When he was a third-grader living in the projects of Tallahassee, DeAndre McDaniel learned his mother was taken to jail yet again.
From there it took a village to keep McDaniel on the straight and narrow, as his grandmother Dot and godmother Kim wrapped their arms around him and protected him through middle school and high school.
When Dabo Swinney began recruiting McDaniel in high school, that support group was convinced Clemson and not FSU was the place where DeAndre would grow into a man.
Tonight McDaniel will be inducted into the Clemson Athletics Hall of Fame. He is in his ninth season on Swinney's staff, and he has his master's degree plus an enormous amount of gratitude to the people who shaped him.
In this interview, McDaniel shares his life story in full for the first time -- from growing up way too fast as a child, to the devastation of not making it in the NFL, to working at a Wal-Mart as he adjusted to the real world, to returning to Clemson when Swinney told him it was time to come back home.
Andrew Miller
Josh Needelman
Teresa Padgett, mother of Justin Foster
William Qualkinbush
Joe Person
Bob Thomas
Brett Jensen
Drew Butler
Brian Boone and Clay Lowder
Matt Hayes
Kyle Young
Cole Cubelic and Pete Yanity
Billy Davis
John Newman
George Sluppick
Jonathan Gantt
Chip Towers, longtime Georgia beat writer
Justin Foster
Xavier Brewer
Paul Strelow
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