There is a little Gilbert Brown in all of us. Or more to the point, there is all of us in Gilbert Brown.
Gaining weight? Want to feel better about yourself? Stand next to Gilbert Brown.
“I want to be a role model,” Brown says.
Model? Kate Moss could sleep in one of his sleeves.
The last time anyone had any clue as to what Brown weighs, Brown had just stepped off the scale when Packers teammate Robert Brooks caught him.
“What’s it say?” Brooks asked.
“Three-sixty-three,” Brown said.
“The scale stops at 350,” Brooks said.
Brown may be the largest human being ever to play in the Super Bowl, either Brown or Nate Newton of Dallas, who wore his weight like an aloha shirt.
Brown tries to hide his, as absurd as trying to stuff a turkey into a shot glass.
Rub the two of them together, you’d get a grease spot the size of Wales. Newton once admitted to 400 pounds. Brown won’t.
“What difference does it make how heavy I am?” Brown asks. “Why do you keep asking about it?”
“I’ll tell you my weight if you tell me yours,” I say.
“You’re a pipsqueak,” Brown says. “I burp bigger stinks than you.”
We can safely conclude here that while Brown is obviously a fat man, he is not a jolly fat man, no John Candy he, no Chris Farley, no fool.
“I’m here, I’m happy to be here and I’m healthy,” Brown says.
His nickname is “the Gravedigger.” Nothing frothy about that.
“I like it,” he says. “It’s better than some kind of fat nickname.”
Brown has endured a week of us pipsqueaks poking fun at his stomach, and hasn’t enjoyed a moment of it. Why should he?
Ask Brett Favre about his arm, ask Dorsey Levens about his legs, ask Reggie White about his soul, ask Gilbert Brown about his fat.
“William Perry once said he was big when he was little,” you say. “Were you always big, Gilbert?”
“I wasn’t crazy big, but I was big,” Brown says. “In the second grade I sat on a chair and it broke. People laughed.”
Size matters. The Denver Broncos’ line is small, smallish. Brown expects it will take several of them to handle one of him.
“I don’t expect to be single-blocked,” he says.
What would it take for you to move Gilbert Brown by yourself, you ask Denver center Tom Nalen.
“A lever,” Nalen says.
The two teams are staying in La Jolla, a mile or so from one another. Brown happened to run into Denver’s Terrell Davis on the street.
“He said, `You get away from me,’ ” Brown says. ” `I don’t want to see you until Sunday.’ “
There is respect in this, just as there is regard in inquiries about Brown’s size. He is not a freak. He is a Super Bowl tackle. He is a big man who does big things.
“If you can’t do what you do, you won’t be doing what you do,” Brown says.
What Brown would really like to do is carry the football. At least once. Score a touchdown. At least once. He has never carried the ball at any level. Never.
“I saw the Fridge score,” Brown says. “It was fun seeing a big guy do that.”
The Packers have no “Fridge plays” for Brown. But he can dream.
“There are 82 positions to celebrate after a touchdown,” he says. “I would do 81 of them.”
Before Brown can be asked for a demonstration, he heads off to the weight room to work on his conditioning.
“You got to get your ligaments and tendons tight,” Brown says.
The stomach can take care of itself.
