Self-actualizing SoCal sports families

Tiger Woods, the Williams Sisters, the Ball Brothers, and now the St. Brown Brothers: why do ambitious, strange athletic clans proliferate in L.A.?

Amon-Ra Julian Heru John St. Brown is a first team All Pro wide receiver for the Detroit Lions of the NFL (out of USC). His brother Equanimeous Tristan Imhotep J. St. Brown is a reserve for the New Orleans Saints (out of Notre Dame). A third brother, Osiris Adrian Amon-Ra J. St. Brown, played football for Stanford. (Via Park MacDougald).

Yes, the St. Browns are yet another Southern California sports family led by a black patriarch with strong opinions and ambitions for his offspring. First there was Tiger Woods in golf, then Venus and Serena Williams, in tennis, then Lonzo, LiAngelo, and LaMelo Ball in basketball. And now the St. Browns in football.

Although the Williams Sisters are a product of a eugenic racial supremacist experiment by their black parents to breed black daughters who could physically outplay the white women who dominated women’s tennis a half century ago, the other three SoCal sports families are mixed race, with a black father and a white or Asian mother.

Sports Illustrated wrote in 2017:

Meet College Football's Version of the Ball Family

By Mike Piellucci September 06, 2017

It’s a Wednesday afternoon in Orange County, Calif., and a middle-aged man in a faded leather weight belt barks orders in a nondescript gym, herding what he calls his “house of 4.0 thugs” through a workout so intense that their biceps twitch.

His name is John Brown and he was once among the bodybuilding elite, a two-time Mr. Universe and three-time Mr. World with a jheri curl and boulder-like muscles. The 4.0 thugs are his three sons, Equanimeous, Osiris and Amon-Ra.

… Theories abound as to why they’re so accomplished. It could be simple genetics, which would be no accident since John readily cops to pursuing his wife, Miriam, for, “selective breeding.” Or it might be their demeanor, ravenously competitive on the field and equally distinguished in the classroom. (Yes, the 4.0 thugs routinely have 4.0 GPAs, according to their parents.) Then there’s John himself, who introduced the boys to weight training when they were as young as kindergarteners, feeds them entree portions of red meat for breakfast and turns his nose up at most high school and college strength coaches because most “don’t know s--- about lifting weights.”

Ultimately, a bombastic former athlete developed a unique regimen to train his three mixed-race, colorfully named sons, intending that they would dominate their chosen sport. In other words, this is the Ball family of football.

Only, the St. Browns are something else entirely, and even more unique. After all, what other accomplished sports family features a patriarch with a day job in women’s fashion and a passion for painting surrealist art? A matriarch who addresses her sons only in German and who once moved with them to Paris for a semester in elementary school? And siblings who are trilingual and took the SATs in three languages?…