The imagery is appropriate, for Brennan's career has experienced a rebirth in the islands.

With the Warriors' 2007 season set to begin Saturday against Northern Colorado, he leads the nation's 24th-ranked team, and is coming off one of the greatest statistical seasons ever for a college quarterback.

Last year, as the Warriors went 11-3 with a victory in the Sheraton Hawai'i Bowl, Brennan broke or tied 18 NCAA records, including Division I-A season marks for touchdown passes (58) and passing efficiency (185.96). His 406 completed passes were more than 83 teams attempted, and his 72.6 percent completion rate was one percentage point from another I-A record.

Once an overlooked talent who could barely draw scholarship offers despite playing for a powerhouse high school program, the 6-3, 200-pound fifth-year senior from Irvine, Calif., has NFL eyes trained on him. He applied for the NFL draft after last season, but withdrew although a panel of league scouts told him he could have been a second-round pick. Gil Brandt, the former Dallas Cowboys VP of player personnel who now writes a column and evaluates the draft for NFL.com, expects Brennan to be a first-round pick next spring.

"He has a live arm, he's got mobility," Brandt says. "He's got everything you're looking for in a quarterback."

He also has the nerve. In May, he publicly criticized the condition of Hawai'i's athletic facilities, triggering an uproar that a panel of state legislators formally joined several weeks later with a session at which they questioned athletics director Herman Frazier and then-interim chancellor Denise Konan.

Before Brennan journeyed to Hawai'i in 2005, he had skills but little career stability, having attended four schools in four years. Moreover, the specter of a felony conviction followed him.

On Jan. 28, 2004, in Boulder, Colo., Brennan, then a redshirt freshman at Colorado, was accused of drunkenly entering a female student's dorm room and fondling her. Brennan eventually was found not guilty of indecent exposure and criminal intent to commit sexual assault, but convicted on felony counts of second-degree burglary and first-degree criminal trespass. He was sentenced to seven days in jail, 60 hours of community service and four years' probation.

Colorado coach Gary Barnett, already dealing with allegations that the program used sex to lure recruits, dismissed Brennan from the team shortly after the incident.

Brennan says the incident proved a lesson in humility, and he discusses it openly in media interviews. He also has spoken to youth groups, including inmates at a juvenile detention center in Honolulu, about his past.

"Because I have nothing to hide," says Brennan, 24. "There's no doubt the position I put myself in, I have no one to blame but myself. But there were a lot of things that followed that just weren't right. ... Hopefully as time goes on and I get a chance to maybe go to the NFL and it resurfaces, I'll really get a chance to set the record straight. Maybe some kid will pick up the paper someday and it will save his life."

Brennan's father, Terry, says his son never had gotten into trouble before and the timing of his actions made them even worse.

"The circumstances around it, the time it happened with Kobe Bryant (who faced sexual assault charges in Colorado in July 2003 that were dropped in September 2004), and around the same time some incidents that happened the year or two before with some of the recruiting, it brought his thing right smack dab in the middle of it," says Terry Brennan.

'I wanted to get away'

Brennan, who backed up now-Arizona Cardinals quarterback Matt Leinart at Mater Dei High in Santa Ana, Calif., before spending a year at the Worcester (Mass.) Academy, left Colorado and starred during the 2004 season at Saddleback Community College in Mission Viejo, Calif. Hawai'i's staff spotted him there while recruiting a wide receiver.

Following Brennan's sentencing in January 2005, just after Saddleback's season, potential suitors including Syracuse shied away. San Jose State, where Brennan's cousin, Brent, is the recruiting coordinator, remained an option, but it felt too close to home. Hawai'i coach June Jones allowed him to join the team as a non-scholarship player.

"My whole family was (in California) and I was embarrassed. I wanted to get away, go find myself," Brennan says. "Hawai'i seemed like the place to do it. When I got there, I was ready to embrace what it was about and was absolutely thrilled by how people were. ... They just waited to see the type of person I was, and once they found that out, they treated me like a son."

They also found out he's perfectly suited for the run-and-shoot, the shotgun-formation offense Jones has been teaching during a 35-year career that includes head-coaching stints with the Atlanta Falcons and San Diego Chargers before taking over at Hawai'i in 1999.

Though the Warriors lost three starting offensive linemen and their top two running backs from last season, they have 14 returning players and were chosen in a media poll as the favorites to win the Western Athletic Conference title over defending champion Boise State — which has gone 39-1 against the rest of the league since 2003. The prediction is based largely on the offense's capabilities, with Brennan orchestrating. Last season, the Warriors averaged 46.9 points, 559.2 yards from scrimmage and 441.3 passing yards per game, all tops in the NCAA.

