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 places 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 have learned as part of the NFL’s draft crop.
“That I could get into Stanford helps with football,” says Harrison Phillips, a defensive tackle projected to go in the second round. “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 boards who recently made the 2018 National Football Foundation Hampshire Honor Society for having carried a grade-point average of 3.2 or better throughout college.
“It is definitely a lot, especially midterm and finals week. 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.'”
