As a 91直播 middle linebacker, he used to sniff smelling salts before football games.
He once lifted the back of a Toyota Corolla.
He would get tattoos for fun because A) it was a form of meditation, and B) he enjoyed the pain.
But the craziest, nutso-est thing UH associate head coach Chris Brown did occurred during a spring practice last week.
While coaching a linebackers drill, Brown felt a warm sensation under the left side of his hoodie.
“I unzipped my hoodie, and the blood was just gushing out,” said Brown, who resembled a speared zombie. “My entire hoodie was soaked in blood.”
A hematoma from shoulder-replacement surgery burst through stitches, spewing blood. A trainer and doctor applied gauze and wrapped an Ace bandage to slow the flow.
“They ended up taking me to emergency at Straub,” Brown recalled.
An hour later, a restless Brown asked to be discharged. He called an Uber, went back to the UH football offices, and faced bewildered head coach Timmy Chang.
“What the hell are you doing here?” Chang asked. “Go home.”
“There’s work to be done,” Brown answered. “I stayed for a few hours until I did what I had to get done.”
Brown added: “I want the players to look at me like, ‘Coach CB had the surgery and this dude is out there. He’s dedicated. He’s all about what he says he is. He’s being that lion every single day.’”
Brown’s problems with his left shoulder began when he was 15. Despite suffering a dislocation, he kept playing.
“As the years went on, I remember (the shoulder) going out over and over,” Brown said.
During his junior and senior seasons with the Warriors, trainers would re-set the shoulder when it popped out of socket.
“I thought when you felt pain in your shoulder, you pushed through it,” Brown said. “You take an Advil, and you push through.”
His other remedy was to attend the so-called Iron Church. He did eight reps of military-styled bench presses of 405 pounds. With a 100-pound dumbbell in each hand, he would do side lifts, like an Andean Condor flapping its wings.
“I don’t think that helped my shoulder at all,” Brown conceded. “But I would lift heavy weights. The more I warmed up, the more I forgot about it.”
But discomfort progressed to bullet-biting pain in recent years. He couldn’t lift his left arm outside a car window. His REM was MIA.
“I couldn’t sleep at night,” Brown said. “It felt like a knife was stuck in my shoulder. It was constant throbbing. Every little movement you could hear popping because it was bone rubbing against bone.”
After consultation with medical staff, he decided to undergo surgery in late January, between the 2025 91直播 Bowl and the Feb. 3 start of the Warriors’ spring training.
Dr. Edward Weldon, the orthopedic surgeon, removed the ball and socket from Brown’s left shoulder. A titanium rod was drilled into the shoulder to connect the sockets. The usual one-hour procedure took 31⁄2 hours because of Brown’s dense muscle mass.
“It’s a pretty heavy duty titanium rod in there,” Brown said “I have to make sure I let TSA know when I go through metal detectors at the airport.”
Dr. Weldon told Brown the 31⁄2-hour surgery was easier than the 300 hours of physical therapy.
“It takes six months to get back to normal,” Brown said. “But it’s a very painful process because you have a foreign object in your body, and your body’s not used to it.”
Brown has not missed a meeting, practice or workout session. (He assists strength/conditioning coordinator Bobby Thomas.)
Although he describes himself as the Terminator, Brown does not utter the Arnold Schwarzenegger line from the 1984 movie.
“I don’t think any of the players know what ‘I’ll be back’ is,” Brown said.
