The answer surprised even Brown himself.

“While the answer is always yes, it would be harder to hit that reset button than most people think,” Matt Brown said. “Because I wouldn’t be able to do what I’m doing now.”

Fifteen years after he was paralyzed after crashing into the boards while playing hockey for Norwood High, Brown believes the accident that robbed him of so much has given him a perspective he never would have had if he hadn’t been paralyzed.

People spend years, sometimes a lifetime, trying to figure out their purpose. What were they put on this earth for?

From his wheelchair, Matt Brown can see higher and further than most. His purpose is, quite simply, to help others.

The Matt Brown Foundation was launched by Brown and his family in the middle of the pandemic.

“Not exactly the optimum time,” he concedes.

Five years later, the foundation is, like Brown himself, finding its groove. It has distributed some $300,000 in grants to people who are living with paralysis, paying for accessible vehicles, home modifications, essential equipment.

Besides donors, an annual golf tournament and the Falmouth Road Race are big fund-raising tools. This year, the foundation gained charity status with the Boston Marathon, allowing it to field runners, opening a new revenue source that Brown hopes will allow it to distribute even more grants to more people.

The grants change little things, changing lives. They renovated a bathroom for a guy on the South Shore who hadn’t been able to shower since his accident a year before. They bought a standing frame for a man so he could be vertical in his Quincy home.

Not long ago, Brown got a call from the folks at the Little Mustangs Preschool Academy in Norwood, about two miles from his house.

One of the students there, a 4-year-old boy, is paraplegic. When his classmates went out to recess, all the boy could do was watch them from his wheelchair, because the playground equipment wasn’t accessible to him.

Brown’s foundation paid for an adaptive swing, and on Tuesday, Brown watched as the boy called his parents over to push him in that swing for the first time.

The boy’s classmates made cards for Brown, thanking him in eight different languages.

“To see that little boy smile,” Brown said, “to see his parents smile, I can’t even explain what that feels like.”

He lives in the house he grew up in, with his parents, Mike and Sue. His parents met in the sixth grade. Sue’s maiden name is Brown, same as Mike’s, so they like to say Mike took her name when they got married.

Matt Brown would like to get a place of his own some day. But he can’t imagine leaving Norwood. The town, and its people, always had his back.

Next month, he’ll be the best man at the wedding of his childhood friend Austin Glaser, a Norwood police officer who was his roommate at Stonehill College. Brown has been working on his speech for ages, trying to get it down from a half-hour to five minutes.

He has also remained close to Tyler Piacentini, the Weymouth High player whose check sent Brown crashing headfirst into the boards at Pilgrim Skating Arena in Hingham in 2010. He never blamed Piacentini, saying it was “just two guys going for the puck.”

Last year, he did doughnuts in his wheelchair on the dance floor at Piacentini’s wedding in Nashville.

On Wednesday, Brown was sitting in his driveway. As he does three days a week, he had just spent more than two hours at the gym at Journey Forward, a nonprofit in Canton that helps those with spinal cord injuries.

He regularly works out there alongside his friends, hockey players who suffered similar spinal cord injuries: Jake Thibeault, who was paralyzed in 2021 while playing for Milton Academy; AJ Quetta, who was paralyzed in 2021 while playing for Bishop Feehan High; and Denna Laing, who was paralyzed in 2015 while playing for the Boston Pride in the National Women’s Hockey League.

“We almost have enough of us for a full line,” Brown deadpans.

Brown was mentored and inspired by Travis Roy, the Boston University player who was paralyzed on his first shift for the Terriers in 1995, whose own foundation raised millions and who died in 2020 at the age of 45.

“We’re all following in Travis’s tire tracks,” Brown said.

In the driveway, Brown’s friend Jack Doherty was talking about speeches he’s lining up for Brown. Doherty has his own story: He died on the ice, a cardiac arrest while playing in a men’s league in Weymouth in 2013. After being clinically dead for seven minutes, Doherty was brought back to life by first responders. He says Brown is one of the most inspirational speakers he’s ever heard.

“When he speaks,” Doherty said, “people want him to speak longer.”

Brown doesn’t want anyone to think he’s some super hero. He’s just a regular guy from Norwood, who’s been able to move on from a life-altering injury with the help of family and friends who never gave up on him, who always inspired him. And so he aspires to inspire others.

It could have gone the other way, he says.

“I could have closed the door, just stayed in my room, give in to that darkness,” he said. “But my friends and family kept me going.”

He turned to look at the house where he ran down the stairs on Christmas mornings. Where he put on his uniform for Little League games. Where he did his math homework.

