Getting Division-I interest is hard enough for one sport, but lucky for Malik Brooks, he's talented enough to have a rare problem. Should he play D-I football or D-I basketball?

His answer is both. After one season with FCS Monmouth, the Lockport native is coming back home to transfer to Canisius to walk on to the basketball team. Brooks doesn’t have regrets about his time in New Jersey, but he missed basketball, his first love.

"I can't really go out and play good pickup games of basketball during football [season]," he says. "I might get injured, and it's a Division-I program, so I'm going to get in trouble for that."

Brooks's high school career was filled with accolades. He broke 1,000 points on the hardwood and recorded more than 1,200 receiving yards as a senior. UB football gave Brooks an offer before Monmouth scooped him up, offering a difficult playbook that took a long time to grasp.

"At Lockport, all I needed to know was a color, and then I knew what I was doing on that play," Brooks says. "You've gotta know what side of the field you're on, you have to know how far you are from the sideline. It's a whole bunch of stuff."

As much as he enjoyed football, Brooks couldn't stay away from basketball forever. He missed his favorite sport, and was willing to forego a scholarship to play it. Canisius recruited Brooks when he attended Lockport, and the Griffs' interest was rekindled when Brooks spoke about switching sports.

"I knew if I came back and wanted to play basketball, I knew [Canisius] would be interested," he says. "I talked to all of them my senior year. Me and Reggie [Witherspoon], we always had a really good relationship. My trainer is a really good friend of his. It’s a really big circle of greatness."

Brooks has three years of eligibility and he can play for Canisius right away.​