Chasing Down AJ Brown

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STARKVILLE, Miss. (WCBI Sports) – Seemingly everyone is chasing down AJ Brown.

The Starkville High School junior has a list ten schools long of football scholarship offers that includes SEC schools like Mississippi State, Ole Miss and Alabama, and teams like Kansas, Texas and Southern California.

“It’s exciting, when you have all those schools coming after you,” Brown said. “It’s just a wonderful feeling.”

College coaches are drooling over his skills at wide receiver, but right now he’s busy with his first love, baseball.

“It’s hard because every day somebody’s calling me with football and I’m trying to stay focused on baseball,” Brown said.

A career in baseball may be within Brown’s very wide reach. He calls baseball his first love.

“For anybody that’s got the attention he’s got on the football field that wants to spend the whole spring semester playing baseball, tells you a lot about it,” head SHS baseball coach Travis Garner said. “We’ve had pro scouts here just to watch him practice.”

Pro scouts, at practice.

As far as his football recruitment, Brown still says it’s “100% open.” Mississippi State doesn’t get an edge despite the fact that he grew up a Bulldogs fan.

Just like the raw ability pro baseball scouts see, the football skills Brown has are unrefined. He didn’t play his freshman year. His high school head coach, Jamie Mitchell, said when he saw Brown play in middle school he didn’t seem very good. The analysis is different now.

“He’s got uncanny skills,” Mitchell said. “I think the upside to him is he’s really still green, still has a lot of growth in front of him.”

Brown says he tries to stay humble through all of the attention.

“He’s kind of a quiet guy,” Mitchell said. “Very unassuming.”

“He loves to smile,” AJ’s dad Arthur Brown said. “Very intelligent, he keeps to himself, and I’m very proud of him.”

AJ says his dad is a role model and comes to every game. But when they watch NFL games together, Brown isn’t one to fantasize about that being in his future.

“To be honest, I don’t even try to put myself in that situation right now,” Brown said. “I just try to stay focused on what I’m doing right now. I’m just trying to have fun.”

And that fun, could take him a long way.