John Urschel goes back to school at MIT

Growing up, John Urschel was looking at two very different career paths. He wanted to be a football player, but his mother wished for her son to attend MIT, and become quite literally a rocket scientist.

With Urschel now living out his dream as an offensive lineman for the Baltimore Ravens, it looks like he ended up winning. However, with Urschel now enrolled at MIT for graduate school, it seems as if a happy medium as been reached between mother and son.

Writing for the Players' Tribune as their Advanced Stats Columnist, Urschel pens a great essay on his experience at MIT thus far. In addition to hitting the textbooks hard, Urschel has also been training with the school's football team in an effort to balance both school and sport.

Despite the MIT Engineers being a Division III team, Urschel has been very impressed by the football team, which featured 17 high school valedictorians on its roster last season. They even outplayed the pro player, surpassing Urschel during sprints.

"I am a 310-pound offensive lineman for the Baltimore Ravens. I probably had about fifty or sixty pounds on the biggest guy on MIT’s O-line. But when we ran, they put me to shame. They could out-sprint me."

Urschel says the decision to head back to school so early was because he felt that he wasn't applying himself enough mathematically. Urschel writes, "[I've] always prided myself on not sacrificing football for math, or math for football." And it seems like he's doing a pretty good job right now of balancing his two loves.