Eight years ago Daniel Smith dreamed of playing in the NFL and saw the University of Hawaii taking him there.

These days he marvels at how UH instead started him on the path to an unimagined career in law.

“It has been a wild ride,” said Smith, who will graduate from law school Saturday in North Carolina and then start a job in Washington D. C., all the while wondering what he might be doing if UH had not reneged on the scholarship he said it promised him in high school.

As a 6-foot, 3-inch, 185-pound defensive back in Charlotte, N. C., (the family was later transferred to Boise, Idaho), Smith was recruited by several schools. Hawaii offered him a scholarship as a junior in 2007 on his 17th birthday. Smith said UH instructed him to turn down other suitors.

But nine months later, when head coach June Jones and much of his staff left UH for Southern Methodist in January 2008, a month before the national letter of intent signing day, Smith said the new staff refused to honor the agreement, leaving him in an 11th-hour lurch without a scholarship.

UH claimed a valid offer had not been made and Smith’s grades were not as they were purported to be.

The resulting lawsuit, which came amid a growing climate for athletes’ rights, drew national attention for its potential to set a precedent for all colleges, if Smith prevailed at trial.

Smith walked on at Portland State, a school that had offered him a scholarship before his pledge to UH. “I was really feeling down about the whole situation,” Smith recalled. “It was something that was weighing on my mind every single day. I’d wake up thinking about it and I’d go to sleep thinking about it.”

But the 21⁄2-year legal process also gave him an appreciation of the law in action. “I just started seeing the way Mark (Valencia, his Honolulu attorney) dealt with the entire lawsuit and helped me and my mom,” Smith said. “I started thinking to myself that I would never want other people to go through what I did.”

He said,  “I kinda decided my freshman year that this (law) is something I could actually do and make a career of it.”

In defending itself, UH spent more than $155,000 on outside attorney fees and court sanctions, according to figures obtained by the Honolulu Star-Advertiser under the state’s open records law. Ultimately a settlement was reached in which UH agreed to pay Smith $41,500, according to documents.

UH said the settlement was not an admission of liability and it was agreed to, “in order to avoid further controversy and the time, expense, risks and costs inherent in litigation.”

Smith said, “The goal was always to play football, that was my No. 1 goal coming out of high school. I would have loved to have played for (UH). If it wasn’t for the suit and the whole ordeal, I probably would have stuck to something in sports.”

After an injury ended Smith’s freshman season, he transferred to Whittier College in California to concentrate on school and prepare for law school. Valencia, his attorney, became a mentor.

Valencia, who will attend graduation ceremonies, said, “Daniel is a tremendous success story, (somebody) who took a very bad situation that UH created and used it as motivation to do great things. This is how you handle adversity. And, I think, he is going to be a phenomenal lawyer.”

“I’ve had so many great people in my life tell me that everything happens for a reason and I started believing that a few years ago when my life started turning around,” Smith said. “The journey has been long, but I wouldn’t change it at all.”

Reach Ferd Lewis at flewis@staradvertiser.com or 529-4820.