One of the leaders of American soccer at the time that the United States Football Association was formed, and the president of that organization during a crisis period in 1927.
When the American Amateur Football Association made its bid for international recognition in 1912, Brown was the president of a rival organization, the American Football Association, which had been founded in 1884, and became the leading voice within the AFA for compromise and accommodation with the new association. He met with considerable opposition on this issue within his organization, which broke off merger negotiations with the AAFA in December 1912. However, Brown was able to overcome that opposition and led the AFA into the new association, by then reorganized as the U.S. Football Association, after it won recognition from FIFA in 1913.
By 1927, Brown had become president of the USFA, a post in which he served from 1926 to 1928. In 1927, he was called upon to make an emergency trip to the FIFA Congress in Finland after the Hungarian and Australian federations sought to have the USFA penalized by FIFA because of the signing by American Soccer League clubs of players still under contract to European teams, particularly Hakoah Vienna after its American tour in 1926. After his arrival in Finland, Brown was able to broker a solution to the problem, one that avoided the threat of the USFA being suspended from FIFA, but which angered from ASL owners and did have a role in precipitating the Soccer War.
Brown was the United States delegate to the 1929 FIFA Congress in Spain at which the decision was made to hold the first World Cup the following year.
Inducted in 1950.