Dave Hyde: There's no Super Bowl journey quite like Hollywood Brown's

Dave Hyde, South Florida Sun Sentinel on Feb 8, 2025

Published in Football

By clicking submit, I authorize Arcamax and its affiliates to: (1) use, sell, and share my information for marketing purposes, including cross-context behavioral advertising, as described in our Privacy Policy , (2) add to information that I provide with other information like interests inferred from web page views, or data lawfully obtained from data brokers, such as past purchase or location data, or publicly available data, (3) contact me or enable others to contact me by email or other means with offers for different types of goods and services, and (4) retain my information while I am engaging with marketing messages that I receive and for a reasonable amount of time thereafter. I understand I can opt out at any time through an email that I receive, or by clicking here

Marquise “Hollywood” Brown wasn’t recruited out of Chaminade High School in Hollywood, Fla. He wasn’t called Hollywood back in those days, either. He was Marquise Brown, just another kid with an uncertain future who ended up sitting out a year after high school before heading to a California junior college.

That junior college, College of the Canyons, didn’t offer athletic scholarships so before practice each day Brown walked two miles to work at a Six Flags amusement park. He started with a broom cleaning the grounds before getting promoted to running a ride.

“Keep your hands in and …” he’d say before starting the ride.

Stop the story anywhere along these beginning years and look to involve Super Bowl Sunday. It doesn’t have Kansas City Chiefs quarterback Patrick Mahomes calling Brown a, “weapon we’re glad to have back (from injury).” It doesn’t focus on his uncommon speed that can shift America’s biggest game to Kansas City against the Philadelphia Eagles.

What Brown demonstrates is to win big in sports sometimes you have to struggle, even fail — sometimes badly. This Super Bowl if full of such stories if you care to see them. Andy Reid couldn’t win the big one in Philadelphia, and is now after his fourth Super Bowl title in Kansas City.

Jalen Hurts was benched in Alabama, transferred schools and now is playing in his second Super Bowl. There are 20 undrafted players on the Kansas City and Philadelphia rosters, each involving a personal journey that involved overcoming something tangible.

Then there’s Brown. Plenty of people would have ended their dream when there was no college scholarship waiting after high school.

“I had a friend coaching at a Division II school who said, ‘Nah, he’s too small,”' said Tyler Tate, a Chaminade assistant. “We joke about that now. But (Brown) was 5-9, 140 pounds.”

Chaminade is a powerhouse today, one of the nation’s top prep football programs. But coach Dameon Jones was just starting at Chaminade in 2015 when Brown arrived for his senior year. That season was a struggle.

“We weren’t very good, and I remember thinking, ‘Let the other team score so we can at least watch (Brown) run the kickoffs back,”' Tate said.

“He always had a different gear than everyone else, and he always worked his butt off,” Jones said.

Jones remembers calling him, “Jet,” Brown’s nickname from his youth. Tate started calling him, “Prime Time,” for the manner his moments lit up a game.

But Brown only went by Marquise when he met coach Ted Iacenda through another Broward player and enrolled in the College of the Canyons in the winter of 2016.

“The second he walked into my office I said, ‘My god, he’s tiny,’” Iacenda said. “He was very polite — ‘yessir, no sir,’ — and that wasn’t the norm. We were impressed by his work ethic. So, he was with us a couple of months working out before our first practice in April.

“I’ll never forget that first practice. We were playing seven-on-seven and the quarterback threw him the ball. I was mad, because it was bad overthrow, a waste of a down. Then I remember watching Marquise change gears — visibly change gears — and go up and get the ball.

“From that day on, the legend of Marquise Brown was born.”

A dietary and strength program made him bigger and faster. He became the focus of Iacenda’s offense, then such a junior-college star the only question was which college scholarship he would take.

He chose Oklahoma. He caught passes from Heisman Trophy winners Baker Mayfield and Kyler Murray. He had 265 receiving yards and two touchdowns against Oklahoma State when ESPN announcer Gus Johnson, seeing he was from Hollywood in Broward, pronounced him, “Hollywood” Brown.

His script is more common from there. He was a first-round pick by Baltimore in 2019. He scored 21 touchdowns in three seasons before being traded to Arizona in 2022. Kansas City, needing help for Mahomes, picked him up before season but a chest injury kept him out until mid-December.

Brown has quietly moved into a supporting role for Mahomes, catching three passes for 35 yards in the AFC Championship Game win over Buffalo. Who knows what Super Sunday will mean to him other than a career highlight for making the game.

“I wish he’d tell his story more, because it’s such a good story,” Tate said.

Just this past week, Tate invoked Brown’s name in talking to four- and five-star recruits.

“I told them it meant absolutely nothing,” Tate said. “I said, ‘I had a kid who was no stars and worked himself into a first-round pick.’”

He told them about Hollywood Brown, back before he was Hollywood or a first-round pick. Back when he was just a kid named Marquise with no scholarship offers. Back when he played junior college, worked in amusement park and was so far from being invoked as a role model that on this Super Sunday he’s the best role model of them all.

____