Brown has flourished this season in the Knights backfield, rushing for a career high 67 yards against Toledo and helping the Knights maintain a healthy running game while tailback Alex Haynes nurses an ankle injury. Brown has also proven he can catch the ball out of the backfield, tallying 66 receiving yards against Liberty and 67 vs. Toledo. While his numbers on the gridiron prove his ability, they pale in comparison to the stats he’s accumulated on the baseball diamond. 

In June, Dee was named to Baseball America’s second team All-America squad.  

He is no stranger to awards though, having previously been named the Atlantic Sun Freshman of the Year and placed on the Collegiate Baseball News first team Freshman All-America squad. The numbers he put up were impressive, a .397 batting average with 3 home-runs and 56 RBI. His success in both sports made Brown the only UCF athlete in the school’s history to hit a home-run and score a touchdown in the same academic year, an accomplishment few players in the nation have bragging rights to.         

For those who followed Brown’s high school athletic career, his collegiate multi-sport success is not a surprise. Dee was a three-sport star at Hernando High School in Brooksville, excelling in football, baseball, and basketball. There he was rated #12 on The Orlando Sentinel’s  top 100 prep-school football player list., and was a three-time all-conference honoree for baseball. As if athletic honors were not enough, Dee was also a two-time member of the Academic All-Conference team. 

Two-sport athletes have always been a fascinating topic for fans, with names like Bo Jackson and Deion Sanders stirring up memories of breakaway-runs and mammoth homers. The multi-talented player who chooses to participate in more than one sport must give up on the idea of having an off-season, and work equally hard every day of the year. 

It’s a demanding task, and one must be in peak physical condition if they are to avoid injury and fatigue through the long year of practice and games. Is Brown up for the challenge? If numbers tell the story, it looks like he is.         

In his first two years at UCF, Dee Brown has shown not only that he is ready to play two sports, he is ready to dominate them. Will he be the next Neon Deion, eluding tacklers on the way to the end-zone and racing around the bases? It’s too early in his promising collegiate career to tell, but one thing is for sure. UCF fans will continue to cheer on Brown at whichever sporting event they attend, and if he keeps putting up big numbers, they might not be the only ones in the country rooting for this two-sport star.