Alabama defensive back Tony Brown wasn’t able to run track his senior year of high school.

It wasn’t because of an injury or that he didn’t want to, like other high school students. Brown enrolled early at Alabama as a five-star football prospect and started his collegiate career at the same time as track season back in his home state of Texas.

This season was important to him. And in a short turnaround from spring ball, Brown is making up for lost time during his final spring as a member of the Crimson Tide track & field team.

“When Tony Brown steps on the track, it’s almost like, ‘What’s going to happen next?’ What kind of amazing thing are you going to see?” Alabama head track & field coach Dan Waters said, per WBRC FOX6 News. “It’s like a Bo Jackson-type moment.”

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Brown practiced for one week before making his season debut at the SEC Championships on May 12. Two weeks later, he punched a pair of tickets to the NCAA Championships in Eugene, Ore., in the 100 and as the anchor leg of the 4x100-meter relay team.

In the qualifying round of the NCAA East Regional in Lexington, Ky., Brown ran a personal-best and Alabama season-best time of 10.27 seconds in the 100 -- his second meet of the year.

“He’s beating kids that all they do all day and all night is think about track and field, and he comes out as a secondary sport and runs just as fast as he is,” Waters said. “It just tells you what a special athlete he is, he’s got a unique gift. He’ll be a superstar on Sunday.”

Brown is no stranger to limited breaks -- or success on the track.

As a junior at Ozen (Texas) High, Brown was crowned the 2013 Texas Class 4A state champion in the 110-meter hurdles (13.40), and he placed second in the 100-meter dash (10.53).

He also ran personal best of 7.76 in the indoor 60-meter hurdles -- the fastest time in the nation in 2013 -- and a personal-best time of 13.38 in the 110 hurdles at the 2013 Texas Relays, which was also the top time in the entire United States that year.

Neither those numbers nor his recent times surprise his mother, Tammy Walker-Brown.

“We have always had the attitude that speed kills,” Walker-Brown recently told BamaOnLine.

“... It hasn’t (surprised me), because when he lived at home we went from a track meet to spending the night for a baseball tournament to AAU basketball, so we were always just going in this full circle. So, what seems like a lot to some people is just a regular M.O. for how we live. And I’m really proud of him.”

At 6-foot, 198 pounds, Brown is one of the bulkier sprinters at any event. He typically slims down some for track season, but the little time to adjust, as well as a senior football season in sight, made that something he had to deal with this spring.

“He’s heavy right now, but he’s strong,” Walker-Brown said. “And I think it will only help in that final season when we get ready to start football.”

While Brown will compete for a pair of track & field national titles this week in Eugene, the focus is still placed on the gridiron and what will be his senior and final season at Alabama.

The Beaumont, Texas, native will likely start at the Star position in the Crimson Tide’s nickel and dime formations this fall, and that future shaped what he ran this spring for Waters.

“He didn’t do the hurdles,” Walker-Brown said. “We wanted to protect him. … We didn’t want any freak accidents in the hurdles. That was the one contingency. I was like, ‘Yeah, but you can’t hurdle.’ And I’m thinking he’ll just sit down and rest his body for a while, and he was like, ‘OK, I’ll run the 100.’ He’s always wanted to run the 100.

“Sometimes he’ll just get out there and run and compete. He wants to be in the front.”

Prior to the SEC Championships, Brown earned his bachelor’s degree in communications and finance from UA, a goal at the top of his list for his final year at Alabama. He accomplished it in three and a half years, like teammate Shaun Dion Hamilton.

With an undergraduate degree under his belt and a master’s in business in the works, Brown can now relax a bit and focus more on track and improving his craft on the football field.

And he has some things in mind.

“There’s a certain 40 time that wants to run. He’s trying to get his momma an island,” Walker-Brown said with a laugh. “ And there are a certain amount of tackles he wants to make, there’s a certain way he wants to look during the season, there’s a leadership role that he wants to encompass.

“He feels like if he can come straight off the football field and lead on the track, that will carry over into football season. He would like to be in the same position that DBs who left this year are in next year, to put himself in a good position to play at the next level.”

The 2017 NCAA Outdoor Track & Field Championships will take place June 7-10 at Oregon’s Hayward Field. Brown and his Alabama teammates have already arrived in Eugene.

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