The month of December is technically when the college track and field season begins indoors every year. But nobody really pays that much attention. One reason is because ESPN and all their friends in the media don’t really cover track and field at all, at the professional or college level. But beyond that, nobody really runs anything that is worthy of paying close attention to. For most sprinters, it takes a few races to begin running what your capable of, or at least that’s the excuse many of my college teammates would give me if I lost a season opening race. You can’t even blame track fans for ignoring December, because the best sprint programs in the nation often don’t even run races that early. So when you look at the national leaderboards it will be missing the names of anyone who sprints for teams like the Florida Gators.

However, somebody has to run the nation’s fastest time in every event through December. And right now Erin Brown of Grand Canyon University is the fastest man in the nation in the 200 meter dash. He ran 20.79 seconds to pull it off, which is a very big deal because he was never supposed to be this fast! He’s never run at the NCAA championships, either indoors, or outdoors, and is honestly unknown in the track world. But you might have seen him, from an episode of Dr. Phil. At that time his parents were concerned about his plans to be a content creator and avoid taking a regular job. But if he keeps running like this, track and field might be a legitimate career path for him.

How good was Erin Brown in high school?

On the Dr. Phil show Erin Brown made it clear that he wants to profit off of his talents, regardless of which one it is. He makes his own YouTube content, apparently makes music as well, and by the way runs track and field in Division 1. But at the high school level he never really ran a senior year track season, because that would have happened in 2020. So all college coaches had to recruit him off of were his junior year performances, where he ran 48.40 in the 400 meter dash, but only 22.90 in the 200 meter dash. That 400 literally snuck him on to first team elite list on MileSplit for that event. But it’s still a long way off from what the fastest high school boy in 2019 ran. Back then Justin Robinson ran 44.84 in that event before becoming an All American for Arizona State. As far as the 200 is concerned, that’s basically what a 2 star recruit would produce. It’s not bad, but nowhere near good enough to get more than a partial scholarship at the lowest level D1 schools. So nobody really knew how good Erin Brown was back then, but Sam Houston State took a chance on him, shortly before he would end up on the Dr. Phil show with his parents.

Erin Brown’s rise to the top college sprinting

Once the show was done he clearly got focused on the track. During his first outdoor season in 2021 he ran 21.41 wind legal in the 200 meter dash. That’s way faster than anything he did in high school, and proof that the 400 was not his only event. He didn’t make a final in the Southland Conference, but it was clear he was just getting started. The following year he ran new PRs indoors in the 400 and 200 meter dashes, and finished 4th at the WAC conference championships in the 400 for both indoors and outdoors. The only reason the conference changed is because Sam Houston State joined the WAC, primarily because of football conference realignment.

Heading into the 2023 season, Erin evidently felt that Sam Houston was no longer the best place for him, and entered the transfer portal. But his new PRs made him a commodity that Grand Canyon track and field could not pass up on. He continued running PRs in both the 200 and 400 finally breaking the 21 second barrier in the 200, and 46 seconds in the 400 outdoors. Those performances were good enough to earn him a bronze medal and a gold medal at the WAC conference championship meet and earn him an invite to the NCAA west regionals for the first time. He didn’t qualify out for the NCAAs but he was now a legit sprinter in both events to threaten for the NCAAs, with another season of eligibility to come.

So this season it was clear Erin Brown is not the same sprinter that was recruited out of high school. At the Spokane Invitational he opened his indoor season in the 60 meter dash and 200 meter dash. His 60 was a new PR by a lot, going 6.76 seconds. It’s not fast enough for the NCAA meet yet, but getting dangerously close. And in the  200 meter dash Erin Brown ran the fastest time in the nation so far, of 20.79 seconds. He will likely need to run at least a tenth of a second faster to book his tickets into the NCAA championship meet indoors, but he has now proven that he is capable of pulling it off.

The Bottom Line

It is unclear what the future of Erin Brown’s career will look like. Erin Brown is a sprinter who was always more talented than anyone gave him credit for. He has consistently gotten better, every year he has been on the track. But he apparently has no desire to work for a traditional boss, and made it clear to Dr. Phil he would put in the work to have success without it. He does a whole lot away from the track, in addition to being a student, and maybe one of those ideas will take off for him. But right now Erin Brown is a collegiate sprinter, and a really good. He even has a chance to compete for a national championship while representing Grand Canyon University, of all schools. So if working a non-traditional job is really what he wants, track and field might be the best thing he has going on.

LOOK GOOD, FEEL GOOD, RUN GOOD.

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