JT Daniels' winding college career is ending at an unexpected place

The former five-star quarterback is playing his final season at Rice, his fourth school in his six seasons in college. It's the latest stop in a fascinating college football journey.

When JT Daniels took the first snap of the game last Saturday at Darrell K. Royal-Texas Memorial Stadium in Rice’s 37-10 loss at Texas, he made a bit of history.

In that moment, he became what is believed to be the first quarterback ever to start three games at the Longhorns’ home venue for three different teams.

Each of those visits embodies a different stage of Daniels’ career. While at USC in 2018, he was the freshman phenom, the five-star recruit who was poised to thrive just as so many others before him at his position had done at that program. Sure, the Trojans lost that day, 37-14, but a brighter future was ahead. Four years later, in his first (and ultimately only) season at West Virginia, he was a reclamation project, a talented player in search of a reset.

His third and final visit to Austin represented something entirely different. Daniels is on the fourth school of what is now his sixth season of college football. His most recent stop isn’t one of the sport’s historic powers or a consistently successful Power Five program, but an academically minded school with little football history beyond being a punching bag and punchline for much larger, better-funded programs.

This isn’t where he was supposed to be – not at Rice, a program far beneath his latent talent and the hype he once enjoyed, or even in college football, several years after when many thought he would have left for NFL riches.

Daniels’ story is fascinating because of the number of different ways it can be viewed. It’s an example of player mobility in the modern college game. It’s a fun bit of trivia and a piece of Guy Remembrance as fans across the country get ready for a new season. You’ll never guess who Rice’s new quarterback is!

But Daniels’ path through college football doesn’t need to be tied to any larger themes to be compelling. It’s plenty interesting on its own.

He was bred for greatness – literally

Raised by a single mother who worked as a waitress to provide for her family – and with his father in but mostly out of his life – Steve Daniels found a refuge in football. In high school, he was honorable mention all-state in Michigan as a senior, and while in college at Western Michigan, he helped lead his intramural flag football team to the national championship tournament.

After his playing days were over, that passion never left him. Eventually, it would be transferred over to his son.

When JT Daniels was 12, Steve quit his job as a traveling telecom salesman and put his burgeoning career on pause. His new primary focus would be his son and turning his inherent potential as a quarterback into something more. By his own admission to the Los Angeles Times in 2018, JT didn’t love football growing up, but his dad’s love of the sport drove him to it.

“JT is Steve’s hobby,” Alison Daniels, JT’s mother, told the Times in 2018. “He is consumed by it. It’s not like he’s into photography or into cycling. He is into JT’s football. And the good news is JT went along with it, never said no to anything. One thing after another, year after year, Steve’s cycles are spinning, just thinking, what else can we get him in? And JT went right along with it.”

Much of that extra time Steve suddenly had became devoted to his son.