National Football League

Williams files suit over engagement ring

Published Jul. 6, 2011 1:00 a.m. ET

foxsports

Cowboys fans have seen a few airmailed footballs slip through Roy Williams’ fingers the last three seasons.

Now it seems the receiver has let a $76,600 engagement ring that he mailed slip through his grasp — and he wants it back.

According to a lawsuit filed last week, Williams mailed the ring along with a recorded wedding proposal to Brooke Daniels, a former Miss Texas USA.

When Daniels turned down his proposal, Williams wanted his ring back. Just ship it back, hopefully with postal insurance, right?

No problem, except that six weeks after sending her the ring, Williams said in affidavits that Daniels said she lost the ring.

Williams reported the loss to his insurance agency, which investigated and found that the ring was in the possession of Daniels’ father, Michael Daniels.

Michael Daniels told the Odessa American that Williams said he didn’t want the ring back.

“He said (to Brooke Daniels), ‘I’m not like a lot of people, I don’t want the ring back. You’ll eventually come back to me,’ ” Michael Daniels told the newspaper. “And she didn’t.”

Williams, who declined comment, was a prep football star at Odessa’s Permian High, the football-obsessed school and community chronicled in the novel and movie “Friday Night Lights.”

Daniels is from Tomball, near Houston. In addition to winning Miss Texas USA in 2009, she was also named Miss Photogenic during the contest. She placed in the Top 10 in the Miss USA pageant that year, the same pageant that sparked controversy when Miss California’s Carrie Prejean, the runner-up, said she lost the title because of her response to a question on gay marriage.

The elder Daniels said neither he nor his daughter said the ring was lost and that he would return it to avoid a lawsuit.

Under Texas law, engagement rings fall under the “conditional gift rule” which requires the person who accepted the ring to return it if they broke off the engagement. If the person who gave the ring broke it off, they give up any claims to the ring.

Since there was never an actual engagement, the legal claims might prove a little hazy — and what a star-studded courtroom that would be if the disagreement ever got that far. It has all the elements of a juicy novel or a TV movie.

A football star, a beauty queen and $76,600 diamond ring — no place but Texas.