Bobby Brooks was born to be a great defensive football player, he just needed someone to knock a little sense in him to realize it.

After starring on both offense and defense for Hogan High’s football team, Brooks soon realized at Fresno State that he should just stick to linebacker.

“I’ll never forget his name, Dion Laffitte,” Brooks said, with a laugh. “He hit me so hard in practice. I held on to the ball, but after that I realized I can’t take this anymore. I’d rather be the hitter than the hittee. I mean, it was great to hit someone hard and not get in trouble for it.”

Not only did Brooks not get in trouble for it, the former Spartan, Bulldog and Oakland Raider will actually be rewarded for it on March 5 when he is inducted into the Vallejo Sports Hall of Fame.

“It’s definitely an honor to go in,” Brooks said. “I still haven’t taken it all in. There have been a lot of great players to come out of Vallejo and to be called one of the best means a lot. I’m definitely happy because it’s someone saying that along the way I did something right.”

Brooks was a star running back and linebacker at Hogan, which closed its doors in the summer of 2011.

While a Spartan, Brooks was named to the All-Monticello Empire League team and led his team in tackles and interceptions in both his junior and senior years. His top story, however, came as a sophomore.

“I think my favorite memory from playing at Hogan is when I was called up to play on the varsity team for the first time,” Brooks said. “To play with guys like Marcus Bishop, Major Norton and all those cats was certainly something.”

After graduating Hogan in 1994, Brooks went on to play college football at Fresno State, when he soon decided to only play defense. It was there he first realized that football was his true calling.

“That’s when I realized I wanted to go pro and that I could go pro,” Brooks said. “Playing at Valley Field was incredible and playing in front of so many fans and getting the type of publicity we had was great. We didn’t get that kind of publicity in Vallejo. The quote on quote outside world wasn’t showing up to games in Vallejo. None of the big networks were coming to games. So it really put things in perspective for me and what I wanted to do.”

Although Brooks had a stellar career at Fresno State, when the NFL draft came along, nobody was calling or knocking on his door. Like fellow 2016 Vallejo Hall of Fame inductee C.J. Anderson of the Denver Broncos, Brooks went undrafted.

“I knew I wasn’t going in the first round, but from the second round on I had a lot of teams telling me, ‘Well, if this happens, then we might take you.’ But it never happened. For the first time in my life I felt I had no control over me. I couldn’t understand that if I was better than someone else, why was I not getting rewarded for it.”

Brooks later signed as a free agent with the Oakland Raiders and to this day he’s thankful for Al Davis, the late Raiders’ owner.

“Mr. Davis gave me a shot. He gave a kid from Vallejo a shot even when he didn’t have to. I will always appreciate him for that. When he was alive he could really break down game film. If there was 147 plays in the game, he would know that it was play 39 that you screwed up on.”

Brooks only got into one game during the 1999 season, but things turned around for him in 2000 and 2001, however, as he played in all 16 regular season games both years. In 2001 he would register 16 tackles and he was even on the field in the playoffs against the New England Patriots for one of the most controversial plays in league history — Tom Brady’s incomplete pass that spawned “the tuck rule.”

“I was on the field when the play happened and it was a fumble. Anyone who knows anything whatsoever about football knows it was a fumble,” Brooks said. “Tom (Brady) had two hands on the ball when he was about to pass. He still had two hands on it when Wood (Charles Woodson) hit him. The only time he didn’t have two hands on the ball is when Wood had two hands on the ball. You have to understand it was after 9/11 and it was patriotism going on. The Patriots had to win, it was meant to happen.”

Brooks would not play another regular season game with Oakland, as he played a year in Jacksonville in 2002 before going on to play for NFL Europe’s Cologne Centurions, where he led the team in tackles and was named to the all-NFL Europe team. He came back to the Raiders in 2006 before deciding to hang up his spikes.

Brooks’ former teammate Charles Woodson talked about Brooks going into the hall of fame on Saturday at Team Superstores in Vallejo.

“Bobby was a good young player, fast and big as a linebacker,” Woodson said. “I don’t think he was quite given the opportunity he should have gotten in the NFL, but he was a big-time player and I’m glad he’s getting recognized and going into the hall of fame here.”

These days Brooks is still hanging around the game, this time as a coach at St. Patrick-St. Vincent, where he has been for the last three years.

“The greatest thing in the world is being able to show kids the right way to play the game,” Brooks said. “I still do the drills with the kids. I don’t put on a helmet or pads, but I hit the bags just like them. The coaches I had at Hogan weren’t talkers, they were do-ers, so I’m trying to do the same thing.” —— (c)2016 Times-Herald (Vallejo, Calif.) Visit Times-Herald (Vallejo, Calif.) at www.timesheraldonline.com Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC. AMX-2016-02-17T00:01:00-05:00