As shocking new details arise in the tragic end of Greg Brooks Jr.’s football career, LSU football coaches and medical personnel have eyes turned on them all as a result.
Greg Brooks Jr. came out of high school as a four-star recruit as a 2019 high school graduate. He had multiple division one offers but ultimately decided to commit to the University of Arkansas.
Brooks immediately was rewarded playing time in his true freshman season. Brooks was a high NFL prospect throughout his first three seasons at Arkansas but decided to enter the NCAA transfer portal in 2021.
In 2022, Brooks returned home to wear the purple and gold of LSU.
In that first season with LSU, Brooks had his best college football season yet, with 63 tackles, one sack, and two interceptions.
Ultimately, Brooks decided to return to the Tigers for the 2023 season, not expecting the life-altering decisions made by his medical staff to turn his life towards the worst.
During August 2023, Brooks started to experience a general feeling of illness, including dizziness, nausea, headaches, and vomiting, all of which were reported to the LSU training staff ahead of practices and games.
After telling coaches and training staff about how he was feeling, Brooks’s starting position was threatened to be taken away immediately if he didn’t play because of how sick he was feeling. At one point, Brooks even passed out in front of LSU trainers and coaches and threw up as a result. The LSU medical staff wrongly diagnosed him with vertigo, and he went on to be cleared to practice. He went on to play two games and attend multiple practices while being told to “take it easy” due to his symptoms.
39 days later, LSU training staff finally got in touch with a neurologist, who sent Brooks in for an MRI. With the MRI imaging, no one could have expected the outcome. Brooks was diagnosed with a rare form of brain cancer, called medulloblastoma.
Brooks’s father wasn’t informed about the situation at all until the LSU medical staff called him to say that his son was getting emergency surgery that next morning, and he needed to be there.
It turns out, the family was set to believe the only possible thing to do in this situation was for Greg to receive this surgery. Come to find out, the surgeon who performed on him wasn’t qualified to do this particular surgery.
“The whole surgery thing absolutely blows my mind,” said Lower Dauphin junior Hannah Sanson.
Due to the surgeon not being certified to perform this operation and messing up along the way, Brooks suffered strokes mid-surgery and now suffers from a condition called posterior fossa syndrome. Brooks now is more than a year post-operation, and is wheelchair bound, unable to walk, use his right hand, and has difficulty speaking. He has even had to relearn how to read, write, and speak. The disease he suffered is not the reason for his suffering, it is now all a result of surgery.
While he is now cancer-free, Brooks has a long road of recovery ahead. Brooks was a top NFL prospect just days prior to the discovery.
In an interview with Good Morning America, Brooks’s father mentioned how the LSU coaching staff hasn’t reached out to the family since October 2023. “I mean, LSU quite literally abandoned this poor guy,” says Lower Dauphin junior Grace Lindsay.
Now, instead of suiting up for his Sunday NFL games, he has daily speech and occupational therapy.
