Brown: “Do you think the linemen heard me?”
Freshman kicker Marcus Brown reportedly resigned from the football team this Thursday after accidentally referring to coach Jim Harbaugh as “Dad.”
“It was humiliating,” said Brown. “I’d just made a fifty-five-yarder in practice. Coach clapped me on the shoulder to congratulate me. He can be pretty tough, so when he’s nice like that you know you did something pretty great. But then out of nowhere I just said ‘thanks, Dad,’ and everybody froze.”
“I feel like it wasn’t that big a deal,” said linebacker Roy Allison. “Coach Harbaugh isn’t Brown’s dad and the whole team knew that.”
“To be honest,” added Allison, “I probably wouldn’t have remembered it if Brown hadn’t cried so much afterwards.”
Eyewitness accounts say the team sat still for several seconds before uncomfortably laughing it off and continuing with their practice. Brown was seen shortly after leaving the stadium and jogging back to his South Quad dorm, where he decided he would take a permanent leave of absence from the team.
“It was kind of weird, but everyone knew it was an accident,” said special teams coach John Baxter, “[Coach] Jim [Harbaugh] just looked at him funny for a second, then acted like it never happened.”
At press time, Brown’s biological father was not available for comment.
