Justin Brent has not let TMZ infamy define him as an athlete or a person

MISHAWAKA, Ind. — Justin Brent, possibly the oldest 23-year-old in America, arrives early to dinner, sinks into a booth and passes on the bread. He substitutes broccoli in place of a fried side to go with his 18-ounce T-bone, the most flavorful food he has eaten in the past two months.

His three favorite meals are cheeseburgers, ribs and chicken wings, but saying goodbye to those is just a small sacrifice for a guy who knows a thing or two about getting bad habits out of his system. It’s a level of maturity he thinks will serve an NFL locker room well.

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How many other prospects played three positions for two schools and two sports for one school, making a Sweet 16 and winning a bowl game in the same calendar year? How many pro hopefuls earned a Notre Dame degree by studying abroad in China, celebrated their 21st birthday by welcoming their child into the world and lived in an apartment near another school halfway across the country with their girlfriend and son, all without a car?

“We had been dating since I was 16,” he says of his girlfriend, Karli Ward, adding: “Off and on, obviously.”

He owns that last part of it — obviously — too, knowing full well that his freshman year of college is a part of his story that he cannot erase, especially as he approaches job interviews. It is part of the reason he is so excited to be back here, why that normally interminable three-hour drive to Notre Dame from his hometown of Indianapolis on Route 31 was met with more than begrudging acceptance this time around.

“This is home. This is always gonna be home because my son was born here, this is where I was recruited to go,” Brent says. “You gotta think: I committed to Notre Dame my sophomore year going into my junior year. I was here every day. Freshman, sophomore, junior year, I was here every day. So it’s five years that I was part of this family, and to come back here and you gotta think, man, my girlfriend moved out here with me, so I have memories with her up here. It’s a lot. So it all hit me.

“I always said: Man, I hate that drive. I hate that drive. But today it wasn’t that bad, because it was like: Man, this gas station is still right here, that McDonald’s is still right there. So it was kind of cool.”

That he professes his love for this region while wearing a navy Nevada Wolf Pack hoodie — a cloak of anonymity some three miles from where he will participate in his second pro day in a week — is part of his story, too.

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“Guys in college, my teammates, or other guys were always like: ‘Man, I wanna do what you did, I wanna do that,’ and they always wonder why I always downplay it,” he says of his past. “And I’m always like: It doesn’t lead to anything positive.”

You know who Justin Brent is even if you don’t exactly remember his name. It has been nearly five years since he brought college football and TMZ together, not that time has kept Brent from still hearing about his most public moment as a Notre Dame student.

No laws were broken, no classroom shortcuts were taken, no team rules were violated. But in 2014, Brent found himself in a decidedly 21st-century firestorm that was ripe for consumption and small on substance.

Notre Dame had an open date on Oct. 25, and the school was on mid-semester break that week. Brent, in his first season with the Irish, flew to New York and attended a preseason Knicks game on Oct. 22. His company for that game? Lisa Ann, a porn star who was 42 years old at the time and boasts of enshrinement in three adult entertainment halls of fame. She is famous enough that Brent says at least one player on the court that night noticed her in the crowd and repeatedly looked over at him, wondering who in the world this kid was that she was sitting with.

Pictures of the two together surfaced the next day. Brent woke up Oct. 23 to discover that he had become something of a viral celebrity, the results of which made him either a legend or a pariah, depending on the prism through which one views such matters.

“It’s almost as if overnight everybody knows your name, but not for the reasons you want them to know it,” Brent says. “It’s hard to process it, man. There’s all kinds of people — there are some that are impressed, there are some that are upset. You’ve got to think about your family. You’ve got to think about everything. So it was tough, man.”

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He says he met Lisa Ann through a roommate when she was in town earlier that year. The two stayed in touch, leading to the Big Apple excursion. Another photo later surfaced of the two appearing to be in bed together. Brent still is not sure how that one got out, but it ended up serving as a broader lesson about the situations he had put himself in.

“I’ve always been kind of private about who I’m always with, but after that I really had to become a private person because my whole life was (about) who I was talking to,” he says. “Obviously, we weren’t dating — that was just what the media would tell you — but my whole life was about who I was hanging out with and everything, and that’s not what you want. You want it to be about football, and you want it to be about that stuff, and it changed me, man. It made me mature a lot faster. You’ve got to think: When that happens, you’re in a situation where every choice you make, you have to make the right choice now, because everybody already thinks one way of you, only thinks one way of you.

