WARREN – As Warren G. Harding football coach Steve Arnold took the podium to speak at a coaches clinic at the University of Iowa a few years ago, he offered the audience a trivia question.

“I said, ‘What family of brothers has produced the most NFL players?’,” Arnold recalled. “There’s people thinking about it, and one coach says, ‘It’s the Selmon brothers.’ I said, ‘No. We got the Selmon brothers beat my man. Warren, Ohio, has the Selmon brothers beat.’

“Finally, he said, and this is (Iowa) coach (Kirk) Ferentz, says, ‘The Browner brothers!’ “

Bingo.

The Browners – Ross, Jimmy, Joey and Keith, who grew up in Warren – all played in the NFL.

Ross is one of the most decorated defensive lineman in college football history and, as a member of the Cincinnati Bengals, set a record for tackles by a defensive lineman (10) in Super Bowl XVI against the San Francisco 49ers. Joey was a six-time Pro Bowl player for the Vikings and was named to the NFL’s All-Decade Team during the 1980s.

To add to the lineage, Keith’s son, Keith Browner Jr., is currently a defensive end for the Chicago Bears, and Ross’s son, Max Starks, won two Super Bowls with the Pittsburgh Steelers. Willard Browner, another sibling, was drafted by the Chicago White Sox and was a running back for Notre Dame. Finally, the youngest brother, the late Gerald Browner, played football at the University of Georgia.

One more thing about the Browners … they haven’t forgotten where they came from.

Ross and Jimmy are both planning to attend the inaugural NFL Legends of Warren Reunion and Celebrity Golf Outing on Sept. 26.

“Oh yeah, always looking forward to coming back home,” said Ross, who now lives in Nashville, Tenn.

Technically, home is the west side for the Browners, who grew up near Tod Avenue – “Anywhere from Sixth Street, Eighth Street, Karl Avenue, Baker Street. That was our area right there,” Ross laughed – and they don’t hide from their old stomping grounds.

Ross was in Warren this past January for the Warren G. Harding Raiders annual football banquet, which also served as an event for the NFL. In honor of Super Bowl 50, the league gave every high school a golden Wilson football for each player or coach who came from the school and was on a Super Bowl roster.

As mentioned, Ross earned such a distinction. Yet, there’s another honor he’s just as proud of that’s a little closer to “home.”

“We were the first ones in 1972,” said Ross of his Warren Western Reserve Raiders winning a state high school football title his senior year. “The first high school playoffs in the state of Ohio. We were the true champions.”

Those times with the original Raiders are ones Ross said are some of the best in his life. Being named a two-time All-American at Notre Dame and the winner of the Maxwell Award (given to the nation’s best collegiate player), among several other prestigious accolades, are mementos he’ll obviously cherish, but the childhood memories created in Warren are forever etched in his mind.

“When I picked him up from the airport when he came to the banquet back in January, we came into town and we rolled around by his house where he grew up at,” said Arnold of their drive to the city. “He got out and talked to the guy who lives there now. You could just tell, as I looked at Ross, it was bringing back memories for him. He said he remembered him and his brothers, they would leave the Y, stop at the Hot Dog Shoppe and get probably 10 hot dogs between them, and they would eat them and a bag of fries before they got home.

“You could just tell he was happy to be back in Warren.”

Home is still Warren to the 62-year-old Ross, who can recall vivid memories of the excitement that engulfed the town during the early 1970s. Following the Raiders’ dominating 37-6 win in the ’72 state title game, they returned to the championship game, losing to Don Bucci’s Cardinal Mooney Cardinals, 14-3. The very next year, however, Warren G. Harding High School won the title, cruising past Upper Arlington, 41-8.

Warren was the king of high school football, but it was how it happened that Ross remembers.

“These are guys you’ve grown up with in your neighborhood,” he said of his teammates. “Year by year you grow together. You know each other almost like brothers, almost like family. Whoever goes to that school is like your whole family because everyone is together.”

These are just some of the reasons Ross is excited to come back to Warren. He also gets to see old friends and family, eat more Hot Dog Shoppe and play golf (“I can hold my own,” he said). Being a positive influence and raising money for a good cause (proceeds from the event go to the Raiders football program) in the city that raised him certainly played a role as well.

“It was a great place to grow up,” he said. “One thing about it was our parents always wanted us to stay off the streets and not be in gangs and all that type of thing. (They wanted us) to learn a trade or something that was going to be positive in life, and sports really turned out to be one of those positive things in our in life.”

Now he’s helping provide that to others.