The town that raised Don Brown wasn’t built to breed a football coach.
It was small and blue-collar and everyone knew everyone but, for most of Brown’s childhood, it lacked the most crucial feature: football.
Until just before Brown reached high school, his hometown of Spencer, Massachusetts, didn’t have an organized version of the sport that has Brown has thrived in to become one of the best defensive coordinators in the country for the University of Michigan.
There was a Pop Warner team in a nearby town called Leicester, but that wasn’t doable for the son of a milkman and a shoe shop worker.