. Never wanting to become a head coach because of his commitment to his family, Brown wondered why he had taken the job in 2006 when the strains of being away from his wife seemed too much.
However Brown’s wife, childhood sweetheart Jacquie, worked a good job as an accountant and stayed in College Station.
Drawing retirement at age 56, Brown didn’t know why he had chosen a job where he saw his wife every week or two – if he was lucky.
Growing up as a preacher’s kid in Jacksonville, Ill., Brown always heard people ask when he was going to get into ministry. Never pursuing church ministry, Brown figured his coaching was his ministry.
“It finally started making sense to me that I’m here because I’ve got something to continue to give,” Brown said. “I’ve got something special to give, and it’s what the Lord wants me to do at this time.”
Although he and his wife of 37 years have three children, they are adults and out of the house, so Brown finds a way to make his job and marriage work.
“So my wife and I, we just decided that if we’re going to do this we’re going to make it work,” Brown said. “And so did Abilene Christian. It’s working the best it can.”
Brown’s father, Abraham Sr., served as a preacher but always worked another job to provide for his family. Abe Sr. turned 83 in December and retired from ministry just last year. Abe Sr. worked jobs in other cities while Abe Jr. was a kid and – like father like son – was away from the home more than he would
like to have been.
Talking to his dad, Abe Jr. would tell his father how he couldn’t get Jacquie moved to Abilene or how he hadn’t seen her for three weeks. “He’d say, ‘Well that ain’t bad at all.'” Brown said.
“Yeah but that was back in the day you know. He ain’t doin’ it, we’re doing it.”
-A habitual collector-
Disciplined yet eccentric, Brown’s parallel characteristics stand out among the coaching community.
Brown and former heavyweight champion Ken Norton are first cousins who grew up together. Norton defeated Muhammad Ali and broke his jaw. Ken’s son, Ken Jr., won three consecutive
Super Bowls – two with the Dallas Cowboys and one with the San Francisco 49ers.
Other than the famous cousins, Brown has a thing for jewelry, collectibles and garage sale treasures.
His home is like a voluminously collected museum of everything over the years.
Brown owns more than 300 western hats and shirts, about 400 bolo ties and on the weekends, he says Mr. T isn’t close to him in the amount of jewelry he wears.
“Ain’t nobody close,” Brown said. “I’m as good as they come.”
Brown has a taste for the flashy. That’s why he wears eight huge rings on his two hands and has a story for each. Shaking hands with Brown is like shaking hands with a robot because of
the big rings on almost every finger. When he points around the track at practice, you can hear his rings clatter against each other.
“I collect anything if it catches my eye,” Brown said. “If a letter opener catches my eye, then I might have to get 50 of them before I stop.” When I finally catch myself, then I’ll go into something else.”
Jacquie objects to Abe in person, calling him the “jewelry store,” but when guests come over, Jacquie is more than proud of her house-turned-museum.
Now, Brown said he collects to get out and talk to people and has eased up on some of his collecting.
“It’s just the way I was raised. That’s probably my ego,” Brown said. “I think you gotta have it, to some degree, but it just don’t ever take over with me.”
-The first job-
Brown met Jacquie in the second grade. They dated on and off and when Abe was drafted into the Navy in 1968, Jacquie went to Western Illinois. When Abe returned from the Navy, he spent two years on the track and field team at Lincolnland Community College. Brown continued his athletic career at what is now the University of North Texas, where he won the Missouri Valley Conference championship in the triple jump in 1973 and 1974.
After college, Brown remembers his former track coach at North Texas, John McKenzie, asking Brown to be an assistant coach.
McKenzie told him, “Let me tell you, I hired you because you’re competent, and I think you’re going to be a very outstanding coach.”
McKenzie told Brown they’d do their own jobs and stay out of each other’s way, and Brown respected that.
“That meant a lot to me as a first-year coach,” Brown said. “From then on, I just took whatever had been given to me and whatever I had been able to understand and absorb and just came up with a system, and it’s been working for a lot of years now.”
Brown tries to follow a routine, but admits his system is backwards. He demands tremendous time and effort from his athletes, but gives a lot of himself as well. His system produces worldclass athletes, but he treats every person, regardless of the skill level, the same.
Brown will listen and communicate with any athlete as much as it takes.
“Communication is big,” Brown said. “I’m going to hear them, but they may not like my answer because we’re not experimenting here; it’s worked over and over again.”
Rather than recruiting a talented athlete and taking the credit, Brown wants to put his “stamp of approval” into each athlete.
“Most of the athletes I’ve coached over these years didn’t come to me as being super elite,” Brown said. “They were just OK, and that’s something to be proud of.”
One of Brown’s athletes, sophomore hurdler Andrew McDowell, is just hundredths of a second away from an automatic qualifying mark for the NCAA Division II Indoor Championships next month. McDowell, like the rest of Brown’s athletes, is learning well and quickly.
“He’s grilling us hard,” McDowell said. “As soon as we take it in and start putting it out there on the track in the meets and stuff like that we’ll be great.”
McDowell said Brown always tells the team they have Division I talent and need to run and compete like it.
Brown doesn’t just expect success; he’s accustomed to coaching the nation’s elite.
“I can’t remember when I didn’t have an NCAA, or on the verge of being a top hurdler in the world: men and women,” Brown said.
-Proof in the people-
“My dad told me one time, he said, ‘son, you can’t save the world, and everybody don’t like you,'” Brown said. “Boy am I starting to really see that.”
Brown knows his methods may not be on par with whatever a “normal” coach does, but they are tried and tested, and the numbers don’t lie.
Brown will always be himself, and that’s what he’s trying to instill in his athletes.
“You be who you are,” Brown said. “When you start trying to be somebody else, that’s when you can get influenced in the wrong way.”
His voice rises at the end of the sentence. His last statement hints at his preacher’s son past.
“You do what we’re doing.” Brown and his family never stray from that philosophy. In the end, coaching – like life – isn’t about winning. It’s about the people.
“It’s a life process,” Brown said. “I think it’s trying to be able to contribute to society and the community.”
