Funeral service for Kippy Brown, former Vols football assistant, to be held Sept. 18

A funeral service for former Tennessee football assistant coach Charles “Kippy” Brown will be held Sept. 18 at Sweetwater Memorial Park in Sweetwater, Tennessee. The service will begin at at 9 a.m. ET.

Brown died on Aug. 31 at age 71.

He was the first Black quarterback to play at Sweetwater High School in 1969 and led the Wildcats to back-to-back state championships in 1971-72. He was the first Black quarterback to play for then-Memphis State; the Tigers never had a losing season during his career (1974-77).

Brown’s coaching career began as an assistant coach at Memphis from 1978 to 1980. He was a wide receivers coach at Louisville for the 1982 season before joining the staff at Tennessee.

He was the Vols‘ wide receivers coach under Johnny Majors (1983-89) and was an assistant head coach under Phillip Fulmer (1993-94). He returned to Knoxville in 2009 when Lane Kiffin hired him as wide receivers coach and passing game coordinator before the Chick-fil-A Bowl in December 2009. Less than a month later, Brown was named interim head coach after Kiffin left Tennessee for Southern Cal.

Brown returned to the NFL after UT hired Derek Dooley to replace Kiffin. He became the wide receivers coach for the Seattle Seahawks from 2010 to 2014, winning Super Bowl 48 in 2014. Brown retired in 2015.

Brown spent 22 seasons as an NFL assistant. His first NFL job was running backs coach for the New York Jets (1990-92). He later was an assistant coach for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, Miami Dolphins, Green Bay Packers and Houston Texans. With the Detroit Lions, he was the associate head coach and passing game coordinator in 2008.

Brown was inducted into Memphis’ M Club Hall of Fame in 2016 and the Tennessee Sports Hall of Fame in 2019.

Emmett Siegel covers Tennessee baseball for Knox News. Email: emmett.siegel@knoxnews.com; X: @EmmettSiegel_

This article originally appeared on Knoxville News Sentinel: Funeral service for Kippy Brown, former Vols football assistant, to be held Sept. 18