Classroom skills can boost NFL prospects
NEW YORK — Football is complicated. Life is more so.
The charge for universities is to prepare students for whatever comes after they graduate — at least, that is the mission statement. At schools such as Northwestern and Stanford, it certainly rings true.
When those students are football players, the challenges are exacerbated. Balancing classroom obligations with the demands of big-time sports is difficult. Doing so, though, provides substantial benefits, as those players who are part of the NFL’s current draft crop have learned.
“That I could get into Stanford helps with football,” said Harrison Phillips, a defensive tackle projected to go in the second round in the draft, which starts Thursday at the Dallas Cowboys’ AT&T Stadium. “Anything worth doing in life is worth overdoing. The intellectual side of football has always been interesting to me.”
Teammate and linebacker Peter Kalambayi, like Phillips, is among the 39 players on the draft board who recently made the 2018 National Football Foundation Hampshire Honor Society for having carried a GPA of 3.2 or better throughout college.
“It is definitely a lot, especially midterm and finals week,” Kalambayi said. “It’s about understanding when you get home from practice and you are really tired and you don’t want to do anything, having that discipline to do what you need. It’s learning how to say no to going to social events. People hit you up, and you have to tell them, ‘It’s not right right now.’”
Right now, Kalambayi, Phillips and the other recognized scholar-athletes — including Cardinal teammates tackle David Bright and Dalton Schultz — all are listed as potential picks in the three-day draft. Among the traits they could bring to the pros are exceptional study habits, discipline, strong retention skills and organization.
Of course, they need significant athletic ability, too, as well as no health problems or off-field trouble that would give NFL teams reason to worry. And just because they excel in the classroom isn’t an overriding reason to draft them.
“With some players there definitely was a carry-over; with others definitely not,” noted Senior Bowl executive director and Sirius XM Radio football analyst Phil Savage, who has NFL experience in both front offices and as an assistant coach.
“We’ve seen prospects come out of academically inclined schools where the classwork is especially challenging and they had no edge over prospects who came out of other type schools that were not so highly rated academically. You have to be careful to tie it completely together. But guys who check off the boxes in the classroom who you know have worked hard and gotten good marks, it makes you feel good about their prospects.”
College Football Hall of Fame member Pat Fitzgerald was an All-America linebacker at Northwestern and has been head coach there since 2006. He fit the category of star player and student, and he now gets to work with similar youngsters, the vast majority of whom won’t be heading to the pros.
Fitzgerald believes the habits these players create in high school construct a foundation for their college careers as student-athletes. The environment they experience at Northwestern solidifies that foundation for their futures, in football or otherwise.
“It begins with the expectations and standards of our program and university,” Fitzgerald said. “That is our identification, who we are, and we take great pride in that. We are recruiting a young man who is an institutional fit. We place high value in a 40- to 50-year decision. It’s not just playing football, it’s using the university to help you be successful in life. He wants to be successful in all he does.
“Typically, the goals are very high of the young man we get to coach, and we are able to drive them and push them to newer heights. It makes for a great group collectively.”
Stanford’s Phillips had two majors: sociology, and the science of technology and society. He minored in education and graduated in December.
He reasons his acumen for dissecting game plans and individual plays comes not only from his love for football but from his classroom skills. Phillips keeps a notebook with him and regularly writes down things he picks up at video sessions or meetings.
“I don’t know how much carryover there is, but from the football meeting rooms there’s a lot of carryover to the field,” he said. “There definitely are similarities of study habits that might be the same.”