By Jerry Hill
Baylor Bear Insider
When Daniel Sepulveda graduated from Baylor with an undergrad degree in accounting in December 2006, there was a sense of relief and certainly accomplishment, but also a feeling that "I'm not doing school again."
That memory came flooding back three years ago, when the former All-American punter and five-year NFL veteran enrolled at SMU as a first-year law student.
"I'm having a distinct recollection of a memory and saying I would never do school again. And I am very much doing school again," he said.
On May 18, the 35-year-old Sepulveda went through the hooding ceremony at Moody Coliseum as a graduate of the SMU Dedman School of Law.
"It's easy to look back and generally forget the hard moments, the crunch-time moments, but there were definitely many of those," Sepulveda said. "But, once you get through it, it's kind of like, 'Oh, that wasn't so bad.' That's kind of my nature: I survived, it's fine. People do it every year. It can't be that bad. But, when you're in it, you're like, 'Man, this is tough.'''
At 32, instead of fresh out of high school at 18, he was also able to "appreciate and grasp more this second round."
"The biggest difference was just a general exposure to life," he said. "Managing life is not hard, or even involved, when you're 18. You don't have as much to manage. But, 15 years into the future, you're thinking about all kinds of different things that make a law school education stick a little more. And I think it gives you a little bit of an advantage over some of your 23-year-old peers who just haven't really lived a whole lot of life yet."
At 35, Daniel seems to have lived more than one life already.
A Dallas native and Highland Park High School graduate, Sepulveda came to Baylor as a walk-on linebacker in 2002, redshirting that first year. It wasn't until the next year that he gave punting a try, earning second-team All-Big 12 honors as a redshirt freshman and becoming the first two-time winner of the Ray Guy Award as the nation's top collegiate punter.
Inducted into the Baylor Hall of Fame three years ago, Sepulveda's school records are still intact more than a decade after he finished. He has three of the top four season averages, including a school-record 46.49-yard mark as a senior, and set an NCAA record with a career punting average of 45.24.
A fourth-round draft pick by the Pittsburgh Steelers in 2007, Daniel averaged 43.7 yards per kick in an NFL career that was cut short by knee injuries. He was out of the league at 28 years old.
"It's not a regret, it's certainly not a worldly sorrow," said Sepulveda, who was sidelined when the Steelers won the Super Bowl in February 2009. "But, you can't help but think, 'I wonder what it would have been like had I not got hurt.' I'm actually grateful it worked out the way it did, because I wouldn't have gone to law school. There's no way I would have done that if I had played three, four more years in the NFL, and certainly not five or six more."
Instead, he started another life, earning his EMT certificate, then getting married in April 2014 and starting law school two years later.
Daniel and his wife, Rachel, have a 2 ½-year-old daughter, Belle, a 17-month old son, Warner, and are expecting a third child on Father's Day, June 16.
"I couldn't have written that any better myself," Daniel said of potentially having his third child on Father's Day. "Throughout this, Rachel has been pregnant practically the entire time. My priorities are obviously spending time with my wife and kids over law school to the extent that that's healthy and appropriate. I think maybe my law school studies suffered a little bit because of that, but certainly not in a way that I feel guilty about. It's a good thing to prioritize, if you ask me."
Entering law school with a pretty open mind, Daniel wasn't that interested in the court room, "but was certainly open to being persuaded otherwise."
"What do I find interesting? What doors do I see opening in front of me?" he said. "I had some close buddies that went the big-law tract where they go to a big law firm and kind of get chewed up and spit out. That side didn't interest me. I was too old for that, wasn't interested in doing that.
"Sure enough, as fate would have it, that's what I'm doing. I'm headed to a big law firm, Norton Rose Fulbright. It's a big international law firm, but they have an office in downtown Dallas. So, that's where I'm headed to do corporate finance. That's one of the two things I said I wasn't interested in doing going into law school, and sure enough God opened that door and I couldn't say no.
Daniel has the next couple months to study for the bar exam, which will be held July 30- Aug. 1, and will officially begin at Norton Rose Fulbright in September.
"This is going to be invaluable life experience, make me a more useful member of society and a father to my children and husband to my wife," he said, "just using the gifts God has given me to the fullest, instead of kind of sitting back on my haunches, so to speak."
Although he's accomplished a lot in his 35 years, by most standards, Daniel said it pales in comparison to someone like Meriwether Lewis. Undaunted Courage, a biography of Lewis, chronicles how he graduated college when he was 19, served as Private Secretary to the U.S. President in his 20s, led the Lewis & Clark Expedition in his early 30s and served as Governor of the Louisiana Territory, all before his 35th birthday.
"That's immediately what popped in my head when you said that I had accomplished a lot," Daniel said. "I don't feel like I have, compared to some of these guys that I've been listening to their stories. Pretty amazing stuff."
Sepulveda said the turnarounds by football coach Matt Rhule at both Temple and Baylor have been nothing short of amazing as well.
"Seems like Coach Rhule is doing similar things here with his Baylor tenure that he did in his previous stop," he said. "He turned that program around so quickly. And now, you're looking at the same thing happening at Baylor. Hopefully, that trend continues."
