This NFL Star Walked Away From Millions to Run a Sweet Potato Farm: ‘The Toughest Decision I’ve Ever Had to Make’
Jason Brown was the highest-paid center in the NFL. But his brother’s death in Iraq changed everything he wanted out of life.
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Jason Brown was living the dream: a 10,000-square-foot mansion, a Pro Bowl within reach and a five-year, $37.5 million contract that made him the NFL’s highest-paid center. Today, he runs a 1,000-acre sweet potato farm in Louisburg, North Carolina. The former center chronicled this decision in The Athletic.
The career shift goes back to his older brother, Lunsford Bernard Brown II, who was killed in Iraq in 2003 while Brown was in college. “It rocked me to my core,” Brown wrote. Years later, turning 27, the same age his brother was when he died, Brown found himself comparing a life of “entertainment” to his brother’s life of “service and sacrifice.”
In March 2012, the Rams released him. He turned down offers from three teams he’d always dreamed of playing for, including the Baltimore Ravens, the team that drafted him, choosing instead to buy an old dairy farm and teach himself agriculture from YouTube videos.
“Was I going to continue playing football and be self-serving? Or was I going to step out on faith and live a life of purpose?” Brown wrote. “It was one of the toughest decisions I’ve ever had to make in my life.”
His farm, First Fruits Farm, has since donated more than two million pounds of food, grown mostly with help from Brown’s eight children, whom he still organizes with the same “huddle” call he used as a center. He’s also converted an old dairy barn into a wedding venue. He says, “That life of fame and fortune I used to live was pretty cool. But so is this new one.”
Jason Brown was living the dream: a 10,000-square-foot mansion, a Pro Bowl within reach and a five-year, $37.5 million contract that made him the NFL’s highest-paid center. Today, he runs a 1,000-acre sweet potato farm in Louisburg, North Carolina. The former center chronicled this decision in The Athletic.
The career shift goes back to his older brother, Lunsford Bernard Brown II, who was killed in Iraq in 2003 while Brown was in college. “It rocked me to my core,” Brown wrote. Years later, turning 27, the same age his brother was when he died, Brown found himself comparing a life of “entertainment” to his brother’s life of “service and sacrifice.”
In March 2012, the Rams released him. He turned down offers from three teams he’d always dreamed of playing for, including the Baltimore Ravens, the team that drafted him, choosing instead to buy an old dairy farm and teach himself agriculture from YouTube videos.
