"Once the season's over it will probably resurface and I'll have to deal with it," Brennan said of his past.
Brennan would not be able to match Leinart's linear, rocket-like rise to stardom even though he tried to mimic Leinart's style after getting his chance at Mater Dei.
"And it was horrible, because that's not me," Brennan said. "I'm not Matt Leinart."
Who was he?
The Colorado mess left Brennan isolated and unpopular with scholarship givers. Syracuse backed off and San Jose State, which showed interest, was too close to home.
So Brennan went island hopping.
He has made questionable moves in his life, but going to Hawaii was not one of them.
The island offered distance, shelter, stability and the quarterback-knowledge services of Coach June Jones.
"I was embarrassed," Brennan said of his predicament. "I wanted to get away. . . . Hawaii seemed like just the place to do it."
Brennan still has a year and half left on the four-year probation he received stemming from his unlawfully entering a coed's dorm room at Colorado.
He pleaded guilty to charges of burglary and trespassing but another charge, unwanted sexual contact, was vacated for lack of evidence.
"I've got nothing to hide," Brennan said. "There's no doubt what happened and what I did and the position I put myself in. I got no one to blame but myself."
He says it does bother him that some news accounts haven't told the complete story.
"I really got dragged through the mud by the media," he said. ". . . The initial articles that came out after I got sentenced were just galaxies away from what I actually got charged with and what actually I got found guilty of."
Brennan said he only needed to learn this life lesson once.
"It can't get any worse than that," he said of his Colorado problems. "I think that walking away from that, you can't embarrass me, you can't really humiliate me anymore. I'm just a kid that just wants to play football and enjoy himself and that's it."
Brennan is having a lot more fun now.
He sat for a recent interview with his hair in dreadlocks, the price you pay for bonding with your wide receivers.
"I can't wait to cut it off, to be honest," Brennan joked.
Brennan has blended into island culture. He knows enough Samoan that he sometimes calls plays in the language at the line of scrimmage: "For the guys on the other side of the ball, they are like, 'What the hell are they saying?' "