“And it got to the point (where) I had to change my whole thought process. I had to focus. I started listening to scriptures in the morning, I started doing all kinds of stuff and just focusing on my faith. Then I had my son. I was like: I can’t be living this lifestyle. He can’t know me for just being that. I started focusing on my family, man, and I had a girl who held me down since I was young.”

When Brent returned to campus, he sat down with Notre Dame coach Brian Kelly, whom he will forever hold in high regard. Brent was a scout-teamer at the time, and most of his Saturday duties came on special teams. He did not face any school discipline, but it was no secret that he was in Kelly’s doghouse.

“Obviously, through me still graduating and me being back here, Coach Kelly understood I’m young and I was making a decision that I didn’t know was gonna be that bad,” Brent says. “So he still supported me, obviously, but at the same time it was like, ‘You’ve just got to be careful about what you’re doing.’

“He talked to me about that. He also promised my mom that he was always gonna make sure I graduated and take care of me. He’s still doing that now. That’s why I thank him so much, because to some people, I’m ‘The Man,’ but he was thinking about me as a person and what that could mean for the future, and I’m thankful for that.”

Notre Dame has commenced each of its past five seasons an hour south of campus for a reason: Culver Academies is relatively secluded from the rest of society. It makes for a great getaway to enhance team bonding at the start of fall camp, unless you are expecting your first child and your mind is running a million miles a minute elsewhere.

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Fighting Irish coaches were understanding of Brent’s situation in 2016, communicating with all parties to ensure he would not miss the birth of his son should Ward, his girlfriend, go into labor during the program’s Aug. 6-10 retreat. Brent was a limited participant to begin with, thanks to a Lisfranc injury suffered during the spring game four months earlier.

The Culver trip came and went without any drama. Then Brent arrived back to the apartment he shared with Ward, hours shy of an occasion that the Brent of old would have reveled in.

“As soon as I got home I was like: Man, it’s my 21st birthday, and I’m literally sitting here on the couch instead of what every other 21-year-old’s doing on their 21st birthday,” he says, laughing. “But I was like: Man, I’m just ready for him to come.

“I went to sleep, rolled over and an hour or two later she was like, ‘It’s time.’ I’m like, ‘You’re lying.’ She was like, ‘No, I’m serious. It’s time to go.’ The hospital is a mile away, but I’m in a panic like he’s about to come right now. You see (it) in the movies.”

Braxton Brent was born on Aug. 11, 2016. While it was a lost year on the field — Brent saw no action as the Irish crumbled to a 4-8 record — the bigger picture came into focus. In need of a fresh start, the former early enrollee discussed his plans to transfer with the Irish staff, who followed through on Kelly’s graduation promise and let him stick around the following spring.

Nevada receivers coach Eric Scott recruited the receiver-turned-running back to Reno, sealing the deal for Brent’s arrival, which came shortly after he returned from a three-week study-abroad program in China that he needed to complete to obtain his degree in film, television and theatre. Ward and Braxton made the move out West with him, moving into an apartment near the practice facility since they did not have a car.

“She’s a rock,” Brent says of Ward. “She’s been there, been through a lot and made a lot of sacrifices. Came and lived out there in Nevada, 2,000 miles away from her family. She always held me down. I always didn’t make the best decisions, so it’s amazing, but without her I wouldn’t be able to do everything I’m doing right now.”

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Brent saw action in six games at receiver in 2017, making one catch for 21 yards, before opportunity truly beckoned after the season. The first break came when a combination of injury and dismissal left Nevada’s 20th-ranked basketball team down to seven scholarship players in February 2018. Wolf Pack football coach Jay Norvell granted hoops coach Eric Musselman permission to add Brent, who had been a four-star basketball recruit out of Speedway (Ind.) High. He made three appearances in nine games, scoring on his only shot attempt, a garbage-time layup in a rout of UNLV.

The Pack’s storybook ride to the Sweet 16 scratched a hoops itch for Brent while allowing his wife and son to experience the madness of March in a way most folks can only dream of. Brent spent all of 29 days in a basketball uniform, but the one-point loss to Final Four-bound Loyola-Chicago ate at him.

