Hometown to TigerTown Ch. 1: Brian Tyms

Tyms’ path to the CFL was tumultuous, moving from foster homes, to homelessness, to the Super Bowl. Tyms spent his youth bouncing from one foster family to another while his parents struggled to figure out their lives. He became deeply entrenched in the gutters of Fort Lauderdale and Pompano, until he discovered football at the age of 17. Until then, he had no family, no purpose, and no way out. From the first snap, Tyms used football to search for the family he was denied, and a community that accepted him.
Tyms spent ages seven to 18 in foster care. He never ceased trying to reconnect with his biological parents, but they didn’t hold up their end of the bargain, instead choosing to experiment with drugs. Deprived of financial support, Tyms began working at McDonalds, slinging burgers out a drive-through window. Before he graduated high-school, both his parents passed away.
In the ensuing fallout, Tyms had a heated encounter with his foster family and chose to set out on his own. For the next year, he lived out of a 1994 Lexus Sedan, his clothes heaped in the back seat, his possessions stuffed in the overburdened trunk. He drove his home into the ground, piling 330,000 miles on it before the transmission fell out the bottom. Eventually, close friends helped steer him in a more promising direction, convincing him to leave his troubled past in the rearview.
“The best thing to do when you get in trouble is leave home,” says Tyms. “So I took everything I had, everything I made, and left.”

Tyms paid his own way through community college, trying in vain to crack the basketball team roster. Time and again he was cut. Dejected, he turned his efforts to football, a sport that rewarded his physical skill-set and work ethic. Tyms spent every evening in the run-down community college gym, lifting chipped weights and tarnished bars. He spent every morning in his beat-up running shoes, sprinting, jogging, and running routes. He turned his attention entirely to football and set a goal of playing for Florida State. After months of training, he felt ready to take a shot with the Seminoles.
An unnamed coach at Florida State sat down with Tyms following his tryout with the school. Tyms recounts the experience.
“How long have you been playing football son?” the FSU coach asked.
“Maybe a year or two,” responded Tyms.
“If I’m being honest with you son,” said the coach, “if you come to Florida State, you’ll be wasting your time. You’ll never play here. You’ll never make it in football.”
Tyms disagreed with the evaluation, and brought his talents to Florida A&M. They granted him a spot on the team but not in the capacity Tyms felt he deserved.
“They would put me out there in the worst situations,” remembers Tyms. “They would tell me, ‘Hey, run this post, and he’s going to hit you. Catch the ball and he’s going to knock you down.’ It was just savagery.”
Tyms grappled with loneliness in his time at Florida A&M. There was no one for him to lean on when he suffered set-backs, and no one to share in his successes. He had no home to return to. Instead he stayed around the university for the duration of his tenure, building the framework for a professional football career. In his senior year he met a beautiful track star and began to build the support network that had been absent all his life.
Despite the stabilizing presence of his new girlfriend, years of being overlooked for sport opportunities slowly opened a broadening chip on his shoulder. Tyms carried a fiery attitude throughout his collegiate career and into the NFL.
“In practice if somebody hit me too hard, the next play I’d hit them back, even if they weren’t my guy to hit. That’s just the attitude you develop when you’re used to everybody giving you a hard time since you were seven years old,” laments Tyms.

Tyms bounced around the NFL. He started in San Francisco but was cut after being caught in off-field trouble. After a year and a half in Miami, he moved on to Cleveland. There he was suspended and ultimately ended up in New England where he earned a spot on the active roster, despite the ongoing suspension that made him ineligible for the first month of the season. It was in New England that he acquired his Super Bowl ring.
In a stroke of bad luck, Tyms tore his Achilles during training camp the season after the Pats’ Super Bowl victory.
“After that, everybody acted like I couldn’t run anymore,” says Tyms ruefully. “They’d seen me play. They knew what I could do out there. But I guess it wasn’t enough. I was tired of being – I won’t say scrutinized – just treated like a robot. It was very different when I came up here. The coaching staff trusted me to play.”
Tyms found a place on the Tiger-Cats roster at the end of the 2016 season. He clicked immediately with the team and the city.
“On game day, that was… that was something else man. The stadium was crazy. It was just so much love. Even people on the street showing so much love. It’s different than where I grew up because there’s so much hate there. Everybody is upset with everybody for no good reason. But I’m here now. I’m here and I’m happy.”
On the training camp turf at Ron Joyce Stadium, Tyms is embracing an opportunity that he is deeply grateful for. In Hamilton, he’s playing for a Tiger-Cat organization that values him and treats him like a human-being. He married the track star from Florida A&M and they now have two children together. Every day when he takes the field his beautiful wife and kids are there in his corner as emotional support. After so many years in football, Tyms has finally found what he’s been searching for: a family, and a community that’s thrilled to accept him.