Says Jones, "Even if we bust a protection, he has such a quick release, he knows where to go with the ball now in our system, so it's hard to get to him."

Jones' system starts four wide receivers and last season featured more than two passes for every rushing attempt (Brennan's 366 rushing yards were second on the team to the 990 by departed running back Nate Ilaoa).

With their quick-striking ability and speedy wide receivers, the Warriors are especially effective on Aloha Stadium's artificial turf. That's where they'll play seven of their 12 games in a favorable schedule that has spurred talk of an undefeated season. Their prospects of reaching a BCS game, even if they go 12-0, are dimmed because two opponents are I-AA teams and because they are playing one less game than the NCAA allows them under an exemption in the association's rules. (Despite making offers to several prospective opponents, Hawaii could not fill either of its open dates, Oct. 20 and Nov. 3.)

The Warriors' game at Nevada on Nov. 16 and the WAC season finale, Nov. 23 at home against Boise State, loom as the biggest challenges.

"They have their style of football, it's different than most," says Boise State coach Chris Petersen. "Coach Jones is an expert in the run-and-shoot. Couple that with a lot good players and they're going to be a force. ... It's hard to replicate that precision, that timing."

Petersen calls Brennan "as good as anyone in the country."

Talent matches up to best

Jones goes a step further. He has coached Hall of Famers Jim Kelly and Warren Moon, as well as former NFL Pro Bowlers Bobby Hebert, Jeff George and Chris Miller. But none of them, Jones maintains, possessed Brennan's combination of accuracy, competitiveness and mobility. That's why Jones believes Brennan - who faces a steady diet of blitzes - will succeed where other run-and-shoot college quarterbacks failed, notably NFL washouts David Klingler and Andre Ware. (Brennan's predecessor, Timmy Chang, set the Division I-A record for career passing yards, but is with the CFL's Hamilton Tiger-Cats after going undrafted by NFL teams, then being cut by three in two years.)

"Is he a product of the system?" Brandt says. "The system is very, very good. But I think that system or not, when you hit 70 percent of your passes and throw 58 touchdown passes, you've got some skills."

Says Brennan, who grew up playing in West Coast offenses, which are prevalent in the NFL: "I can't imagine a kid out there that's throwing the ball as much as me right now in practice and that's having to go through as many reads. Everyone knows we're going to pass every game. So I've really gotten a good in-depth look at the passing game."

Junior Davone Bess, part of a talented receiving corps that also includes Jason Rivers, Ryan Grice-Mullen and converted cornerback C.J. Hawthorne, says Brennan's accuracy allows them to concentrate on separating from defenders without having to worry about where the ball will arrive.

"He's one of those guys that can read each and every one of his receivers, their weaknesses and strengths, and pretty much put each of us in good situations to make catches," Bess says. "It's almost like catching the ball from a machine, he's so accurate."

Little exposure

On the few times Brennan's passes hit the ground, do they make a sound? Probably not back East. Though four of the Warriors' games will be televised by ESPN or ESPN2 this season, only one so far is scheduled as early as 8 p.m. ET.

Hawaii's six-hour time difference from the East's large media markets, and the consequent lack of exposure there, render Brennan's chances of winning the Heisman nearly nil. He finished sixth in the voting last year, 58 touchdown passes and all.

He did catch the attention of the NFL, especially after riddling Arizona State for a school-record 559 passing yards and five touchdowns in a 41-24 victory in the Hawai'i Bowl. The NFL scouts advised him to get stronger to better absorb the physical pounding at that level.

Brennan figured he might as well do so while enjoying the warm breezes of the south Pacific.

"I think the uniqueness of Hawai'i is what has really caught Colt's eye," Jones says. "He loves the people. He loves the aloha. He loves the 'ohana (sense of family) that he feels in Hawai'i. And it is different. I think that's why he came back."

As a sign of unity with his four starting wide receivers, all of whom wear their hair in dreadlocks, Brennan let his dark-blond hair grow out earlier this summer and had it styled like theirs. The look didn't exactly suit him, who constantly felt like scratching his head, but his teammates appreciated it.

"He went out of his way to show us he was dedicated, he's down with us and down for us," Bess says. "It was big."

It wasn't the first time Brennan took steps toward fostering team solidarity. Four of Hawai'i's starting offensive linemen last season — and three this year — are Samoan, so he learned several words in their language. The team even has some audibles in Samoan that all the linemen have learned, the better to confuse the opposition.

Defensive lineman Michael Lafaele, a native of Honolulu, says mainlanders who move to Hawai'i sometimes find themselves out of place. Not Brennan.

"It's a different lifestyle," Lafaele says. "Everything is more laid back. Everybody gets along with each other. There's no segregated groups or whatever. Colt fit in real good."