“When one door closes, not all doors close,” he said. “I have to work hard to find those other doors. But I’ll never stop trying.”

He looked up and down his street and then he said it, his mantra, something that repeats in his head, and he lives by it.

“Never quit,” Matt Brown said. “Overcome. Keep going forward.”

Kevin Cullen is a Globe columnist. He can be reached at kevin.cullen@globe.com.

May 17—President Donald Trump can be seen at college football games, UFC events, and even NASCAR races. Trump enjoys appearing at sporting events, and recently has entered himself into the college athletics space, attempting to create order in a wild west that is college sports.

It was inevitable that the NIL system currently in place was going to cause issues. This spring marked the first player to sit out of practice over money disputes. The players currently have all the power and there are no guardrails on how much schools can pay players, making it unfair in some sense.

Advertisement

NIL hasn’t been used like it’s intended so far. Originally, NIL was put in place so players could make money off autographs and jerseys with their name on them. But now, it’s used by boosters to pay players to play for their alma mater.

Trump is stepping in. Trump is reportedly creating a College Sports Commission, which will reportedly be led by former West Virginian and college football legend Nick Saban and Texas businessman Cody Campbell. The commission will regulate the transfer portal, boosters and college athlete employment.

This would be the first leader of college sports and potentially create a system that has structure.

Saban might not be the only West Virginian on the commission. In a recent interview with Sirius XM, Rich Rodriguez showed interest in helping his friend, Saban.

Advertisement

“I’m going to give him my cell number if they want an active coach on the deal, ” Rodriguez said. “I’ll be on that sucker. I’ve got some experience. I can help from a current standpoint. I don’t know if they need me, though.

Like Saban, Rodriguez has been coaching for a long time, not as long as Saban and a lot fewer championships, but he’s seen the change and evolution of the sport.

All spring, Rodriguez voiced his problems with the NCAA. Rodriguez didn’t like the roster limit to 105, how there’s a spring portal, where a player you coached all spring can just leave, and how there are no limitations to how much a player can be paid.

Rodriguez has the background to be a candidate for the commission.

Advertisement

So far, it sounds like Saban will lead. Rodriguez agrees it should be the greatest college football coach of all time as the leader.

“He is the greatest college football coach of all time, ” Rodriguez said. “He has a great grasp of the game in general … He’s truly about college football.”

Almost all professional sports leagues have a commissioner who settles issues throughout the league. College football doesn’t because it’s governed by the NCAA. After NIL was passed, the NCAA lost all its power, leaving it to the schools and players, creating chaos.

There’s no movement to create guardrails, and it’s starting to get out of hand. So much, that Trump felt the need to step in.

Advertisement

College sports, and more specifically college football, is a billion-dollar entertainment business. There needs to be structure before it falls apart even further. Saban’s the favorite to lead the next generation of college athletics, and West Virginia’s very own, Rodriguez, could be helping out, too.

“College football is such a great entity, it’s hard to screw it up, ” Rodriguez said. “You can do whatever you want. There’s still going to be that passion for your school and that level of athletes. We’ve done enough things to screw it up in the last couple of years.”

In a dramatic twist to the ongoing College Athlete NIL Litigation, Duke University tennis player Samuel Landau, an NCAA Division I Athlete, has filed a limited objection to the proposed House settlement, accusing the school of luring him with false promises of NIL payments and retaliating when he spoke out.

$45K NIL Deal, Potential False Rumors, and Anti-Semitic Accusations Surface in Filing

The objection, which was filed on Thursday in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, Oakland division, claims that Duke Men’s Tennis Head Coach Ramsey Smith promised Landau $45,000 in NIL compensation in addition to his scholarship to secure his transfer to Duke in late 2023.

According to the objection, Coach Smith assured Landau and his family multiple times, including in an April 2024 text message to Landau’s mother, that the player would be “well taken care of.” However, once Landau joined the program, he alleges that the NIL money never came through.

The objection, filed by Landau’s attorney, Rodger Landau, paints a troubling picture of alleged misconduct within Duke’s athletic department. It accuses the university of retaliating after Landau raised concerns about the NIL payments. According to the filing,

Coach Smith allegedly spread false rumors that Landau had a drug problem, citing a false statement from University of Texas coach Bruce Berque, which has since been denied in writing by the Texas program.

The filing alleges that Duke officials wrongly suspected Landau, who is Jewish, of running a social media account that was critical of his own team members, invoking what the family describes as an anti-Semitic trope. Landau argues that the current language in the proposed settlement is too broad and could allow Power 5 schools to escape liability for NIL misconduct, including false inducements and broken promises.

