University of South Dakota Athletics

One season with the Coyotes, one FCS playoff appearance with Corey Brown on staff. In fact, South Dakota not just made the playoff field in the fall of 2021, the Coyotes hosted a playoff game for the first time in 35 years.
 
Brown’s defensive line unit was certainly a catalyst. It was part of the best defensive unit in the Coyotes’ FCS era, allowing 343 yards and 20 points per game. Opposing offenses mustered just 120 yards on the ground, South Dakota’s best showing since 2009. It also totaled 75 tackles-for-loss including 33 sacks.
 
Brown was named defensive line coach in June of 2021. He has followed a playing career that started at the University of Iowa and continued in the Arena Football League 2 with more than 15 years of coaching experience. Those experiences include four seasons at Miami University, two at Rutgers and a graduate assistant position at Notre Dame the year the Irish competed in the BCS National Championship Game.
 
South Dakota redshirt freshman Nick Gaes took immediately to Brown’s tutelage. He finished third in the voting for the 2021 Valley Freshman of the Year and was named a freshman all-American by HERO Sports. Gaes led the conference with 7.0 sacks (all solo) in Valley play and was third in the league with 8.0 tackles-for-loss. He had at least one sack in six of eight conference games, and finished as the team’s sixth-leading tackler with 35 stops.
 
Brown hails from Houston, Texas. He competed for the Hawkeyes from 1995-99 and started all 11 games at defensive tackle his senior year en route to earning the team’s defensive hustle award. Upon graduation from Iowa, Brown played five years on the defensive and offensive line for the Quad City Steamwheelers where he won back-to-back AFL2 championships.
 
Brown’s coaching career started in 2006 at North Iowa Area Community College in Mason City where he served as defensive line and strength and conditioning coach. He served in the same capacity at Iowa Western Community College in Council Bluffs from 2009-11.
 
The 2012 campaign was when the Irish competed in the national championship game. Brown served the first of two years in South Bend during that run. It was a team that allowed just four rushing touchdowns all season and held eight opponents to less than 100 yards rushing.
 
Chuck Martin, who led Grand Valley State to two Division II titles, was the offensive coordinator for Notre Dame in 2012 and 2013. When Martin left South Bend to take the head coaching job at Miami in Oxford, Ohio, he named Brown an assistant.
 
In his first season with the RedHawks, Brown mentored a pair of defensive ends in Bryson Albright and J’Terius Jones, who combined for 11 sacks during the 2014 campaign. They notched 17 more in 2015 when both players were named to the all-MAC team. Miami boasted a game that season in which they recorded a school-record eight sacks against Eastern Michigan.
 
Brown served four seasons at Miami before transitioning to Rutgers for the 2018 and 2019 campaigns. In just two years, Brown mentored six players who earned academic all-Big Ten status. In 2019, his lone senior on the defensive line, Wil Previlon, earned honorable mention all-Big Ten honors, was named Rutgers’ defensive MVP, and signed with the Green Bay Packers as a free agent.
 
Brown returned to the Iowa City area and spent the 2020-21 academic year as the defensive line coach and academic coordinator at Cornell College, a Division III program in nearby Mount Vernon. The Rams’ playing season was cancelled due to COVID-19, but Brown was heavily involved in academic achievement, social engagement and recruiting among other things.
 
Brown and his wife, Susan, have a son, Blaze. Brown has two daughters, Erin and Kayla.