VIDEO: DANNY O'BRIEN HIGHLIGHTS
Little did Danny O'Brien know at the time that the 18 credits that he carried with him from his North Carolina high school to the University of Maryland would be a means to an end; the first step towards an opportunity provided by the NCAA through its graduate student exemption that would ultimately allow O'Brien to transfer — without penalty — to Wisconsin. "Honestly, I didn't know all the credits were go- ing to transfer until I graduated,'' said O'Brien, who attended East Forsyth High School in Kernersville, N.C. (10 miles from Winston-Salem). "I took some advanced placement classes; a lot of people from our school did. And that helped me a lot getting there (Maryland) with 18 credits; that's a semester and some change. "Being there for summer school, I knew that I
was going to graduate in three and one-half years if not three years, which was a goal of mine. I sat down with a business school advisor and he said, 'You could potentially finish grad school — before all is said and done — on scholarship.' I said, 'Let's do it.' I didn't know it was going to help me in this way. But it did.''
30 » VARSITY AUGUST 30, 2012 O'Brien, of course, found his way to Madison on
the heels of Russell Wilson, the NC State transfer, who brought a national awareness to the NCAA exemption that provides athletes with a one-time waiver; the option to play immediately at another school if they have earned their undergraduate de- gree. "It's one of the rules that benefits the student- athletes and rewards them for succeeding in the classroom,'' opined O'Brien, who's enrolled in the Educational Leadership Policy Analysis program at Wisconsin. "You can't do it unless you graduate and a lot of times graduate early. Certainly I'm not going to complain about it because I'm here be- cause of it.''
There was always a strong commitment to aca-
demics in the O'Brien household — "My family in- stilled habits in me and pushed it (education) pret- ty early even when I didn't see the benefits in it,'' he admitted — never more so than after the family moved from Arden Hills, Minn., a St. Paul suburb, to Kernersville. Danny O'Brien was 10. "I was fortunate to move in August just before school started,'' he said. "I joined a football team