“You gotta think, man, when you lose like that to Loyola, you get a sour taste in your mouth,” he says. “You become a part of the brotherhood, and we’re literally bawling and crying in the locker room. And I was on the plane, in the moment I’m telling Coach Muss I wanna be back next year. In the back of my head I’m also like: You know, it’s gonna get to a point where you’re kind of doing this for fun. Are you doing this for fun or are you gonna really focus on your future and take care of your family? So I had to be real with myself.”

Even if that meant passing up a chance to play for a team ranked as high as No. 5 this season, and even if that meant more adjustments were coming to his primary sport.

Brent switched to safety in 2018. Injury and suspension again opened the door, as Brent tallied 27 tackles, one sack, one forced fumble and one fumble recovery in the season, with two interceptions in the Arizona Bowl, his final college game. He was given the program’s outstanding special teams player award and, on the brink of obtaining his master’s degree in justice management, was named to the academic All-Mountain West team for the second consecutive season.

“He went from playing running back to playing receiver to playing defensive back, like all types of positions,” former Irish teammate Dexter Williams says. “But at the same time, it shows how dimensional (he is). He’s not just a person who can just really stick to a running back spot. He can play defense. You can use him on both sides of the field. It’s something that he brings to the table, so I’m very happy for him.”

“That’s a big-time catch,” Kerry Coombs shouted Wednesday. “Nice job!”

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Brent had stumbled near midfield during a defensive backs drill at Notre Dame’s pro day, recovering to make an off-balance grab in front of the Titans’ secondary coach. He reminded everyone that, as a former receiver, he had been the No. 1 prospect in Indiana in 2014.

This was Brent’s second pro day in two Wednesdays, the combined results of which offered a taste of the athleticism he brings to the table: His 22 reps on the bench press would have tied for first among safeties at the NFL combine, his 36.5-inch vertical would have tied for sixth, and his 7.08 seconds in the three-cone drill would have tied for fifth.

Brent was not invited to the pre-draft showcase in Indianapolis, where he is currently living with Ward, Braxton and Ward’s grandparents until after the draft. He trains at Sparx Athletic Refinery in Fishers, the facility co-founded by former NFL receiver Courtney Roby.

His film is scarce, but Brent is betting on his misguided past to shape his promising future. In a roundabout way, his time in the limelight opened some fairly important doors for him. He would rather not name-drop the celebrities he counts as confidants, but anybody who has seen the pictures of him with Drake on his Instagram page can connect their own dots.

“(Brent) was a guy that actually helped me along the way (during) his time here,” says Williams, who ran into off-field trouble on multiple occasions while at Notre Dame. “(I) learned a lot of things from him, as well.”

“You’ve gotta think, I’ve been dealing with that type of stuff since I was 19,” Brent says. “A lot of guys don’t see that side of people trying to get you until they get some money over there and make it to the NFL.

“(I can) be that person that says: Hey, this is not the best look. Don’t go this route. That’s always gonna be there. You don’t have to jump into that right now. You have to focus on what you need to focus on, because distractions do you in and you’ve gotta make sure you’re focused on what you need to get accomplished before you start worrying about all that other stuff.”

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Brent is a long way from that top-ranked billing of his prep days. He is even further away from the teenager who, as Kelly infamously said in 2014, “gets distracted easily.” Take the entirety of Brent’s college career into account, and you will be hard-pressed to find many revenue-sport athletes who have experienced more in a five-year span than him, for better and for worse.

He may project as a late-round pick at best, but as Brent readies for the draft, he is at a different life stage than his peers. Whereas professionals often strike it big, make a few murky decisions and get humbled later on, Brent has already been there, done that and lived to tell about it.

“When you start maturing and you start having family and you start worrying about other stuff, you don’t really have as much time to be chasing people that are partying,” Brent says. “You’re focused on your dreams and what you have going on and understand that’s always gonna be there. And at this point in your life, when you need to be focusing on football, it’s nothing but distractions that can lead you down the wrong path.”

His son will turn 3 in five months. He shares a birthday with Dad, whose own celebrations have been muted lately. His age stopped mattering a while ago.

(Top photo: Mark J. Rebilas / USA Today)

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