Chase Daniel

Classroom

Chase is pursuing a degree in business finance and has a 3.40 GPA. He has won First-Team Academic All-District honors from ESPN The Magazine in 2007, as well as being a two-time First-Team Academic All-Big 12 honoree. He is being nominated by Missouri for the prestigious National Football Foundation Post-Graduate Scholarship Award, and will likely be in the running for the Draddy Award, which is known in football circles as the “Academic Heisman.” This past spring, due to his association with the business school, Daniel got to take a field trip along with classmates to Omaha, Neb., to spend a day with businessman/philanthropist Warren Buffett, where they struck up a friendship that continues today through occasional e-mail conversations.

Character

Chase is the ultimate representative of the University of Missouri, both on the field and off the field. He has always led by example and is definitely someone that we are proud of. Chase is the leader of this football team, and the work ethic he displays on a daily basis is second to none. He is typically the first on the field and the last off the field in terms of practice, and he is the “ringleader” so to speak for the team during the summer months, when coaches cannot organize team activities. Chase understands his responsibility as a role model to children and goes out of the way to display to them on a daily basis what is acceptable behavior.

Community

Chase is involved in numerous community and charitable activities, as are his teammates. He spends time helping mentor children as part of the Boys and Girls Club of Columbia. He is asked to speak at countless events and has given his time regularly to speak at various Rotary Club events, he was the keynote speaker for the Show-Me State Games this past summer, which is an Olympic-style sports festival that features over 20,000 participants. He has done numerous public service announcement initiatives for drug and alcohol abuse prevention, safe driving and is a spokesperson for the Govenor’s Council on Physical Fitness.

Competition

Missouri senior QB Chase Daniel began the 2008 season on the short list of Heisman Trophy favorites. Among the preseason favorites for Heisman contention again in 2008, Daniel was named the Big 12 preseason Offensive Player-of-the-Year by league media, after he won the postseason award in 2007, as well as claiming Big 12 Male Athlete-of-the-Year for the 2007-08 school season. In the 2008 season opener, Daniel threw for 323 yards and 3 TDs in helping lead Mizzou to a 52-42 win over 20th-ranked Illinois. The points were a record for Mizzou against a ranked opponent. Daniel had 369 yards of total offense on the night, as he burned the Illini for 46 rushing yards on just 9 attempts. The performance was a nice follow-up to his 2007 season, when Daniel continued to smash all sorts of Mizzou passing and total offense records, as he became the school’s first-ever Heisman Trophy finalist (finishing 4th in balloting). He helped lead Mizzou to its 12-2 season as he threw for an MU-record 4,306 yards and 33 TDs. Already at the top of numerous MU records lists, Daniel needs just 52 more passing yards to become MU’s career passing yardage leader. He enters the Nevada game with 8,748 yards, and trails only Brad Smith, with 8,799. He also has a shot at reaching Smith’s seemingly unreachable total offense career record of 13,088 yards, as Daniel has 9,483 entering the Nevada game (needs 3,605 to break).  Recently Daniel was announced as the Draddy Trophy runner-up for 2008.