Journey Brown's unlikely path from Penn State football star to NASCAR pit crew member

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When No. 7 Penn State plays No. 3 Ohio State in one of the biggest college football games of the season on Saturday (noon ET on FOX and the FOX Sports app), Journey Brown will likely watch the game while also thinking about his day job on Sunday.

That probably would have been his plan a few years ago as he eyed a spot on an NFL roster following a successful sophomore season as a running back for the Nittany Lions. Except the location of his current Sunday job is something he could never have imagined.

Brown will suit up Sunday to change tires on the NASCAR Cup Series car of Justin Haley during the playoff race at Homestead-Miami Speedway. It isn’t the job he envisioned.

Prior to the 2020 season and fresh off earning the 2019 Cotton Bowl Offensive MVP Award (current Dallas Cowboys star linebacker Micah Parsons took home defensive MVP honors) thanks to a 202-yard, two-touchdown rushing performance, Brown learned he had a heart condition that would make it too risky for him to play football.

He refused to believe the local doctors. He went to the Cleveland Clinic, and doctors there confirmed the diagnosis. His football playing days were over.

“You tend to become what you do on a daily basis, so for me, I always thought of myself as a football player,” Brown told FOX Sports. “And when I got pulled out of that, I didn’t know who I was because I always thought I was a football player.

“But my family, my friends reminded me that I’m more than that.”

It took Brown a year to truly start believing them. He had a baby daughter and still attended classes at Penn State. But eventually, he had to find something else for which he could earn a living. He found it, in all places, in NASCAR.

NASCAR teams like to recruit college athletes because they are often driven, focused and mentally strong, so pit crew coaches often communicate with college strength coaches and ask their current crew members if they have any recommendations. Brown was recruited by Trackhouse Racing, which not only trains pit crews for its two cars but leases pit crews to other teams.

Brown joined the team earlier this year with no guarantees that they could teach him how to change tires. About six months into training, Brown has started to get reps on a Cup Series crew, an incredibly fast track to changing tires on Sundays, with five previous starts entering this weekend at Homestead. He admits it isn’t totally like football.

“Nothing will ever really hit like how football does because that’s my first love,” Brown said. “For me, it’s like a different type of feeling. It’s like a whole new high that I really get to experience.”

With the daily training, Brown learned the different skills he needed to change tires. Hitting the lug nut he could concentrate and do. He was quick on his feet. But it was the nature of running around a car and then dropping to his knees to change a tire that provided the biggest challenge.

“Me getting down on my knees like that — for a running back, you tend not to touch the ground as much as you can,” Brown said. “For me, it’s definitely different to get down like that and my legs bending different ways where I usually didn’t allow them to do that.”

But many of the things are the same, primarily the attention to detail and doing so many reps in practice that when it comes time for the race, changing the tire seems second nature. 

“There’s a lot that goes into it that, you have to think about that you want to have your emotions all calm and be a little bit more calmer than football would be,” he said.

As far as his health, Brown has seen pit crew members get hit by cars during a race. He feels he is not putting himself at risk.

“With football, you can go out there and think getting hit by a 300-pound dude coming full speed at you while you’re running full speed can probably give you the same type of health problems,” Brown said. “So a car coming down, I’m pretty cautious of my surroundings and just how I am in general. I don’t really have a lot of fear. … I think with my heart stuff, I’m all right.

“Obviously, it would be a different story if I get hit by a car. But I really don’t plan on doing that.”

As far as his former football team, Brown is hyped for the Penn State-Ohio State game, one of the biggest games for Penn State in recent years. He continues to remain in contact with head coachoach James Franklin and is especially close with assistant head coach Ja’Juan Seider.

He watches Penn State current players as well as his former teammates in the NFL and gets his football fix that way.

“I live through them and experience that same feeling when I see them play, and I see their enjoyment in their eyes and see how they feel about it the same way I feel,” Brown said. “It hits hard, very close to my heart, so I can enjoy just as much as I did while I was playing, even though I’m not now.”

He said Penn State will be prepared to play the game like every other game. But, seriously, can it be just like every other game when it is a battle of undefeateds at Ohio State?

“The hype and stuff around it is very real,” Brown said. “But in that mindset, in that where you’re at playing for Penn State, you’ve got to realize that you’re on that level too. So you’ve got to treat it like another game from that aspect because you’re at that top level.”

Brown’s quick rise into the top levels of a NASCAR pit crew has created a new career path for him. Brown certainly wouldn’t have believed this would be his path when he got the news he couldn’t play football again.

“I would have told you, ‘You are lying,'” Brown said. “It’s crazy how the world works and how life works. But I’m happy I’m here, I’m having a lot of fun pitting for Trackhouse and doing this type of stuff. So it’s a very, very fun alternative.”

It’s an alternative he needed. While he had to move away from Pennsylvania and his daughter, who turns 4 later this month, he had to put some distance between his football life at Penn State and what the future holds for Journey Brown.

“That’s why I’m down here — (it’s like) if the girl that you love and the girl and you break up, and then you have to see her every day after that, it’s like one of those things,” Brown said.

“But I came to peace with it.”

Bob Pockrass covers NASCAR for FOX Sports. He has spent decades covering motorsports, including the past 30 Daytona 500s, with stints at ESPN, Sporting News, NASCAR Scene magazine and The (Daytona Beach) News-Journal. Follow him on Twitter @bobpockrass, and sign up for the FOX Sports NASCAR Newsletter with Bob Pockrass.

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