Tim Brown stands with new signee, Jennifer Welter, and Texas Revolution Head Coach, Chris Williams (Via)
We haven’t been able to do a “Where Are They Now?” on Tim Brown yet, but if we do, I sure hope that our loyal daughter, Lisa, gets the full scoop on this story.
Tim is now the general manager of a local Indoor Football League (IFL) team, the Texas Revolution. Towards the end of January, he signed the first non-kicker female football player, Dr. Jennifer Welter, to a professional contract. Sure, arena/indoor league team, trying to make a splash right? After all, this was a team that signed Terrell Owens to a contract two years ago (back when they were the Allen Wranglers) and then dropped him like a bad habit.
Brown though, couldn’t have been more serious in the press conference about signing the 5’2″, 130 pound, 36 year-old linebacker as a running back:
“Somebody said, ‘Are you going to protect her?’ ” said Dallas native Tim Brown, the Revolution’s general manager and the 1987 Heisman Trophy winner at Notre Dame. “It’s football. And it’s cage football. So how are you going to protect her? You can’t run out of bounds in this sport.”
…
“When you look at her resume, when you look at who she is, she’s not a joke,” Brown said. “This is not a lady that does anything for laughing matters or just for stunts. This is something she’s taking seriously. If she’s going to take it seriously, guess what? We’re going to take it just as serious.”
He wasn’t joking.
Welter survived training camp and found herself on the active roster for the Revolution’s preseason game against the North Texas Crunch this past Saturday. She didn’t wasn’t just a spectator either, she played.
Welter had three rushing attempts for -2 yards. Yes, this means that she got hit and did she ever get hit hard (h/t: Kissing Suzy Kolber):
Despite getting absolutely drilled, Welter let her opponents know she wasn’t intimated in the least:
“I said, ‘Is that all you got?’ ” Welter said she told Hearvey after the first of her three carries for the Texas Revolution. “They (Crunch players) were getting all alive, and I had to say something. I didn’t want them to think I was intimidated.”
And her opponents responded:
Welter’s final carry did net her a single positive yard, and she once again paid dearly for it:
While her performance was hardly impressive on the stat sheet, I’m impressed by the sheer amount of guts she showed by running right at men that are literally twice her size and then talked trash after it was over.
Plus, she did help put her team on the scoreboard:
When Welter re-entered the game with 10 minutes left in the fourth quarter, the Revolution had first and goal on the 2. Welter carried over left tackle to the 1, where she was smothered by Willie Jones and Hearvey, who then asked to come out of the game.
On the next play, quarterback Floyd faked a sweep-left handoff to Welter, then scored on a bootleg around left end.
Welter came off the field to high-fives from her teammates.
I guess the Crunch were a little too worried that a girl would score on them and forgot everyone else!
The Texas Revolution will announce their final roster this afternoon and GM Tim Brown will have to decide whether or not to keep Welter on board. While it would seem incredibly unlikely he would do so now that the news has started to go viral, he did graduate from a school that has a rather legendary tale about a certain five foot nothin’, one hundred and nothin’ player…
Yeah, it’s not really Rudy, but let’s all admit it, we like this one better.
Texan by birth, Irish by choice.
First-generation Domer and a former student manager, HLS podcast host, HLS Sim creator, Extra Life streamer, and technical problem haver. You can find more non-Notre Dame related writing on his Patreon.
- Epilogue - January 3, 2022
- HLS Podcast Finale - January 2, 2022
- The Final Fiesta: Notre Dame vs Oklahoma State NCAA ’14 Sim - December 31, 2021
