‘You could call it my mission’: Why Rob Daniel returned to BYU for his degree 9 years later
Daniel, who played for the Cougars in 2013 and 2014, is one of 22 current or former BYU football players who graduated Thursday
When Robertson Daniel left the BYU football program shortly after the 2014 season and started preparing for the NFL draft just a few credits short of getting his bachelor’s degree, it never occurred to the two-year starting cornerback that one day he would want to return to Provo.
Sure, Daniel mostly enjoyed his time at BYU, especially the relationships he had built with head coach Bronco Mendenhall and teammates such as Jordan Johnson, Manoa Pikula, Teu Kautai, De’Ondre Wesley, Mike Davis, Mike Shelton and Taysom Hill. And the program developed him enough that he was quickly scooped up as an undrafted free agent by the Oakland Raiders and would go on to play professional football for nine years in the NFL and Canadian Football League.
But Daniel, who was born in St. Thomas, U.S. Virgin Islands and raised there among Rastafarians before moving to Brooklyn, New York, and then San Jose, California, was a minority at BYU — a Black student-athlete who is not a member of the school’s sponsoring faith, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
“I came back for the same reason why the church sends their young men and women out at 18 and 19 years old (as missionaries): To serve and teach. It was a step I had to take in order to serve.”
— Rob Daniel on why he chose to return to BYU to get his degree
He signed with BYU in 2013 after playing two seasons at De Anza College in Cupertino, California, and then sitting out an entire year to focus on academics, get his associate degree, and become eligible to play at a four-year school. BYU coaches stuck with the former junior college All-American that year, after most other recruiters had given up on him.
“Once I got into BYU, it was a culture shock,” Daniel said earlier this week. “For someone with my background, there was so much going on, so many expectations of you, and not too much of a guide. There was turmoil. It was a tornado, from my perspective.
“But I was always used to being in a storm from what I had gone through in life, so I was able to navigate my way through it, and kind of just settle the storm around me and even thrive quite a bit.”
In 2014, the Cougars got off to a 4-0 start and were rising in the national polls with Hill leading the offense and future pros Daniel, Davis, Kai Nacua, Bronson Kaufusi and Alani Fua fueling the defense. However, Hill sustained a season-ending injury in a 35-20 loss to Utah State in Week 5, and the Cougars’ season spiraled downward before backup quarterback Christian Stewart and an underrated defense rescued them later in the year.
After the 55-48 double-overtime loss to Memphis in the Miami Beach Bowl, Daniel put BYU in his rearview mirror, out of eligibility and thankful for what the school had done for him, but eager to move on.
“Towards the back end of my time at BYU, it was really about going to the NFL for me, so I wasn’t worried about my grades that much, to be honest,” he said. “I was a kid who grew up poor, so I was like, ‘Man, I can get to the NFL and get some money in my pocket. The moment I had a chance, I got out of there.”
Coaching bug bites during a lengthy pro career
Midway through his pro career, after spending time with Green Bay, Washington and Baltimore in the NFL, Daniel bounced to the CFL and had considerable success playing for the Calgary Stampeders and Toronto Argonauts.
The Argos won the Grey Cup championship in 2022 and he was a CFL All-Star selection in 2023. He made a franchise-record 16 tackles in a game in 2023 for Toronto, but became a free agent in February 2024 when his contract expired and was not renewed.
When he was with the Ravens from 2016-18, mostly as a practice squad player, Daniel earned the nickname “Coach Rob” because although he wasn’t playing much, teammates who were playing a lot would often seek him out for advice.
“I really started thinking about coming back (for the degree) while I was playing,” he said. “I kinda realized I had this talent for coaching and really just understanding the game and being able to explain the game.
“I would have guys that were starting in front of me talk to me about ball like I was their coach. They were interested in my perspective on technique and scheme, what I was seeing. When that is happening, you are like, ‘I am not even playing. You are the one making $30 million, and you are asking me?’ It was a wakeup call from God.”
Daniel realized he had to think positively and make the most of what some would see as a negative situation.
“I am a darn good player, but I am also a sponge, and a critical thinker, when it comes to the game of football,” he said. “So once I started to realize that, it really kicked in that I wanted to be a coach.”
He decided he would do whatever it took, even if that meant returning to the classroom, to get a degree so he could coach for a living.
“Before that, getting that piece of paper honestly wasn’t a big deal to me,” he said.
Returning to BYU with a purpose
Even when he was flourishing in the CFL, Daniel often returned to Utah to privately train up-and-coming high school and college defensive backs, including Orem High product and recent BYU star Jakob Robinson.
