Brison Again Back at Ground Zero : Football: Well-traveled player comes full circle, landing in Westlake Village where his career first started.

It’s no secret that Brian Brison hasn’t had the best luck over the last few years.

The start of his athletic career began with a fizzle instead of a bang when he was declared academically ineligible by the Southern Section as a freshman at Westlake High.

Then came the disciplinary problems that forced him to attend five different schools in two states during his high school career.

Finally, the low point: The well-documented assault on Birmingham track Coach Scott King that led to Brison’s suspension from athletic competition for one school year.

But after all that, Brison thought he finally found his niche at Ohio University when he enrolled there on scholarship in 1992, a place where he could leave his troubled past behind to concentrate on football.

No such luck. Almost two years and two schools later, Brison, the former football and track standout from San Fernando High, is back in California and plans to play for Pasadena City College next fall.

What’s more, after a series of zigzag moves that would catch the fancy of most any running back, Brison is back where he started. He has been reunited with Buzz Holcomb, the man who moved Brison into his Westlake Village home when Brison was in the seventh grade. Holcomb has been Brison’s legal guardian since 1988.

For Brison, this is just another stop on a long journey that he hopes will end with a scholarship to an NCAA Division I university.

According to Brison, Ohio coaches told him that they were impressed with him as a freshman cornerback and reassured him that he would get playing time. When Saturdays came, however, the playing time did not come.

After Ohio finished 1-10 in 1992, Brison was moved to strong safety the following spring. He didn’t mind, as long as he was still in the secondary.

“They didn’t think I could handle the corner spot,” Brison said. “I moved to strong safety and they said, ‘It looks like you’re going to be the starter.’ ”

As Ohio’s 1993 season opener against North Carolina approached, Brison was asked to switch to outside linebacker because he defended the run effectively.

“All through high school I had fun no matter where I was playing,” Brison said. “When I went to Ohio, I lost a little love for football, and that’s another reason I felt that I needed to leave.

“I’d be in the locker room, I would put on my pads and go, ‘I don’t want to practice today.’ That’s never me, especially for football.”

At 5-foot-9, 185 pounds, Brison hardly had the ideal size to be a linebacker, and it showed.

“Now I don’t know about you, but you can stand up and (see) he’s not a linebacker,” Holcomb said. “It doesn’t take a rocket scientist.”

So he blasted off. For Brison, home not only meant coming back to California, but coming back to Holcomb as well.

Brison six years ago was among a group of talented athletes who moved in with Holcomb as freshmen.

The group included Ontiwaun Carter, who later graduated from Kennedy and is now a tailback at Arizona, and Colorado State tailback Leonice Brown, who graduated from San Fernando.

The door remained open.

“It’s meant a lot to me because Buzz has always helped me,” Brison said. “He’s always been there for me whenever I’ve needed him.”

For Holcomb, having Brison at home has helped fill a void left after his older son, Mike, was killed in a car accident in 1989.

Holcomb also has a younger son, Erik, a sophomore split end at UCLA who enrolled with Brison at Westlake High during their freshman year.

“After Mike died, I’ve always kissed my boys,” Holcomb said. “These guys would come up to me and hug me and kiss me in public and it’s just a show of respectful affection. I love being loved by ‘em and I love loving ‘em.”

Brison enrolled for the spring semester at Moorpark College after leaving Ohio during the holiday break. He left Moorpark after completing the semester to look for a football program in which he felt more comfortable. Pasadena wound up being the perfect choice.

He is lining up at tailback, where he has not played since his senior year at San Fernando.

“For me to be at the tailback spot where I’ve never been since high school . . . it’s getting kind of exciting for me because I know that’s where I should be,” he said.

His options are once again as wide open. Of course, playing at a junior college means that Brison will attend at least one more school. He hopes to be picked up by a Pacific 10 Conference school, for a rather unusual reason.

“I’ve been looking forward to playing against (Erik Holcomb) for a very long time,” Brison said.

If things start going Brison’s way, he just might get that chance.