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.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.
