Some background on the Fort Lauderdale high school that is home of Iowa's new quarterback recruit, Jake Rudock

In late December of 2002, I paid a visit to St. Thomas Aquinas High School in Fort Lauderdale, Fla.

It was during the week of Iowa's first Orange Bowl appearance, and I went to Fort Lauderdale to visit Iowa wide receiver Maurice Brown's home, and to see the school where he played ball. It's the same high school that has produced many NFL players and dozens of Division I footballers.

Here is the column I wrote from that visit:

FORT LAUDERDALE , Fla. - After catching three passes in his first two seasons as an Iowa Hawkeye, Maurice Brown had 42 receptions this year, 10 for touchdowns.

You could say Brown came out of nowhere. But he came from somewhere special.

Brown is from Fort Lauderdale , this bustling, sprawling south Florida city with six of its natives on Iowa's football team. They come from five high schools. Fred Barr and Colin Cole, senior rocks on the Hawkeye defense, were teammates at South Plantation High. Abdul Hodge, a freshman linebacker with great potential, is from basketball-power Dillard.

St. Thomas Aquinas High sent Brown to Iowa. Sending players to college is what the school does. Ninety-nine percent of its graduates go directly to college. The school had more National Merit Scholars last year than any other in Florida.

"I went to St. Thomas , also," said Brown's mother, Vanessa Brown, a Florida State graduate and a supervisor for the U.S. Postal Service in Fort Lauderdale . "Academically, it is top-notch. It challenges kids."

Tuition is $4,750 a year, $5,750 for non-Catholics.

"It's not at all cheap," Vanessa said. "But I wouldn't trade it for the world. It's a blue-ribbon school. My 13-year-old daughter will go there, too."

St. Thomas Aquinas is a strong-body, strong-mind school. It's the perennial all-sports champion in Broward County, which has dozens of high schools with 2,000 to 3,000 students. Soccer, volleyball, tennis, basketball - even ice hockey - the Raiders excel.

Tennis great Chris Evert went to St. Thomas Aquinas . She was a phys-ed softball teammate of Vanessa Brown's.

"We beat everybody. They hated us," Vanessa said, laughing.

But St. Thomas Aquinas is a football school.

It won the Class 5A state championship in Brown's junior year and was state runner-up when he was a sophomore.

Its home field is Brian Piccolo Stadium, named for the former Chicago Bears running back who played for the Raiders. Former Dallas Cowboys star receiver Michael Irvin prepped there, too, as did a multitude of others who played college football. Last year, STA players signed with Florida, Miami and Ohio State. Notre Dame and Miami are getting players from the school's Class of 2003.

"That's kind of been what's happened here for many years," said STA Coach George Smith. "Kids in P.E. in ninth-grade walk by my office and see the college coaches talking to the older kids. They think 'If I do this and I do that, maybe they'll be talking to me someday."'

Miami recruited Brown, but he decided on Iowa before he touched back down in Florida after his recruiting visit. He was a member of Kirk Ferentz's first recruiting class at Iowa with Barr and Cole.

Iowa surely wouldn't be playing in Thursday's Orange Bowl were it not for that trio of players from Pro Player Stadium's door step. Give former Hawkeyes assistant coach Bret Bielema a lot of credit for working Florida hard for Ferentz.

"Other coaches all said the same things. They said your son can run, jump and catch, but we already knew that," said Maurice's father, Victor Brown. He is a veterinarian who lives in Naples on south Florida's west coast. He and Vanessa divorced when Maurice was 2.

"Bret said Maurice had excellent test scores, was well-liked by the faculty, other students speak highly of him, we think he can graduate," Victor said. "It's sort of corny, but that's what I wanted to hear.

"After Maurice gave a verbal commitment to Iowa, Coach Ferentz came down here. Iowa was a long way from home and I wanted to know that they cared about him as more than a football player. We talked for two hours about everything - family, kids. We just talked."

In the fall of 2001, Ferentz almost booted Brown off his team. Brown had been arrested for drunken driving. He was suspended for the season's final seven games.

"We all sat down, his dad, myself and Maurice," Vanessa said. "We told him 'You made some pretty bad decisions. You need to be a man, accept you did wrong, and try to correct it.'

"He even thought about coming home. Being a mom, I wanted him to be closer to me. But he needed to stay there, stand up and be a man, and correct things."

Victor Brown said his son "had to grow up. He had to understand what it was he needed to do as a person to improve himself on the field and off the field. He was having a good time. He let his good time interfere with his focus on why he was there, which was to get an education and play football.

"When the suspension came down, I went up and talked to the coaches and the assistant athletic director (Fred Mims). We all were in agreement that it had to be a tough-love situation. Coach Ferentz told me from day one that we'll get through this, but he had to know that we were on the same page. If I fight him, he said, it won't be a situation we can win."

A season later, Brown completed a turnaround from problem-child to prodigy.

"I think Mo's done an outstanding job," said Smith, his high school coach. "I give a lot of credit to that staff at Iowa. They stayed with him. We all felt he could do what he's doing now."

It's one day from the Hawkeyes' being in the Orange Bowl. The parents of Iowa's top receiver are euphoric.

"I've been a season-ticket holder to Dolphins games for eight years with three guys here," Victor Brown said. "They bought Orange Bowl tickets right away.

"We tailgate before and after Dolphins games. They talk about 'Could you imagine if Mo played for the Dolphins? That would be awesome. We'd never leave the parking lot, just tailgate all week."'

Vanessa Brown saved a lot of money when the Orange Bowl snapped up Iowa ahead of the Rose Bowl.

"I was preparing for the Rose Bowl, financially," she said. "I was working a lot of overtime so I could go have a good time in California with my brother, father and daughter.

"But now, the Orange Bowl? It seems like a dream, really. It couldn't have worked out more perfectly."