Foothill High School head football coach Vernon Brown, left, and his wife Michelle pose with Canyon Springs head coach Quincy Burts in the Las Vegas Sun studios in Henderson Tuesday, Oct. 11, 2022. Burts played under coach Brown when he was a high school student at Cody High School in Detroit Michigan.
Friday, Oct. 14, 2022 | 2 a.m.
The initial time Quincy Burts traveled in an airplane was when he was relocating from Detroit to Las Vegas in search of his first job after college.
The man who paid for his ticket? Vernon Brown, his former high school football coach.
The house he stayed in for six months while getting settled? With Brown and his wife, Michelle, and their sons Justin and Josh in Henderson.
Burts and Brown developed a lifelong bond on the field of Detroit’s Cody High School, where Brown became a father figure to the all-state safety who came from a single-parent home and thrived under his mentorship.
When Brown left Detroit in the mid-2000s for the Clark County School District, he told Burts to follow, and they started coaching together at Eldorado High School.
The journey will have an unusual twist at 6 p.m. today: The men, each a head coach with his own program, will be on opposite sidelines for a crucial class 5A league game.
The winner between Burts’ Canyon Springs Pioneers and Brown’s Foothill Falcons will make the playoffs. The loser will play out the schedule next week.
Most game weeks, the men message back and forth, as Burts never hesitates asking his mentor for pointers — everything from how certain plays look and feel, to the behind-the-scenes tasks of running a program.
This week, they are taking a break — well, until the weekend.
The men will come together Saturday to celebrate the seventh birthday of Burts’ son and later when one of Brown’s sons has a gender reveal party.
The siblings also coach at Foothill and proudly say Burts is like a brother.
“He’s been my father figure. He’s been a guy who has played the biggest role in my life,” Burts said of Brown. “And it wasn’t only for me. He did this for all of us. You know, there would be a bunch of guys who he would drive home and take an added interest in.”
Brown would drive Burts home each day from practice, a commute of about 30 minutes in the opposite direction of his house. Some days, they’d talk about football. Other days, the topic was life.
When Burts would arrive home, he’d get on the phone and call the Brown house to speak with Michelle and let her know her husband was heading that way. And, of course, Michelle — a counselor at Foothill and from a long line of educators — would drill him about his academics.
Burts was academically ineligible as a freshman and sophomore in high school. If it weren’t for the Browns, he wouldn’t have played a down of prep football or attended college, let alone earn a master’s degree in special education and be in charge of his own program.
“It’s always doing what is best for the kids,” Michelle Brown said of her husband. “Every kid that he comes in contact with, he goes out of his way to make sure they are a better person throughout the process.”
Vernon Brown got his coaching style from his dad, Vernon Brown Sr. The elder Brown was Burts’ physical education teacher at Cody High in Detroit, and he eventually relocated to Southern Nevada to coach with his son.
There will surely be some awkward moments tonight when Burts glances across the field and sees the Brown family. For all of the games they competed in together, they’ve had few against each other. Brown was an assistant at Green Valley a few years ago when they played Burts, then the coach at Valley, in the playoffs.
“This is a big game because the winner is in the playoffs, and Foothill hasn’t missed the playoffs in a number of years,” Brown said. “There is a lot of pressure to get that done, to be frank. So we are approaching it as just another week.”
But he is also looking at the big picture and has a certain level of pride in facing off against someone he has helped mold. They will be rivals for two hours, and then go back to that bond both deeply cherish.
Brown fondly speaks about the first time he saw Burts play — it was in a middle school football game at the old Pontiac Silverdome — and telling the other coaches he was hopeful an athlete of that caliber would attend Cody High. Burts showed up a few days later.
When Michelle Brown was packing up the family’s home in Detroit, Burts was there to handle the heavy lifting because “that’s what a good son does,” she said. When Burts’ wife had their two children, the Browns waited in the hospital lobby eagerly anticipating meeting the newest member of the extended family.
When Michelle Brown makes her famous smothered chicken, Burts seems to always make his way over for dinner.
“They are always there to help me at any moment,” Burts said. “I am not taking this journey alone. I think that’s the beauty of it. Not too many people have someone they can call on who they trust who they know is going to give you advice or whatnot with your best intentions in mind.”
