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From TMZ headline to draft hopeful: Young family inspires Justin Brent as he eyes possible NFL future
From TMZ headline to draft hopeful: Young family inspires Justin Brent as he eyes possible NFL future
Justin Brent prepares for NFL draft alongside his 2-year-old-son
Former Speedway High and Notre Dame football player Justin Brent trains at Sparx Athletic Refinery ahead of the NFL draft.
Former Speedway, Notre Dame standout Justin Brent speaks after pro day in South Bend
Former Speedway High and Notre Dame player Justin Brent speaks ahead of this week's NFL Draft. Now a safety, Brent finished his career at Nevada
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SOUTH BEND – Watching Tiger Woods complete his unlikely comeback with a fifth career Masters win, Justin Brent could feel his emotions well within.
It wasn’t just their shared bond of fatherhood, although that certainly was part of it.
At 23, Brent is two full decades younger than the champion golfer, but the former Speedway High School football star can relate to the sort of international spotlight and TMZ-fueled headlines that dogged Woods in the wake of his public demise more than a decade ago.
In Brent’s case, it was a brief public dalliance with adult-film star Lisa Ann in the fall of 2014 that complicated his budding Notre Dame career and could yet impact his prospects in this week’s NFL draft.
“A lot of times people see things on the internet and they automatically associate that’s how you are or that what happened is exactly how they said it happened,” Brent says. “For (Woods) to not let everything that happened define him, for him to keep his head down and keep working and not keep making the same mistakes and it finally pays off, man, it was amazing to see. It was an inspiration.”
Woods was 19 the first time he played at Augusta National Golf Club and 21 the first time he won in 1997. What ultimately became a wild lifestyle, including multiple reported flings with porn stars, wouldn’t catch up to him for another decade, until Thanksgiving weekend of 2008.
Brent had just turned 19 two months earlier when he found himself flying to New York City during fall break in October 2014 and attending a preseason New York Knicks-Washington Wizards game at Madison Square Garden on Oct. 22. His date that night was 42-year-old Lisa Ann, a 25-year veteran of the adult-film industry who typically has paparazzi chasing her every step.
“It was a blessing to finally see (Woods) win because I know that it is such a struggle to deal with everybody loving you at one point and then everybody hates you at one point or is saying something bad about you,” Brent says. “And your family is struggling because of that, and you just don’t want to let people down. And for a minute, he probably felt as if he was.”
Brent, who eventually earned his bachelor’s degree from Notre Dame and spent the past two seasons as a graduate transfer at Nevada, recognizes his brush with celebrity pales next to Woods’ incredible timeline. But that doesn’t mean he couldn’t be deeply moved by the full restoration of Woods’ status as a generational sports hero.
Their link is as much about the social-media era and viral vitriol as the questionable company they kept.
“When you think about it, everybody goes through something, a moment that they’re not proud of, but not everybody has it blown up in the media or online for everybody to see,” Brent says. “That’s the hard thing to recover from because it’s your image. For him to come back from that — and obviously it will always carry with him, but at least he can say, ‘Hey, I learned from it, I moved on and I was successful after it’ — not everybody can say that.”
Karli Ward was a freshman at IUPUI when she saw the Fame Monster grab hold of her high school sweetheart and turn his world upside down.
She and Brent were taking a break from their relationship as they tried to get settled into college life for the first time. Having dated him seriously since their sophomore year of high school, when a shared double date between Speedway and Ben Davis High students later brought them together, Ward was stunned when photos of Brent and his porn-star date were splashed across her Twitter feed.
Her family soon found out about it as well, which only increased Ward’s embarrassment, confusion and anger. She blamed herself for not enrolling at IU-South Bend as the couple had initially discussed.
“That was a regret just because I knew long distance is hard, especially when you’re young and you’re used to seeing each other all the time,” Ward says. “He was adjusting to school and adjusting to life away and adjusting to a whole new lifestyle. I knew he was in a hard place.”
In addition to the photo of Lisa Ann sitting on Brent’s lap at the Knicks game, another photo surfaced of the two appearing to be in bed together. The latter photo is still the first one that pops up when searching for Lisa Ann on Google.
Considering 1.1 million people follow Lisa Ann's official Twitter account (@thereallisaann), it didn’t take long for the Fighting Irish freshman to become fodder for every sports talk-show host and low-rent comedian looking for a cheap punch line.
