Business runs in the Brohm family
August 28th, 2007
Quarterback Brian Brohm is on track to get a business degree — as has most of his family.
By Brad Knoop
Brian Brohm is the face of University of Louisville Athletics these days. The Louisville native could have played college football anywhere, but he wanted to play for UofL — the team for which his dad and older brothers played. More than that, he wanted to help make UofL a winner and national contender, and he has. The Cardinals finished last season 12-1 and won the Orange Bowl, one of college football’s top-shelf games.
As Brohm begins his final season Thursday, Aug. 30, against Murray State, he is a candidate to receive the Heisman Trophy, the award given annually to college football’s most outstanding player. He’s set to graduate in December with a degree in finance from the College of Business. Then he’ll have what his brothers, sister and dad already have — a business degree from UofL.
Dad Oscar started the trend in the 1960s when he graduated with a degree in accounting. Back then it was a bachelor of commerce (now equivalent to a degree in business administration). Brother Greg, UofL’s director of football operations, got an accounting degree in 1993. Brother Jeff earned a management degree in 1995 and now coaches UofL’s quarterbacks and coordinates the team’s passing game. Big sister Kim, a three-sport star at Spalding University, where she received a bachelor’s degree in English, earned an MBA from UofL in 2005.
The Brohm pack learned from and challenged each other in sports — all types, from tennis to basketball, ping-pong to putt-putt — and in school.
“People saw the relationship Jeff and Greg had with Brian,” Kim said. “They thought Jeff and Greg were tough on Brian. But they were the same way with me. They helped me just as much in sports. I was closer in age to Brian and we played one-on-one a lot. I tried to help him, too, until he started beating me. Then he was actually helping me.
“We were really competitive,” she said.
While the siblings never were competitive when it came to GPAs, Greg and Jeff set the academic bar high for their younger siblings to reach.
“Greg was second in his class at Trinity (High School). Jeff was up there in his as well,” Oscar noted. “Kim was in the top 10 of her class at Mercy (Academy). And Brian, he took advantage of college credit courses at Trinity. That’s why he’ll be able to get his business degree in three-and-a-half years.”
UofL’s tutoring program for athletes also has helped.
“There’s a lot of support to help student-athletes balance the chores of going to school and playing football,” Brohm said. “I’m grateful for that. My family knows how hard I’ve worked in school and knows that I always put my academics first.”
“We’ve been blessed,” said mom, Donna, who has worked in a pre-K program for 15 years. “They were all good students.”
“They didn’t have much time to goof around,” Oscar added. “They played sports all year long. They knew the schoolwork had to get completed.”
