LINCOLN ‹ The date was Jan. 12, 2004. Ron Brown remembers vividly. In five minutes, his 17 years as an assistant football coach at Nebraska officially came to an end.
He spent the five minutes with Bill Callahan, the Cornhuskers' new head coach. Callahan let him know he wouldn't be retained. "I don't blame Bill Callahan," Brown said. "He didn't know me from Jack the Bear. I would have done the same thing, I would guess.
"It was just the way things were handled."
The door to his office was locked the next day, as were the doors to the offices of the other assistant coaches who were fired. "It was a sudden turnaround," said Brown.
After his brief meeting with Callahan, he went to his office and closed the door, not emerging for the better part of three hours. He knew reporters would be waiting. But he wanted to collect his thoughts, to "have enough grounding within my emotions to be able to state things correctly and see them in perspective," he said. "It was a tough day."
He next went to his oldest daughter's elementary school. She was in the third grade at the time, and because of the public nature of his job, he knew there would be things said at the school. So he took her out of class and explained the situation.
His firing "gave us an opportunity as a family to kind of put things in perspective," he said. "I know for the public, it's 'Hired or fired, let's get on with life.'"
Brown recalled the events of that day following practice on Friday.
The past four years "were very productive," he said. "I look back and say, 'Thank you, Lord. Thank you I was fired, that I went through what I went through.'
"I think I'm a better coach now than I was when I left in 2003. Even though I'm learning a new system right now, it's all going to kick in at some point."
At age 51, Brown is learning right along with the tight ends he is coaching. He studies as they do. And he has made deals with them. If they'll help him learn the offense, which hasn't changed all that much from last season, he'll make them better players.
He'll teach them techniques, "detail things about getting people off your back when you're running pass routes and catching footballs. 'I'll train you,'" he said.
"It's a give and take. I don't want to come in here acting like I know something that I don't because those kids can see through that. So I just make deals with them."
There are no deals about one thing, however. They will be physical. They will block downfield. Or they won't play. That is not negotiable.
Physical play is at the core of his philosophy of football coaching. He learned it under Tom Osborne. "Sometimes, you can get into a lot of mental gymnastics and intellectual stuff about the game," he said. "There are a lot of ways to scheme people, fool people. I think there's a place for that. But there's also a place to hit somebody in the mouth.
"I think the great teams are physical."
Brown knows about great teams. He was an assistant on Nebraska's national championship teams in 1994, 1995 and 1997. They were characterized by physical play.
"I just feel that's something that very much fits the culture of Nebraska," he said. "There's a pioneer spirit, a ruggedness, there's a work ethic here and a sense of fearlessness.
"I think kids at Nebraska expected to play that way."
They expect to play physical now, too, under coach Bo Pelini.
On that day in mid-January day of 2004, Brown never imagined he would return to Nebraska as coach. He became the Nebraska state director of the Fellowship of Christian Athletes. He did some color commentary for college football games. He continued his Christian mission work. And he did some coaching of fifth- and sixth-graders.
He never really left coaching in that sense. "But I was prepared to never do it again at the collegiate level. I didn't feel like I had to do it. I would have been happy with broadcasting and doing FCA work and speaking publicly like I was doing," he said.
When Pelini called, however, he didn't hesitate to return.
Before Pelini got the job, he had asked if Brown would be willing to come back. "I hadn't really kept in contact with Bo, and I wouldn't have blamed him for not wanting to hire me," Brown said. "I was very thankful he gave me the opportunity."
Nebraska is the only school at which he would have accepted a coaching job. "I didn't want to chase it (coaching) out of state. If it came back here, I felt, 'You know what, this is a great place to do it.' It combines a couple of different passions I have," said Brown.
"For me, coaching is part of a big package. You try to take some of the pieces out, it's just not the same for me. So I'm thrilled the way it worked out.
"I believe God gave me the gift of coaching again."
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