Two months later, in a mid-December interview with VladTV.com, the porn star filled in some of the blanks of how she and Brent found each other. Lisa Ann told the interviewer they met through a mutual friend at Ohio State, someone she had only met the week before.
“Such a cutie pie, isn’t he?” she said of Brent. “Just a tasty morsel. Nineteen years old. Oh, dreamy.”
Asked about her impact on the freshman football player’s life, Lisa Ann suggested it could only be positive, even while noting the “magnet force” and the “secret society” in which she existed.
“At his age it’s pretty much cool points,” she told VladTV.com. “When he went back to school, he just got a standing ovation everywhere he went for like the first week. Boys think it’s great. This opens up the possibility for every other young, hot college boy to think, ‘Oh, my God, maybe she will.’"
At last check that YouTube interview had 484,500 views. Lisa Ann also made it clear in that three-minute, 19-second video that her fling with Brent would be brief.
“I don’t ever want to be with somebody that much younger than me in a serious relationship,” she said. “I’d be way too worried about aging. But they’re really fun to hang out and go places with and have fun with. They’re super fun, but no, not that young.”
Two weeks later, with Brent back home to visit his family during Christmas break, he and Ward finally had a chance to speak in person. The two went out one night for hot chocolate and a tour of Christmas lights in the area.
“It was kind of just enjoying each other’s presence because we hadn’t been around each other in a while,” Ward recalls. “Later in the evening, once we were about to depart, is when I finally spoke up and told him how what happened affected me and how I felt about it.”
Rather than turn defensive, Brent quickly apologized. Then he sat and listened at length to Ward.
“I told him, ‘What you did didn’t just affect you, it affected me,’” Ward recalls. “I feel like he didn’t really think of that in the moment. Just because he was young and kind of naïve, he didn’t realize his decisions affected those outside of just him.”
Peace talks continued over the break. Ward had a long heart-to-heart with Sharon Brent, Justin’s mom, as well as further soul-baring discussions with Brent.
Progress was made. Heather Ward, Karli’s mother, just wanted her daughter to make sure she was doing the right thing if she and Brent decided to reunite.
“She was hesitant and she told me to be careful because of the name and because of what he had done and how it was broadcasted for everyone to know,” Karli Ward says. “But she understood and she was supportive of me. She was going to support me whatever I decided to do.”
Ultimately, the couple decided to give it another try. They have been together ever since.
“Horrible as it sounds, it wasn’t too hard,” Ward says. “I always had love for him. Yes, I did hold a grudge and it took me a long, long time to stop holding that grudge because I realized, being young, I was very emotional and I was thinking, ‘Oh, I want to be with him, despite what everyone else thinks of him.’"
It helped that Ward’s family, including stepfather Jason Abston and grandmother April Everett, liked and respected Brent so much.
“I had a lot of my family and friends that were in my corner and understood, ‘He’s not that; he’s not who the media has made him out to be,’" Ward says. “It took a lot of inner strength for me to realize that, you know what, we are stronger than this. He was young and dumb and he made a mistake, so it did take me a while to get over it, but I’m not even fazed by it anymore.”
Since meeting Brent, Lisa Ann has continued to expand her personal brand, which now includes a SiriusXM Fantasy Sports Radio show and an autobiography titled “The Life.” Through her official web site, she hawks a line of casual footwear and other products in addition to film clips and headline appearances at clubs from Washington, D.C., to Alaska.
Ward agrees when it is suggested the porn star used her boyfriend as an unwitting prop.
“He isn’t the first or the only one, college athlete-wise, that she’s done that to,” Ward says. “She knew what she was doing. She knew what she was going to get after that, but he didn’t think of it like that.
“It’s the same with a lot of the other guys that she’s put in these predicaments. So yeah, I feel for them, especially being a bystander and seeing what he’s gone through and seeing the hardships that caused for him and the bad rep and just how it’s still affecting his life years later.”
What would Ward say to Lisa Ann if she had the chance?
“I’ve gone back and forth with what I would say,” Ward says. “I just feel like now I wouldn’t even bother saying anything. We’ve moved on past that. We’re in a better place in our lives, and that was nothing but a speedbump along the way. Yeah, I wouldn’t even confront her if I saw her today.”
The question now for Brent is if NFL teams will hold against him what happened 4 ½ years ago.
