BOZEMAN — Now back at full strength, Montana State linebacker Neil Daily has been flying all over the field making plays for the third-ranked Bobcats.
As great as Daily has been on the field, the most impressive thing this young man does might be in the classroom as a civil engineering major — a notable double-duty effort many MSU players have pulled off.
"A lot of it is my dad is a chemical engineer, so growing up I was always walking around seeing what he was doing in his offices. But it's a completely different field," Daily said.
"Going into high school I had a pretty good affinity for physics classes. I just liked understanding how things worked. Growing up making stuff out of wood — I made my mom a raised flower bed, a couple tables. It's that affinity for building stuff that landed me here."
Daily's relentless work ethic landed him an internship this past summer that gave him a glimpse at what his future may have in store.
"In Bozeman here last summer just working for a site-civil firm, WWC Engineering. It was great because I got to see a different type of engineering they don't really tell you about in school," Daily said. "It's more or less the install of the infrastructure around Bozeman here, even the U.S., where you install the water lines, how you design those. How they do the fire lines and design those. Roads, how you just develop land."
As Daily has grown as a leader on the field, he has off it as well. Now one of the upperclassmen with several years of education under his belt, he can share some of his past experiences with current teammates in the same field of study.
“Now it's kind of cool because I can look down and there's a couple guys below me in the civil engineering path, like Adam Jones and Dane Steel," Daily said. "It's cool because I can share my experience here, what professors are good, what classes to take, what classes to take over the summer because they're tough and to try and give yourself as much time as possible.
“That's been kind of fun for me to be able to help those guys out with stuff that I had no clue of going in."
When you have a guy with the athleticism and brains of Daily, it’s no surprise to see him stand out on Saturdays.
