BuffStampede.com interviewed former CU linebacker and three-time NFL Pro Bowler Chad Brown as part of our series of "A trip down memory lane" articles. Thanks to the fans that submitted questions.

Chad Brown: "Growing up in Southern California, I grew up thinking about myself playing college ball as a Trojan or as a Bruin but my dad convinced me it would be important for me to leave the state and grow up and prepare for life away from Southern California. And I had some friends that probably weren't the best influence on me so he thought it was important for me to get away.

"At the same time, I had saw the year before I began to get recruited that CU had signed George Hemingway and Eric Bieniemy, guys that I was aware of in Southern California. And two years before, they signed J.J. Flannigan, so I knew that they were building something special up there in Boulder. Coach 'Mac' (Bill McCartney) seemed like the type of guy to give a great college experience and build a great college football team, which is what he ended up doing.

"I wanted to be a part of building something. I didn't want to come in when things that were great. I wanted to be part of building something and establishing a legacy which is what we were able to do up there at CU."

"I enjoyed all of my five years there. I had a chance to win four Big Eight titles, a national championship, create lifelong friendships. I still live here in Colorado and I go to Boulder pretty frequently. Anytime I get on 36 and I start coming down that hill and I can see the Boulder Valley, just seeing the Boulder Valley makes me smile because it brings back all those memories of all those great times I had there. It was a fantastic college experience and it was a fantastic football experience. I fell in love with the state and met my wife at CU. I can't think of a bad thing that really happened during my time there."

Click Here to view this Link.Did your freshman season coincide with Brian CabralClick Here to view this Link.'s first year as linebackers coach at CU?

"I think he came in that spring."

"I love Coach Cabral. If it was not for Coach Cabral, I don't think I would have made it to the NFL. To be honest, I was not a very disciplined student and he actually (laughing) broke into my house to get me up to make me go to summer school one morning. Coach Cabral, at this time, was just a couple years out of the NFL and he is standing over you in bed and pushing you into the shower, making you go to class, it made me realize without a doubt that this guy cares about me. To break into someone's house, that is pretty strange. (laughing) But apparently he saw something in me where it was worth that effort. Each time I see him, I thank him for that.

"When you are 18 or 19, the last thing you want in your life is another dad. You think you are all grown up and you don't need a father. But that is exactly what I needed. Not to say that my father back home didn't do a great job, but to have someone here in Colorado, in Boulder, take that type of approach and build that type of relationship with me and that type of care and love was exactly what I needed and I was able to redshirt and play those four years up at CU and get into the NFL. Without a coach like Coach Cabral, I probably would have ended up failing out of school.

"Early in my NFL career, I actually came back and had Coach Cabral put me through some training in the off-season. Sometimes in the pro game you worry about game planning and match-ups and things of that nature and sometimes the fundamentals are left behind. So early on, when I felt like I needed help with my fundamentals, I would call up Cabral and we would get together in the summer.

"We would meet up in Folsom Field and we'd do bag work and footwork and all those fundamental things that sometimes you lose track of in the NFL. After a summer of that, I remember him telling me, 'you are going to have a great season because you have come back and you have paid attention to the fundaments.' And that is what I kind of needed to hear going into preseason camp. To walk into camp with the stamp of approval from Cabral and that confidence that those workouts gave me was huge. I ended up having a fantastic year. It was my last year in Pittsburgh, my fourth season in Pittsburgh, going into my free agent year. I had a great season and I was able to sign a big money deal with the Seattle Seahawks and all that came with that. But going back and addressing the fundamentals as my career went on were big for me."

"I played against Will Shields. He was an offensive guard for the Kansas City Chiefs. He was an All-American at Nebraska. I played against Will for most of my career and he was a fantastic player. He is probably going to be in the Hall-of-Fame, perennial All-Pro, he is the first guy that pops into mind.

"The Big Eight was a pretty talented football conference back then. Even though they weren't guys I went against directly but guys on the other side of the ball like Dana Stubblefield from Kansas, Nebraska had some great defensive players.

