Boulder
Brian Daniels, the Colorado senior from Evergreen and Denver’s Mullen High School, has been the big guy in glasses taking voluminous notes as he sits the front of the business school classroom. With a 3.6 grade-point average, Daniels usually is destined to wind up with an “A.”
After the period ends, one classmate might ask him what in the name of the bricks-and-
clicks business model the professor was talking about; and the next would want to know what kind of lamebrain play call that was on the third-and-8 against Kansas State.
Next week he will miss classes, but for a good reason.
Daniels will travel to New York, don a tuxedo and accept a postgraduate scholarship worth at least $18,000 from the National Football Foundation at an awards dinner in the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel.
A four-season starter at guard, Daniels is among 17 members of the NFF’s “National Scholar-Athlete Class,” essentially an academic All-American team limited to players in their senior seasons of eligibility at all NCAA football levels. All 17, also including Wyoming safety John Wendling, are finalists for the Draddy Trophy, the football-classroom equivalent of the Heisman Trophy. The winner’s postgraduate scholarship money will be increased to $25,000.
Though some on the Draddy list, including Daniels and Wisconsin tackle Joe Thomas, a candidate to be the No. 1 overall choice in the 2007 NFL draft, will likely have pro careers, newspapers haven’t run weekly versions of the “Draddy Watch.”
Funny how that works, isn’t it?
Certainly the finalists are elite student-athletes. But the next time someone who otherwise abhors stereotyping because of its “insensitivity” unconscionably tries to lump football players in a “dumb jock” category, the 17 players can be cited as evidence to the contrary. Just as well as the players who try in the classroom, scrape through with 2.2 GPAs, and leave campus enriched on the way to productive careers in fields other than professional sports.
“Later on in life, when I have a chance to talk to young people about sports in general, it will be about how they teach you discipline,” Daniels said.
This sort of discipline doesn’t involve picayunish rules about facial hair or other individual choices – the kind some football coaches make for their players and then are applauded as “disciplinarians.” Rather, this comes down to making personal choices that should be as much a part of the educational process as the Tudor England final.
“If you’re just going to school, I don’t think you have as much self-discipline,” Daniels said. “You have time on your hands. When you play football, you’re on a regimented schedule – ‘Be here and do this, be there at that time’ – and you don’t have as much time to study. So you had better use it.
“Playing college football or being a collegiate athlete is probably the hardest thing many of us will do in some ways.”
Daniels’ CU football career spanned highs and lows involving Big 12 North championships, controversy, Gary Barnett’s firing and the rocky 2-10 start of the Dan Hawkins era this season.
“When I made my decision to come here, I knew it was the right place for me,” Daniels said. “It’s been a fun ride, a bumpy ride, but I’ve had a lot of good times. What we’ve gone through was tough, but it brought us closer together as a team. Coach Barnett used to say, ‘Adversity introduces a man to himself,’ and I’ve had plenty of that. … What happened, happened. The way the media handled it, the way the school handed it, could have been better. This all never happened before, not all together like this, so I guess nobody knew how to handle it. But at this point, I have no hard feelings about it.”
Daniels will leave campus a loyal CU alumnus. When his younger brother, Mullen offensive lineman Shawn Daniels, was considering Colorado State and Wyoming because those programs offered him scholarships first, Brian offered his opinion.
“I told him, ‘You better not go to CSU, because I’ll never come to your games, except for the Colorado game,”‘ Brian said.
Eventually offered a scholarship to CU, Shawn committed to the Buffaloes.
The Daniels tradition will continue, both in the classroom and on the field.
Staff writer Terry Frei can be reached at 303-954-1895 or tfrei@denverpost.com.
