John Blanchette: Brown still chasing the dream with Shock

One day, Ben Brown came home from work and took a look around.

He’d just finished his shift at Toys “R” Us and was headed for another at Kmart. Somewhere ahead was a third gig, at Sports Authority. Three jobs. His wife was at her job, his daughter Nia at day care. He was in Atlanta, 2,000 miles from home and light years from what he believed to be his destiny.

“I’ll never forget that day,” he said. “I looked at the apartment we were living in. We didn’t have any furniture. We had a TV in the corner, without cable. My daughter had a bed, but my wife and I were sleeping on the floor.”

Then he took a look at himself.

“I just sat there and said, ‘Something’s got to change. This isn’t working.’ “

Rather than come up with a Plan B, Brown reverted back to his Plan A.

He would play in the National Football League.

Yes, it sounded far-fetched then. Today, maybe not so much. He has already been in one NFL team’s camp and survived to the last cutdown. And there are, what, a dozen or more alums of arenafootball2 who have gone on to play in the NFL – not sensational odds, but at least pulling in $200 a game as a fullback with the Spokane Shock puts Ben Brown in the orbit, if not on the same planet.

Besides, if he invested any heed to his doubters, he’d still be working three part-time jobs in Atlanta, sleeping on the floor of a tiny apartment.

This is minor league football, but the dreams can still be major league.

“I always knew I’d play pro football,” he said. “In the seventh grade, I was signing autographs. I’d tell people, ‘I’m going to make it to the NFL so don’t throw this autograph away because I’m not going to give you another one.’ Then I’d laugh, but I believed it. I knew it was going to happen some day.”

And if it doesn’t, well, he has a whale of a tale about the journey.

Brown grew up in Los Banos, Calif., maybe halfway between Fresno and Monterey, and played at Bakersfield College for two years. Then Shrell, his girlfriend since those seventh-grade autograph days and now his wife, became pregnant with Nia “so I decided I had things to take care of. I went out and got a job. And then I got another job.”

Then they bounced – to Sacramento, to Atlanta and, three years later, to that crossroads.

“We had a sit-down talk and I told her that God was telling me to go back and play football again,” Brown remembered. “And she said, ‘Then you’d better go at it with everything you’ve got.’ Two weeks later, we were back in California.”

And a few weeks after that, Brown was in Hillsboro, Kan., on the campus of Tabor College.

No, not Faber – Tabor. As NFL hothouses go, Tabor has been only slightly better than the knowledge-is-good setting for “Animal House.” Rolland Lawrence, a Tabor grad, was a Pro Bowl defensive back for Atlanta in the 1970s. An NAIA school with an enrollment of less than 500, Tabor was on no scout’s TripTik.

“It seemed like another obstacle at times,” Brown admitted. “Early on, the coach asked me, ‘Ben, why did you come here – you could have gone to bigger schools.’ I told him I came there to make it to the NFL. He laughed at me. He said, ‘Well, son, I’m sorry to tell you – you’re not going to do that out of here.’ “

But Brown decided long ago that pro football wasn’t a where proposition, but a who. At 6-foot-1, 250 pounds he’s been a career fullback – even in high school – blocking for flashier runners. When he was done at Tabor, he and Shrell cobbled together a highlight tape – he had no agent – and shipped it to all 32 NFL teams, with a letter saying he was “destined” to play pro football.

Somehow, John Dorsey – director of college scouting for the Green Bay Packers – fished it out from among the hundreds of others that reached his desk, and e-mailed Brown to arrange a closer look.

“But I had to go to Kansas State to do it,” he laughed. “He wouldn’t come to Tabor because it was too far.”

Brown was impressive enough to earn an invitation to minicamp, and impressive enough there to be asked back for the preseason. He played in all four exhibition games, was told he’d be put on the Packers’ practice squad and then found himself on the list of 19 Green Bay released before the season opener.

“The numbers didn’t add up, I guess,” he shrugged. “But my feelings weren’t bad. I was looking toward going somewhere else. I knew God had something else for me in due time.”

Turns out something else was Spokane. Brown is here, but as he was at Tabor, he’s on his own. Shrell is back in California, due any day with their second child. Brown flew back last week, trying his best to induce labor while the Shock had a bye on the schedule.

“I had her out walking, saying, ‘C’mon, we got to do it,’ ” he laughed, “but it didn’t work.”

Of course. As a Plan A guy, he should have known these things happen in their due time.