How Penn State safety Ji’Ayir Brown made his Senior Day about the people he loves most
Ji’Ayir Brown made his way over to the fans packed up against the railing and kept pointing. The first time, it seemed to go unnoticed. The second as well. Eventually he went up the stairs from the field in Beaver Stadium to the seats and brought his family and friends down to the field with him, including his mother Joy Ingram.
Brown wanted to share his final moments in Beaver Stadium as a player with her — after all, she’s why he’s here. Ingram is his motivation and his reason. She is the wind at his back pushing him to achieve all he has in his three years as a Nittany Lion.
His love for his mother outpaces all else.
Saturday evening was the embodiment of that and gave him one final chance to soak in how far he had come. From the child nicknamed Tig (short for Tigger), being raised by a single mother in Trenton, New Jersey while also trying to help her out however he could financially, to the captain of Penn State football primed to have a long career playing in the National Football League.
Following the game, he recounted how much she and his sisters mean to him. He spoke softly, but with intent — reinforcing each word he spoke with the passion in his voice. The longer he spoke, the more emotion came, and soon so did the tears. They welled up as he spoke, never fully leaving his eyes, but instead pooling to add a shimmer as his voice quivered slightly.
“She’s been through a lot,” he said. “For her to feel that feeling of her son, that she did a hell of a job raising, for her to live through me, experiencing the same things I experience, you can’t ask for no better feeling.”
His voice began to tremble even more.
“Nothing in the world can match the feeling of making your mom proud.”
Playing with passion
Brown’s tears were of little surprise. He takes every chance he can to feel everything. He plays with a passion that can look like violence — like when he’s attacking a ball carrier or closing in on the quarterback — or pure joy, like when he’s celebrating with his teammates, bearing a smile that stretches from ear to ear.
He allows himself to experience all that he can.
So that’s what he did. He felt everything he could.
Grass. Fans. Cheers. Emotions. All of it.
“Every step I took,” Brown said, “Every movement I made, every tackle, every celebration, I really dialed into it. I really admired the feeling. The crowd, the fans, the grass, having an appreciation for everything around me. It felt amazing, man. It felt amazing. It’s a bittersweet moment. Penn State has done a lot for me. It’s hard to leave Beaver and leave all these great fans behind, but life moves on.”
Things were not always sunshine and rainbows for Brown in his time at Penn State. His first season was in the throes of the COVID pandemic and didn’t allow him to get to know his teammates, his coaches or really anything about Penn State.
That altered his first year on campus in a way that he could not have been prepared for.
“It’s funny,” Penn State head coach James Franklin said Tuesday afternoon, “Tig did his share the other night and talked about his first season was the pandemic. Just talked about how bad it was. Then I remember the next year we were able to kind of get back to our normal routine. I remember Tig specifically saying, ‘so this is how it is.’ Yeah, they kind of been through a bunch, right?”
Choosing to stay and leaving a mark at Penn State
The potential pitfalls did not end there for Brown and his classmates. A 4-5 pandemic season was followed by a 7-6 season that fell well short of expectations.
Brown could have left. He could have gone to the NFL and surely been drafted. But he didn’t he stayed. He wanted to set things right for the program.
So he did. He led the team in interceptions. He tied for the lead in forced fumbles. He earned his first career sack and then tacked on two more for good measure.
Those measurements of success can’t begin to quantify the value he brought to the team this season, one he’s satisfied with the result from.
“I feel like this program is special,” he said. “We have very special players here. That should be the standard, this is our standard at Penn State. We should have 10 wins every season with the players we got and the staff that we got. Just to put the program back where we belong is a big accomplishment for me, Sean (Clifford), PJ (Mustipher), the rest of the captains, (Jonathan Sutherland, (Chris) Stoll, Juice (Scruggs) too. That was what we set out to do, put Penn State back on the map. ... We put the groundwork in and we showed everybody where we belong.”
What comes next isn’t entirely clear. Brown said Saturday he was still living in each moment — including his media availability that has become routine — and didn’t want to think about anything else because once this day ended it was gone forever. He declined to commit one way or the other when it comes to playing in a bowl game because of that, saying he’ll get back to that question when the time comes.
Whether he plays or not, his career at Penn State has been a resounding success. For all he accomplished on the field, it all pales in comparison to what really matters to Brown.
Saturday night his family and friends strode past him as he directed them onto the field.
His mother stopped as she crossed his path and pulled him in for a hug.
It’s hard to imagine anything preceding that moment being more important.
This story was originally published November 26, 2022 at 10:54 PM.
