Alumnus John Urschel Caps Off Banner Year with Campbell Trophy
Eberly College of Science alumnus John Urschel earned many accolades this year, including the prestigious Campbell Trophy, given to the nation's best football scholar-athlete.
It has been a big year for John Urschel, ’12 ’13g Mathematics. The 6’ 3” starting right guard of the Penn State Nittany Lions football team is a winner on and off the field.
Urschel earned two degrees from the Eberly College of Science in a relatively short time, completing a bachelor’s degree in mathematics in only three years with the honor of serving as the math department’s student marshal, and completing his first master’s degree in mathematics a year later. He is currently working toward a second master’s degree in math education while still maintaining his perfect 4.0 grade point average. In addition to his own academic work, he teaches undergraduate trigonometry and geometry as a lecturer for MATH 041. At 22, he has also already published, as the coauthor of “Instabilities of the Sun-Jupiter-Asteroid Three Body Problem” in Celestial Mechanics and Dynamical Astronomy.
This would be impressive for even the brightest student, but John Urschel did all of that while playing Division-I football.
Being a student athlete just adds to his accolades. The list of his accomplishments in this calendar year alone is dizzying: recipient of Penn State’s Ernest B. McCoy Memorial Award, presented annually to two senior student athletes, one male and one female, who are able to combine academic success and athletic performance excellence; first-team CoSIDA All-American for the second consecutive year; first-team All-Big Ten (by the coaches for the second consecutive season and by the media for the first time); winner of Penn State's Big Ten Sportsmanship award; one of the sixteen National Football Foundation Scholar-Athletes; and recipient of one of Fox Sports’s “Best Person in Sports” achievements.
In addition to all of his awards, Urschel was nominated to speak on behalf of all Big Ten players at the 42nd Annual Big Ten Kickoff Luncheon, where his speech garnered a standing ovation; elected a co-captain of the 2013 Nittany Lions football team; and selected as a finalist for the NCAA Senior CLASS Award, which recognizes an NCAA senior student athlete with achievements spanning the athlete’s values in community, classroom, character, and competition.
Also notable are the awards he was a candidate for, even if he didn’t win: the Outland Trophy, presented to the country’s best interior lineman, and the Rotary Lombardi Award for down lineman and defensive line players with All-American or all-conference team honors. Many athletes consider it an accomplishment just to be a candidate.
But the award every scholar-athlete has his eye on, the big one—the William V. Campbell Trophy—was taken home by Urschel in 2013, too. The Campbell Trophy recognizes the nation’s top football scholar-athlete, and Urschel is Penn State’s first Campbell Trophy winner.
Congratulations to John Urschel on a fantastic year at Penn State, both in the classroom and on the field.