Brown twins to be featured Sunday on Amazon Prime series

Jeremy Werner, ILLINI INQUIRER | May 23, 2021

Illinois football players Chase Brown and Sydney Brown will be featured on Sunday’s episode of Amazon Prime’s “The College Tour.” The series focuses on the college experience of specific college students and is hosted by Alex Boylan and produced by Lisa Hennessy, an Illinois alumna in speech communication.

Sunday’s episode will focus on 11 University of Illinois students, including the Brown twins. The episode will be available at 7 p.m. CT Sunday on YouTube or at go.illinois.edu/thecollegetour.

“This project was exciting for us,” Chase said in a statement. “It was a great way to tell our unique story as students and football players on this campus, and show off what a great place Illinois is to excel at both of those endeavors.”

Added Sydney in a statement: “It was important to include Illinois Athletics in this campus profile because the spirit of Illinois students really shines at sporting events, especially in Memorial Stadium. As students from Canada, I know this show would have been really helpful for my brother and myself as we were making our college decisions.”

Background: The Brown brothers are Canada natives who grew up in London, Ontario. Both transferred to St. Stephens Episcopal in Bradenton (Fla.) to play football. Though inseparable for most of their lives, the identical twins went separate ways for college — initially. Sydney signed with Illinois, while Chase chose Western Michigan over several power-five offers to pursue WMU’s aviation program. But the cost of flight schools and being away from his brother pushed Chase to transfer and he rejoined Sydney at Illinois.

Sydney, a junior safety, has started 26 of 27 games he’s played at Illinois, totaling 179 tackles, 10 passes defended and four interceptions. As a sophomore in 2019, he earned All-Big Ten Third Team honors from coaches after leading the team in interceptions and finishing second on the team in tackles.

Chase earned a waiver to play immediately midway through the 2019 season but preserved a redshirt by only playing in four games. He quickly emerged in 2020 as the Illini’s lead running back. His 540 rushing yards (5.2 ypc) ranked fifth in the Big Ten. He had back-to-back 100-yard rushing performances in wins over Rutgers and Nebraska. He had three rushing touchdowns and earned Third Team All-Big Ten honors from the media.