How football provided family for NC State TE Dante Daniels

Dante Daniels dealt with instability for most of his childhood. He wasn’t sure whether or not his mother would be around at night or where he’d be living the following year as they moved from apartment to apartment growing up.  But there was one constant through the uncertainty: his two stuffed animals named Puppy and Ellie. The stuffed dog and elephant were there for Daniels through a turbulent time in his life. And as he’s moved from Windsor, Ontario to El Dorado, Kan., to Raleigh, N.C., to pursue college football, that pair of stuffed animals have been along for the ride the whole time.  Even though Daniels, who stands at 6-foot-6, 272 pounds as one of the Wolfpack’s go-to blocking tight ends, has seemingly outgrown the youthful plush trinkets, they are always in tow. “As big as I am,” Daniels said with a grin recently, “I’ll still have stuffed animals.” Those stuffed animals bring a certain joy to Daniels’ face as he talks about them, but they also serve as a reminder of his childhood, which featured an unstable home environment and a brief period with nowhere to go but to sleep on friends’ couches.  His path to playing college football at NC State was not the most direct nor the easiest, but it crafted a unique sense of perspective for the well-traveled and enduring Canadian.  “I think I would have taken a lot more things for granted in life,” Daniels said if he didn’t experience his up and down childhood. “I feel like me personally, I wouldn’t have the same morals I have right now. … I probably wouldn’t have gone down a great path of God and a moral life.”