ARLINGTON, TEXAS - Tennessee Titans clothes, some in unopened boxes, fill three closets in C.O. Brocato's Arlington home; a pile of Titans' shirts, shorts, warm-ups, hats and bags — individually wrapped in plastic — sit in a corner chair by the front door; and more than a hundred baseball caps, some signed by Steve McNair, take up part of a guest bedroom.
The team's longtime scout wears his heart on his chest, his shorts and his head.
"I don't know what else I would wear," he said. "This is who I am."
Brocato moved to Arlington in 1971 after UT Arlington hired him as defensive coordinator. He joined the Houston Oilers as a scout in 1974, and only a brief stint with the United States Scouting Combine has interrupted his time with the organization.
Brocato, 85, calls himself "semi-retired," but he enters his 41st season with the Titans, now as a "scouting consultant." The team honored Brocato last month by naming the draft room in its Nashville training facility after him.
"He's sort of a walking history book," Titans general manager Ruston Webster said. "He tells the story of working out Earl Campbell, and those things are priceless. I think we all enjoy hearing them. It's helpful for people coming into the organization to know a lot of that history, as well as for everyone in the organization to know about him."