He is urging the court to revise the settlement to include expanded audit rights and establish an arbitration process for student-athletes to seek compensation for unpaid NIL deals. He proposes allowing arbitrators to impose penalties of up to $5 million per athlete for proven fraud or retaliation.

If such revisions aren’t made, Landau is calling for Duke University to be excluded from the House Settlement altogether. He argues that Duke, with its $12 billion endowment, has demonstrated an unwillingness to honor NIL commitments and has weaponized its institutional power to suppress dissent.

The NIL era has meant that college athletes can now earn money from their name, image, and likeness through endorsements and sponsorships. Earlier, college athletes were not paid and did not gain monetary benefits from the revenue generated by prestigious college sports programs.

Hamilton College pitcher/utility player Emma Tansky ’25 (Collegeville, Pa./Episcopal Academy) and outfielder Alexis Mayer ’26 (Woodcliff Lake, N.J./Pascack Hills HS) were selected for the 2025 National Fastpitch Coaches Association (NFCA) Division III All-Region Team on Friday, May 16.

Tansky was one of 14 athletes that made the second team in Region 1 after she was on the all-region third team each of the previous three years. Mayer, who received her first all-region team honor, was one of 13 players on the third team.

The all-region teams honor student-athletes from the association’s 10 regions with selection to one of three teams. NFCA member head coaches nominate and then vote for the athletes in their respective region.

Tansky (7-4) posted a 3.51 earned run average over 83.2 innings. She pitched in 19 contests and had four complete games in 10 starts, including an eight-inning shutout against Wesleyan University on April 20. Tansky had one save and struck out 69 batters. She led the team with a .444 batting average (28-for-63) and played in 29 of 32 games. Tansky scored 22 runs, stole a program-record 21 bases in 22 attempts and owned a .493 on-base percentage. She owns Hamilton’s career stolen base record with 64, ended up second in program history with 139 career hits and 90 career runs, and boasted a career batting average of .408.

Mayer, who was on the NFCA Division III Pitcher and Player of the Year Watchlist in early April, hit .347 (33-for-95) and started all 32 games. She hammered six doubles, tied a program record with seven triples, smacked five home runs, and had a .716 slugging percentage. Mayer set a program record with 38 runs batted in, scored 28 runs, stole eight bases, drew 17 walks and had a .443 on-base percentage. She ended up with a .953 fielding percentage on 43 chances with three outfield assists.

Hamilton started the season with eight straight wins and finished with an overall record of 15-17. The Continentals swept Bates College in a New England Small College Athletic Conference doubleheader and added conference wins against Colby College, Trinity College, Wesleyan University and Amherst College.

 

The Texas Longhorns are without Quinn Ewers after he left for the 2025 NFL Draft.

The Miami Dolphins drafted Ewers in the seventh round of the draft. In a recent interview with On3’s Nick Schultz, Ewers used the word unconventional to describe his NIL experience in college football.

Advertisement

NIL became legal in college football in July of 2021.

Ewers started his college career with the Ohio State Buckeyes in 2021. He was the top recruit and quarterback in the 2021 class. He played in one game for Ohio State in the 2021 season and then hit the transfer portal.

He was the No. 2 quarterback in the On3 Transfer Portal Industry Rankings, committed to Texas, and the rest is history.

“The way that it’s kind of been set up for me has been nothing short of unconventional, I think I would say,” Ewers said. “Skipping my senior year to enroll at Ohio State early, and then be there for not even a whole calendar year, and then decide to go back to my home state of Texas, and really, turn around a program that hadn’t really won anything in years, consistently.”

Advertisement

When Ewers left Texas, his NIL valuation was $4.5 million.

He threw for 9,218 passing yards, 68 touchdowns and 24 interceptions.

Not everyone agreed with Ewers’ decision to leave for the NFL. If Ewers had stayed at Texas for another year, he reportedly would have made $8 million in NIL money, per 247Sports’ Chip Brown.

Some criticized the move, but not Josh Pate. Pate credited Ewers for focusing on legacy more than NIL.

Now that Ewers is gone, Texas’ starting quarterback for 2025 is expected to be Arch Manning. The Longhorns have already looked in the portal for Manning’s backup, bringing in former Troy quarterback Matthew Caldwell.

Texas opens the 2025 season against Ohio State on Aug. 30.

Related: Texas Named Finalist for No. 1 Recruit in New Jersey