GLENN GUILBEAU, Tiger Rag Editor
Former LSU football star defensive back and team captain Greg Brooks Jr. continues to gradually recover from paralysis and speech impairment after an emergency brain tumor surgery on Sept. 15, 2023, that had major complications and ended his budding football career as a fifth-year senior.
GREG BROOKS JR. SUING LSU, OUR LADY OF THE LAKE HOSPITAL FOR MEDICAL NEGLIGENCE
But he will not be forgotten, pledges his father, Greg Brooks Sr., who with his son sued LSU last August for misdiagnosing the cancer in Brooks Jr.’s brain and thus delaying the surgery at Our Lady of the Lake Hospital by surgeon Brandon Gaynor, who are each being sued as well.
READ GREG BROOKS JR. LAWSUIT HERE
There is no information on the status of the lawsuit as of yet, such as a court date or other status conferences, hearings or deposition schedules. Brooks Jr.’s lawyers Jeffrey Rosenblum of Memphis and Kara Hadican Samuels of New Orleans have not returned calls about the lawsuit. Nor has Metairie attorney Michael S. Futrell, who is representing LSU, or Baton Rouge attorney Thomas R. Temple Jr., who is representing Our Lady of the Lake hospital.
Brooks and his son appeared on ESPN analyst and former LSU football player Ryan Clark’s “The Pivot” podcast last week. Clark, a former NFL and LSU star safety, has been friends with Brooks Sr., who played at Southern Mississippi and in the NFL, since they were young kids growing up in New Orleans and has known Greg Jr., 23, since he was a baby.
“Every single day, the grass is going to be greener,” Brooks Jr. said. “I keep saying, ‘Do not give up.’ I can’t complain. I’m still here. It’s just a blessing to be sitting here. The way my family raised me, I can’t thank them enough.”
Clark, who would later broke down in tears after Brooks Jr. was wheeled out of the interview, told him, “You are an absolute dude. This world needs you. And we are so blessed that you’re here.”
Brooks Sr. had harshly criticized LSU football coach Brian Kelly, who is a defendant in the lawsuit, last February on “Good Morning America” for ignoring his son from October of 2023 on by not visiting his son or calling his son or calling him or Brooks Jr.’s mother, Pym Barnes. He picked up that criticism again with Clark, but Clark at times took up for Kelly, who did visit Brooks Jr. often in Baton Rouge after the surgery during that football season. Until Brooks Jr. was transported to St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital specializing in cancer in Memphis that October. Brooks Jr. has since returned home.
BRIAN KELLY CRITICIZES ACCURACY OF GREG BROOKS SR.’S COMMENTS ABOUT HIM
“To not hear from your head coach in over 17 months f-ing months – 17 months,” Davis Sr. told Clark. “That’s hurtful. That kid’s suffering. This man (Kelly) has never called us. Never called us. Check the phone records. Stand up and do what’s right. Pick up the phone and call his mom.”
“Now Greg, you say he never called,” Clark interjected. “I want to be clear. Brian Kelly and coach Frank (Wilson) were there one of the days I was there.”
Brooks Sr. retorted, “When we left Baton Rouge in October of 2023, we never heard from Brian Kelly. Never heard from him. Brian Kelly maybe came to the hospital four times. He didn’t come to see him until Sunday (Sept. 17, the day after LSU’s game at Mississippi State). Unacceptable. He should’ve been the first person that called that kid and told him he loved him. Unacceptable. So, you come Sunday. And I don’t see you again until Thursday.”
Clark and Brooks Sr. then had this exchange:
CLARK: “He still has a team to run. Greg Jr. is important, but he (Kelly) still has to go back to practice. He still has to coach. He still has to do the job that he’s paid to do.”
BROOKS SR.: “Ten million dollars a year (salary), and you can’t pick up the phone and call and check on this kid? You can’t do that?”
CLARK: “OK.”
Clark then pointed out that he read and saw reports in March of 2024 that featured Kelly saying Brooks Jr. was walking.
“I had just left him, and I knew he couldn’t,” Clark said.
“Walking? He was nowhere near walking,” Brooks Sr. said. “That just goes to show you, he (Kelly) never knew about his progress.”
Brooks Jr. still is not walking normally and needs help and assistance with a wheelchair. But he is improving. He is not talking normally either. But he is improving.
Brooks Sr.’s comments about Kelly have garnered the most attention because of Kelly’s celebrity status as a head coach. But the crux of the lawsuit and of Brooks Sr.’s comments with Clark focus on the gross medical negligence accusations against LSU’s medical personnel.
Brooks Sr. is naturally struggling with the fact that his son practiced and played football from Aug. 5 or through the Florida State game on Sept. 3 and the Grambling game on Sept. 9 with a likely growing tumor in his brain. How much more successful would the surgery have been had LSU got Brooks Jr., who was clearly showing neurological symptoms, to a neurologist sooner for the MRI and the subsequent surgery sooner?
