The Human Joystick: Aggie Flashback with Dante Hall

Key quotes from Dante Hall interview

"It was such a big deal for me to get my degree and I thought about it for years and finally decided to make it happen. It was so important to me that I actually made the drive from Houston to College Station every day for six, seven months. With a lot of people in my corner, I was able to get it done."

"There are a lot of kids like Jorvorskie Lane and myself who come in at 18 and immature, and it is beautiful to see them go down the right lane, as opposed to the one that leads to getting worse as a person. "

"My high school coach was a member of the A&M team from '80-'85. This is a guy that took me under his wing and was a father to me. I knew he had my best interest and when I got hurt my senior year, he stepped up and told Coach Slocum and staff to look at me and give me a chance. That’s why I came here, a fellow Aggie told me that if I came here I would be well taken care of."

"I never quite understood why people couldn’t see what I could see on the field and it never dawned on me until I retired and picked up golf. I’d go out and play with older guys, younger guys, teammates and I’d see hooks and shanks, I could always see the ball and fellow football players and business men were always saying, 'your eyes are unbelievable, how’d you see that?' It finally hit me, man I’ve got super vision."

"I love the game of football and I realize it now that my career is over and I still have the passion to be in the game. Looking back, I think that had a lot to do with my success. The Southern Miss game, I had tweaked a knee or something was going on and they didn’t want to play me. It was such a big game and I finally convinced them to put me in and I had all this anger from not being able to play. When I got in, it was just a ball of fury and anger and I just ran with it. It was all from not being able to play until the second quarter. Once I got in, it was like, 'Oh yeah, it’s on now!'"

"1999 was Dante Hall’s full display of immaturity, not understanding the ramifications of how I was parking. A&M is a big campus, its hot, you want me to walk from this class to that class I will be a sweat bomb. That was my mindset and it was dead wrong. Up until then, I was accumulating so many parking tickets and they had to call Coach Slocum and the staff. When the season went sour, I think everything came to a head. We got our brakes beaten off by Oklahoma, and Slocum came in and was addressing multiple things, not just me, but when he addressed my parking, I took offense and said something back. In hindsight, he was right, I was wrong. You don’t upstage a coach like that and he had no choice but to kick me off the team."

"What a lot of people don’t realize is, a few days later me and coach Slocum had a great conversation and he kept me on scholarship so I could keep working towards my degree and that was huge. It allowed me to keep working out in the weight room to get ready for the draft. On top of that, he spoke very well of me to the Kansas City Chiefs, told them I wasn’t a bad kid, just a little immature and so on. It was just a bad day, bad meeting and he stood up for me in the days, months and years after it. We’ve had a great relationship since then and it taught me that nobody is bigger than the team and that was a great lesson."

"It was sad that it went down like that, but that was a big part of why I wanted to come back and come back to work with the team. I did not want one little thing to take away the great four years I had here. It was important to come back and finish it the right way."

"When it first happened I was bitter, even though Coach Slocum stuck his neck out for me, because I had to answer questions about it. As I got older and older, I realized it really was all on me. When I came back in 2007, I felt proud once again to be an Aggie and been die hard ever since."

"The number one reason I was successful was because I was used to catching punts from Shane Lechler. What I mean by that is that as a 17 and 18 year old, he was kicking it 70 to 80 yards and I got that for four years. When I got in the league, not everyone kicks like that. I could survey the field and still catch the ball, glance at the field, look at the ball. I was so comfortable catching punts because I could focus on looking down the field."

"When I do public speaking, I’m always sure to share the story about how on the way to your dreams, there is always going to be bumps and adversity that you have to go through. I think it is important."

"Speedy Noil is a beast, not only does he have the talent but he has the right head on his shoulders. He has it physically and mentally."