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VOLUME 25, ISSUE 6 53 most overlooked players in the Big Ten. Heck, he might be one of the most overlooked Boilermakers period. Af- ter the end of spring practices, when Brown took every first-team snap, the student newspaper didn't even list him as a probable starter in the fall. Left him out entirely. "It's so crazy, how nobody recogniz- es him," Williams said. "I don't under- stand it. … I honestly feel like he's one of the best corners in the Big Ten. But it's fine, he can be the dark horse, come in and surprise everybody." Brown uses the slights as another reason to get up for an extra work- out or push through one more sprint. Many of his teammates acknowledge him as one of the team's hardest work- ers — a leader by example, as the cli- ché goes — who they see putting in the time without drawing attention. "He just puts his head down and just works and works and works," Appleby said. "He works as hard as anybody on our team and you almost never see him." Brown doesn't see any other way to be. He's the fastest man on the team, he says, so he should be the fastest up a hill during conditioning. He's strong enough to lift significantly, so why take a repetition off? "I try to kill myself when I'm in the weight room," he said. "I literally try to come out of there with my body shak- ing because afterward I feel good. And I feel like after that, when I get on the field everything will be easy. That's what I do. I don't say much. I just go in there and work. "I try to be first, because that's what's expected. … There's no ex- cuse for me to be in the back and be slacking. What's the point of slacking? I might as well go all out, go hard. It's a mindset that will separate me. I try to be consistent. I'm not going to come in here one day and be like this and the next day be another way. I'm going to be the same every day, and that's what I hang my hat on, being consistent." Brown was that in 2014. In his first season as a full-time cornerback — he had split time as a freshman, then started at safety in 2013 after Landon Feichter's sea- son-ending injury — Brown proved to be physical enough to jostle wide receivers. And he had the catch-up speed to make plays late. Next step? Turning some of his pass breakups into interceptions. The old football joke is that corner- backs are cornerbacks (and not wide receivers) because they can't catch. And for Brown, it might hold true; in three games last season, he dropped Tom Campbell Brown (left) and Williams are fueled by their competition, and hope it'll make them one of the best units in the Big Ten.