Research findings show former Hawai’i quarterback Colt Brennan suffered from CTE

Dr. Ann McKee, a professor of neurology and pathology at Boston and the CTE Center director shared the news that former Hawaii quarterback Colt Brennan suffered from CTE prior to his death in May of 2021 caused by drug overdose. Doctors identified significant traumatic brain injuries in multiple parts of his brain. 

She noted was a massive gap in the membrane that connects the two sides of the brain to each other. Colt suffered a significant cavum septum pellucidum that ran the entire length of the membrane, meaning there was a gap, or cave, all along that should not have been there. He also suffered from a loss of tissue in his right frontal lobe that left a hole due to a substantial loss of tissue caused by a car accident that happened in 2010.

“It was enough to call CTE Stage I,” McKee said. “But it might’ve been greater had we been able to really assess other regions.”

The car accident caused a traumatic brain injury (TBI), which changed his brain forever. Add CTE, alcohol and drug use on top of that, and his brain was hijacked and damaged beyond repair.

“He’s got impulses that he can’t control. He’s got urges that are physical in nature,” McKee said. “There’s a physical aspect to this. It’s not just will. And fortitude. And discipline. He’s got injuries that he’s trying to overcome.”

Although Brennan changed significantly after the car accident, science suggests his CTE began years earlier. Colt had suffered a concussion while he was a walk-on at Colorado before transferring to Hawaii. Even when he was just 12 years old, Brennan suffered a concussion so severe, he got sick enough to the point where he was forced to go to the emergency room.

“He was really working uphill,” says Ryan Bain, a Tree House counselor and former Division I college football player. “He had a pretty limited toolkit given everything he had been through with the car accident, the damage to his brain and addiction in and of itself, without all of the other medical issues. Not to mention his fall from grace. It’s really difficult for people, the self-esteem collapse that comes from that.”

Even if dramatic brain injuries are identified, they are nearly impossible to recover from. McKee noted that one way to help people suffering from traumatic brain injuries and symptoms of CTE is to understand that their symptoms are the results of injuries they have sustained over a lifetime, and do not reflect on who they are as a person.

“We really need better ways to help these guys,” McKee says. “Better ways to identify they’re going through these issues. We know this very well—that there’s almost nothing to really offer these guys. There’s very few people that even recognize this is an issue.”