Last fall, he re-enrolled at BYU only needing an internship with a nutritionist to complete the coursework for his degree in Global Studies — “Studying geography and learning about natural disasters,” is how he explained his major — and then contacted BYU football coaches about helping out while he did the internship.
“I had just got done playing professionally, so sometimes a voice of someone who just got off the field resonates with kids. So that was kind of my role, really just helping out, man,” Daniel said. “I don’t want it to sound weird, but I think I made a big impact.”
A different perspective on getting a degree
No fewer than 22 former or current BYU football players received their diplomas on Thursday during commencement exercises in Provo, including quarterback Jake Retzlaff, receivers Darius Lassiter, Keelan Marion and Chase Roberts, offensive lineman Connor Pay and defenders John Nelson, Blake Mangelson, Talan Alfrey and Jayden Dunlap.
Most of them “walked” on Thursday as friends and family members cheered at the Marriott Center, but Daniel was not among them. He said no family celebration was planned, either — nothing to mark what to many is one of life’s biggest accomplishments.
Why not?
“I don’t really have a feeling for it,” he said. “There is nothing there for me. That’s kinda how I feel.”
Asked to explain that sentiment that might seem unusual to most, Daniel said it goes back to the way he was raised.
“In the United States, we put an emphasis on degrees and stuff like that, and we don’t put emphasis on how good of a person you are, what your integrity is like. We put importance on a piece of paper and what you are able to recollect from a class room and a lecture.
Team Navy’s Rob Daniel attempts to catch a pass during the BYU alumni game at LaVell Edwards Stadium at BYU in Provo on Friday, March 28, 2025. Team Navy won the alumni game with a final score of 25-20. | Brice Tucker, Deseret News
“I grew up around Rastafarians, where your importance was within your spirituality. It was who you are as a person, how you treat the person next to you, how you feel about other people. Those are the things that matter.
“So as I am going through life, to put importance on a degree and all that just wasn’t a thing for me. That’s why I’m not (celebrating it more). It was more about my relationships with other people and how people felt about me, the impact I made with other people. How I helped people grow.”
A degree was just another door to walk through
Daniel said getting a degree was simply an obstacle he had to get past, a door he had to walk through, so he could serve more people through coaching.
“I came back for the same reason why the church sends their young men and women out at 18 and 19 years old (as missionaries): To serve and teach,” he said. “It was a step I had to take in order to serve.”
Daniel said the two years he was at BYU before (2013 and 2014), and this recent highly successful football season that was one of the more rewarding experiences of his life, have convinced him that BYU is the place where he currently wants to serve as he pursues his dream of becoming a full-time coach, and then a general manager of a professional team.
“This degree allows me to be closer to the players that need me, and help guys go through something I was able to go through,” he said. “It is to help the guys who come through BYU end up having a better career than I did, because they have the resources and information to thrive.
“That’s really what it was all about, coming back to get my degree. It was to serve,” he continued. “You could call it my mission.”
What’s next for Rob Daniel?
Daniel continued to help at BYU during recently completed spring practices, and makes no bones about it. He would love to be hired on full time, and makes a pretty good pitch why BYU should add him to the staff.
“I have had experiences in life, and with everything that I have been through, I don’t think there is a better person than me to be at BYU,” he said. “Either integrating guys that are coming off missions, or guys that are not (Latter-day Saints), or guys that are fighting with being active. I don’t think there is a better guy to integrate all those types of guys than a person like myself who has been in so many different places in life and then came to BYU and thrived at BYU.
“I would have guys that were starting in front of me talk to me about ball like I was their coach. They were interested in my perspective on technique and scheme, what I was seeing. When that is happening, you are like, ‘I am not even playing. You are the one making $30 million, and you are asking me?’ It was a wakeup call from God.”
“In my situation, you are coming back to help a place that once helped you, and once looked out for you when you were looking for a place to go play. So me coming back for my degree was about the players at BYU. It was about the future of the program. Because the reason I was able to come to BYU was because of past players that had a good (experience) at BYU and did things for BYU that created a path for me to be able to be at a place like BYU.”
Daniel said he would love to pay it forward, and be paid for it, as a father of four who currently resides in Sandy.
“I hope that I am coaching full-time at BYU one day, and hopefully one day soon,” he said. “I don’t say this lightly, and it will sound arrogant, but I am going to be a full-time coach regardless, and it will be somewhere. My ego is not too big to start at the high school level, especially now that I got my degree. I just know that BYU would benefit a lot from having a guy like me in the building.”