"The competition I faced in the Big Eight definitely prepared me to play professional football just because I was playing against guys that were also going to play in the pros."

"I think there is. The fact that those guys were former CU players, there is definitely an openness and a welcome feeling when you just stop by practice or you just stop by Dal Ward to say, 'what's up?' They want to connect us with the current players. Those current players were in some cases not even born when we won our national championship so they have no idea of the standards and the legacy and the people behind that. But now they can put a name and a face with those pictures on the wall and they can put a name and a face with the guy who is shaking their hand and talking to them about how we need to get back to how things once were and they can kind of connect the dots and bring all that back together.

"To a 17 or 18 year old freshman, what happened 21 years ago, that doesn't matter to them. But once they understand it from a legacy perspective, once they understand it from a standards perspective, it means something. So when Jon Embree and Eric Bieniemy talk about the standards, they have met the guys, the players, that helped Jon and Eric perfect those standards. Then it ties it all together for those kids."

"Clay has got an awesome size to speed ratio. A lot of times guys that are that physically strong and that size just don't have the flat out speed that he does. So he has a natural talent that is impressive. He certainly needs to hone that talent and add some agility and flexibility to that, he is a stiffer player, but that'll come with time. But just as a pure natural talent and as a guy with a hard-nosed approach to football, he has those quite a bit."

"Not right now, not this summer. I have been so busy with some of the other things that I am doing, it makes it kind of difficult to fit that in. But I coached David Goldberg, who just graduated from CU this past season. I coached him for two-and-a-half years and it was such a treat to see him go from walk-on that never played to guy who got on the field a little bit to guy that earned a scholarship to guy that was starting his senior year. It was great to be a part of that experience with him. He had me on the field for his senior day, which was awesome and totally touching that he would include me with his parents on that day.

"It felt great to help the program in some small way. I am not coach at CU but for me to be able to coach a guy like David Goldberg and see his progression and see him help the Buffs on the field was really an honor and was really a treat. Hopefully I can have that same experience with Clay, when he comes back to Highlands Ranch for the summers over these next couple years, like Coach Cabral had with me: coaching me up, nurturing me, giving me some wisdom and experience and all those kind of things."

"That fire was devastating. It was one of the worst days I could have ever imagined. To lose all those animals, I lost about 2,500 snakes in the fire, and to lose the years and years of work that I had put into building that collection and the finality of it all, to realize that I can't get back to where I was. Yes, I could try to rebuild, but I can't get back to where I was within five or seven or 10 years. It would take that long to get back to that place where I was. That was devastating. But life goes on. You can cry over dead snakes but it is not going to bring them back to life.

"Things are going to happen to us in life. Unfortunately, it is not really about what happens to us, it is about what we do once things happen to us. I still do some things in the reptile hobby that help other keepers and help other breeders and their businesses. But I myself am not going to rebuild my snake collection to that size or even a tenth of that size. I will always have reptiles, it is a part of my life, but I will never be a reptile breeder on a scale of that size ever again, I can't imagine that scenario.

"I am taking advantage of the time that I used to spend on reptiles doing radio, doing television. I have coached my son's team for a number of years so I will be able to get a little more involved in that. So I am taking advantage of the time I would normally spend with reptile things to spend time with things that are personally gratifying. I look fondly back at the 20 years I spent time amassing that collection of reptiles. But it is probably time to move on."

"The week before the Super Bowl I started, so it has been almost six months. Before I had the fulltime show, which started in February, I was on-and-off for about a year-and-a-half with fill in duty. It started off as a personal challenge. I came on the air to help Alfred Williams do his show when his co-host was out of town. I thought, 'this is not so bad, I could probably enjoy this.' Growing up as a kid, I stuttered and I was shy. I tried to take advantage of the radio and develop some confidence speaking publicly. I took it as a challenge personally to myself. How far could I go from the kid that was shy and didn't want to talk to anybody and the kid that stuttered to a guy that now gets paid to speak to people? So the transformation and personal challenge has been pretty cool. And I talk sports all the time, so to do it on the air and get paid for it is not a bad gig."