Big numbers for Brown
Marquise Brown’s big numbers are overshadowing his diminutive stature.
NORMAN — Ted Iacenda’s phone buzzed with a text message Sunday morning in Southern California.
“Doesn’t it feel good to say I told you so?,” it read.
It was the morning after Marquise Brown, Iacenda’s former player at College of the Canyons, set an OU single-game receiving record, and one coach from Southern Cal was having a little recruiting remorse.
Though USC initially extended Brown a scholarship offer, it pulled it after questioning Brown’s size.
“Typical group-coach think,” Iacenda said. “The gist I got was, they didn’t think he was big enough.”
But midway through his first season with the Sooners, Brown is having a pretty big impact on college football’s biggest stage. The details are different, but for the second year in a row, Oklahoma (8-1, 5-1 Big 12) finds itself late in the season with another deep threat emerging from the unlikeliest of places.
A year ago, Dede Westbrook was the junior college transfer wide receiver flying past opposing defenses and hauling in eye-popping touchdown catches.
This time around, Brown is turning into that guy for the Sooners, already catching two 80-plus yard touchdowns.
“I think he has the potential to be,” quarterback Baker Mayfield said of Brown’s homerun play ability. “I wouldn't say necessarily that he's just established that role for us, but obviously he has the potential to do it.”
Brown is listed at 5-foot-11 and 162 pounds, but he’s likely a couple inches shorter and more than a few pounds lighter.
That size — or lack thereof — scared off a lot of college coaches.
A combination of his size and his late ACT scores kept him from earning much interest from Division I coaches
out of high school. After sitting out for a season to stay at home in Hollywood, Florida, with his mom, Brown took off across the country to continue his career at junior college in January 2016.
“We were kind of skeptical because how could this kid be an (academic) qualifier and be with us?,” Iacenda said. “How could someone not have taken a chance on this guy? He’s an absolute flyer.
“But he qualified late, and then you throw in that he’s 125 pounds his senior year, and you can kind of see where some schools overthink it. He wore that like a badge of honor.”
It only took Brown two games at College of the Canyons to catch the attention of the same college coaches who ignored him two years earlier.
Oklahoma’s offer came on Halloween in 2016.
When Bob Stoops, Lincoln Riley and Cale Gundy looked at Brown they didn’t see a diminutive receiver. They saw a speedy guy who could have a big impact.
He’s certainly doing that, leading the No. 5 Sooners with 743 receiving yards, just nine games into his first season of Division I football.
Though he’s putting up impressive numbers now — 440 yards and three touchdowns in his last three games — it took him a little while to get going.
He didn’t play against Ohio State, and after hauling in 155 yards against Tulane, Brown flew under the radar with 38.6 yards per game in the first three conference games.
Things started to turn around at Kansas State where Brown had six catches for 126 yards.
“I knew I was gonna have my time eventually,” Brown said.
Brown’s path isn’t all that unlike that of Westbrook, who didn’t start emerging as a serious threat until last year’s TCU game where he had a then-career high 158 yards and two touchdowns.
“We saw somewhat of what Dede could do last year with that speed, but I think Marquise is
even faster,” Mayfield said. “Marquise, he's got another gear.”
That speed gave Brown a pretty apt nickname of Jet around College of the Canyons.
Even though Gus Johnson’s Hollywood nickname has seemingly replaced Jet after the Bedlam win, the meaning behind the old moniker still rings true.
“It’s not how big you are, it’s how fast you are,” Iacenda said. “He’s one of the fastest people on this planet.
“There are not many people in this world that can do what he does at the speed at which he does it. That is going to make him an asset at every single level he plays.”