Pellom McDaniels

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Pellom McDaniels III (born February 21, 1968 in San Jose, California) is a former NFL defensive end who played from 1993-1999.

Pellom was the first child of Pellom and Mary McDaniels. Raised by his working class maternal grandparents, from them he learned his work ethic and drive to be successful. He displayed an early interest in the fine and applied arts, as well as athletics and began his undergraduate studies in Fine Arts at Oregon State University where he experienced success as a student-athlete. Following his collegiate career, he worked for Procter & Gamble as a Health and Beauty Care representative in the Portland, Oregon area before pursuing a professional football career in the World League of American Football with the Birmingham (Alabama) Fire. In 1991, he signed his first contract in the National Football League with the Philadelphia Eagles. In 1992, the Kansas City Chiefs asked McDaniels to join the team’s practice roster, and from 1993 to 1998, he was an integral part of the heralded defense that both intimidated and dominated NFL offenses.

While a member of the Kansas City Chiefs Football organization, he worked his way into this community, becoming a voice for Kansas City’s children while contributing the resources needed to begin the Arts for Smarts foundation. Programs like the Pellom and I Like Art, Wee Art, the Fish Out Water Writing program, and Smart Starts were designed to help children and young adults recognize and realize the possibilities for their futures. After spending two seasons with the Atlanta Falcons, he retired from the NFL and began his pursuit of a graduate degree at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia. A current Dean’s Teaching Fellow at Emory, he will be completing his Ph.D. in the spring of 2007.

Publications include: My Own Harlem (1998); So, You Want to be Pro (2000), "We're American Too: The Negro Leagues and the Philosophy of Resistance" in Baseball and Philosophy: Thinking Outside the Batter's Box (2004); reviews in Hampton University's International Review of African American Art related to the work of artists Kadir Nelson and Hale Woodruff; and "Caught in the Act: Seeing Photography as a Window to Reality" in the online journal HypheNation: An Interdisciplinary Journal for the Study of Critical Moments Discourse.