“This kid was playing with a f-ing brain tumor – a brain tumor,” Brooks Sr. told Clark. “If proper protocol was followed, we would’ve caught this earlier. He drained fluid from his brain for three weeks. And LSU gave him a BC powder? That’s even more hurtful – to know that he came and asked for help. If it can be prevented, prevent it. If you tell someone, ‘My head’s hurting,’ they’ve got to believe you because they can’t see it. If it was my ankle or my knee, you’re going to see it.”
The fact that LSU rushed Brooks Jr. to surgery just a day after the tumor was discovered perhaps proves the validity of misdiagnosis arguments in the lawsuit.
“They diagnosed him on a Thursday. Surgery on Friday,” Brooks Sr. said. “That tells it all right there. He was suffering. It took almost a month and a half for him to be scanned! Vertigo? All these things. A month and a half to be scanned? That’s hurtful for me. That should hurt anybody, just to know that that kid was out playing like that.”
Brooks Sr. said his son wasn’t taken seriously by the medical staff or by coaches early on. In addition to Kelly, then-defensive coordinator Matt House and then-safeties coach Kerry Cooks are also listed as defendants in the lawsuit. And players universally tend to be closer to and talk more to their position coaches than their head coaches.
“They were saying, ‘Suck it up!’ And calling him a (expletive deleted),” Brooks Sr. said. “And he’s out there throwing up.”
Clark then explained that headaches and concussions are common in football and asked Brooks Sr. if he felt that the training staff was doing its best to diagnose the issue.
“When you look at TV, if there’s a hard it, they’re taking them out the damn game,” Brooks Sr. said. “So, what’s the difference between that and him (Brooks Jr.) coming to you and saying, ‘Coach, my head hurts?’ Because they don’t believe you if you don’t see it. If it was an ankle or knee, they’d see it.”
Clark then asked Brooks Sr. what many have discussed since the lawsuit came to light in October of 2024.
“Did you ever tell him to stop playing? Did you ever say, as a family, let’s go get a second opinion? Let’s try to figure out the best way we know how,” Clark said.
“I was believing that it’s Vertigo, believing that it’s heat exhaustion,” Brooks Sr. said. “I’m trusting the medical staff. Hell, if I didn’t, we would’ve got a second opinion. We put all the faith in the medical staff.”
As harsh as Brooks Sr.’s criticism of Kelly was, his criticism of the medical care – or lack thereof – for his son by LSU team doctors was as striking and more detailed. LSU team doctors Stephen Etheridge, Vincent Shaw and Tony Johnson III were named as defendants in the lawsuit in addition to head athletic trainer Owen Stanley.
Brooks first began complaining of headaches and dizziness on Aug. 5, 2023, and vomited in front of teammates and coaches at this time. LSU’s medical team first mistakenly diagnosed him with Vertigo and heat exhaustion without seeing a doctor. Dr. Shaw then saw Brooks briefly after practice that day, but “failed to do any type of detailed examination,” the lawsuit states.
Brooks kept practicing and complaining of the above symptoms for several more days without seeing a doctor through Aug. 11. Then Stanley – a trainer, not a doctor – diagnosed Brooks again with Vertigo via an app on his phone and cleared him to practice without getting Brooks to a doctor, the lawsuit says.
Despite those symptoms often continuing, Brooks Jr. was cleared to play in LSU’s first two games of the season on Sept. 3 and Sept. 9 before LSU finally made a Sept. 13 appointment for him with a neurologist, who ordered an MRI (magnetic resonance imaging) test. The cancer was then discovered. LSU and the family were notified on Sept. 14. And LSU rushed him into surgery at its Our Lady of the Lake partner on Sept. 15. During the surgery, Brooks Jr. “suffered multiple strokes due to acts of malpractice, which are being addressed in a medical review panel proceeding,” the lawsuit states.
Clark closed his podcast with an impressive and prescient soliloquy of advice to his childhood friend who is much like a brother to him.
“You have to remember that your job is to take care of him,” Clark began. “If you make this a personal vendetta (against Brian Kelly, for example), if you make this about big Greg instead of little Greg, now you lose the power of his voice. You lose the power of his fight – that pain and that adversity and that trouble and that hard work that it took for him just to be able to get to where he is. And the things his mom had to deal with.”
Brooks Sr. said with conviction, “Right.”
Clark then went hard on his friend.
“All that stuff you all went through, if you go and act an ass, it takes all that away,” Clark said. “There is a way to do this, and there is a way to move forward where he gets what he needs, where he gets what he deserves. And the rest of the world gets to see you the way that you should be seen – which is class, which is honor, which is love, which is effort.”
Clark foresees Brooks Jr. one day speaking to young kids stricken with cancer.
“All that is going to make his story when he’s standing in front of a group of kids who have tumors, who are riddled with cancer, who want to be able to stand up and walk,” he said. “If you make this a circus, he won’t get to be a king. And he’s a king.”
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