He was encouraged, as he went through pre-draft interviews with NFL representatives, that no one asked him to explain what he was thinking when he went to that long-ago Knicks game with a famous porn star.
Privately, however, he knows the topic looms.
“I’m sure there will be questions,” he says. “I’m sure they ask coaches and everybody around, but it’s (not) really who I am. It’s stuff that’s in the past. I’m sure they realize that. I’m sure you can just see the growth.”
The earnestness in his voice and his willingness to answer any questions that arise, no matter how personal, should serve him well. If he isn’t selected on Day 3 of the draft, he hopes to sign quickly as an undrafted free agent and get right to work impressing his next team in offseason workouts.
“Everybody who’s gone to college and been there for five years, they’ve made mistakes when they were younger,” he says. “I think it’s all about learning from it and being able to show that you have learned from it. It would be different if I was still making those same choices at 21, 22. The proof is in the pudding.”
He sees himself becoming a positive influence on younger teammates at the next level. His wisdom was hard-earned.
“It definitely did change me because overnight everybody knows your name and not for the reason you want them to,” he says. “It matured me fast. You have to watch everything you do. Everybody has opinions of you, and you’d rather it be just for football. As time goes on, you live with that. I still live with that.”
Why did he get involved with an adult-film star in the first place?
“Honestly, I was just young and naïve,” Brent says.
The important thing is Brent still has Ward in his life. And Monday, when they celebrated the seventh anniversary of their relationship, they did so with 2-year-old Braxton by their side.
He was born on Aug. 11, 2016, the same day Brent turned 21. Brent had to rush back from preseason training camp at Culver Academies to witness the birth.
When Brent headed west for a fresh start at Nevada, where he played sparingly on a Sweet 16 basketball team in 2018 and moved to safety last fall, his girlfriend and son were with him throughout.
“He’s been a great dad,” Karli Ward says. “Braxton was really attached to me, obviously, as a baby, but as he’s getting older, he’s realizing dad is the fun guy.”
Mini-footballs and mini-cleats have been purchased for the boy. Braxton wears those cleats whenever he accompanies his father to regular workouts at Sparx Athletic Refinery, the Fishers facility co-founded by former Indiana and NFL receiver Courtney Roby.
Toddler soccer signups brought a second sport already for Braxton, who is getting pointers from his father in that sport as well.
“Braxton wants to be just like his dad,” says Ward, who has resumed taking college courses while managing a family friend’s boutique to make ends meet. “He wants to walk like him, he wants to talk like him. They brush their teeth together. Justin will sit and hold his hands together a certain way, and Braxton looks at him and copies him. He’s his mini-me for sure.”
Fatherhood has forced Brent to grow more serious about his life, his relationship and his shared future with his girlfriend and their son.
He is on track to earn his master’s degree in justice management next month, and he made up for his NFL scouting combine snub with outstanding workouts at both the Nevada and Notre Dame pro days in March.
While there he thanked Irish coach Brian Kelly for letting him return and for the care and guidance he showed him in the aftermath of the Lisa Ann incident.
“He’s still looking out for me to this day,” Brent says. “He changed my life. He helped me get to the point where I am now. That’s always going to be home.”
Brent’s 40-yard dash time was just 4.67, but he would have ranked in the top 10 in nine categories among safeties invited to this year’s combine. That included 22 repetitions in the bench press, which would have ranked first.
After being named a team captain and season MVP of Nevada’s special teams last fall, Brent punctuated a disjointed college career with two interceptions in an Arizona Bowl win over Arkansas State. Now he waits and wonders where his next chance will come.
A small gathering of family and friends will be held on Saturday at the home of Tandon Doss, the former NFL receiver from Ben Davis High who has become a trusted mentor for Brent and his family. The uncertainty can be overwhelming at times, but it’s at those moments when Brent is most thankful Ward is still in his life.
“I always tell her how nerve-wracking it is, how vulnerable the situation is,” Brent says. “She always reassures me and encourages me. She tells me I’ve worked my whole life for this. Anything I need, she’s there to help me. She just stays on my side. She’s my rock.”
Follow Notre Dame Insider Mike Berardino on Twitter @MikeBerardino. His email is mberardino@gannett.com.

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Brett Gelman was born on October 6, 1976 in Highland Park, Illinois, USA. He is an actor and writer, known for The Other Guys (2010), A Very Harold & Kumar Christmas (2011) and Lemon (2017). He was previously married to Janicza Bravo .
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