When your work ethic is unreasonable, I believe it's okay to have unreasonable expectations and unreasonable goals. Things like playing in the NFL, graduating with your undergrad and master's with a 4.0. Things in the future I want to do, like get my PhD in math from a top, top university, being a titled chess player. These are things that aren't reasonable, but things that I'm thoroughly attempting to achieve, and I'm going to give them everything I have.
That ambitious guy with the unreasonable work ethic and unreasonable goals is former NFL lineman John Urschel from our conversation in 2015. I'm pulling it out of the Wavemaker archives now because of an alarming new finding about NFL players and brain damage. You may have seen this. A new medical journal study of hundreds of former NFL players who died over a recent six-year period found that at least one in four of those players were afflicted with the degenerative brain disease called CTE, which is caused by the cumulative force of hits to the head over many years. It's been linked to football for about two decades now. And that study connects to the backstory of this conversation.
In March of 2015, a star rookie linebacker named Chris Borland shocked the NFL by announcing that he was retiring from football after only one season because he did not want to risk getting CTE. A week or so later, John Urschel wrote a piece explaining that despite the risks of playing football, he just loved the game too much to leave it. So at the time I called him to talk about that, and I got a more fascinating, gripping personal story than I anticipated. John Urschel is one inspiring individual. I'm Michael Scher, and this is Wavemaker Conversations, where curiosity meets hope. [music]
John, welcome to Wavemaker Conversations.
So, first of all, just to bring the audience who is not immersed in football and popular culture up to speed, you read Chris Borland was somebody you competed against in college. You read his piece and you wrote an explanation of why you, how you have calculated the risks you face as a football player and why you choose to remain in football despite the fact that you have a very unique set of academic skills that would give you other options. Why do you play football?
I'd say my piece was less a response to Chris and more of just me putting out there my personal reasons and my personal story with football and why I still play. And it's simple. I understand that I have a lot of talents mathematically. I have a lot of other options other than football. But the main take-home of the piece is that I'm thoroughly in love with the game of football. It's something that I could not imagine not doing, and it's something that I couldn't possibly do without.
And so reading your resume, which is quite awesome. You earned your undergraduate degree in mathematics at Penn State in three years, got your master's in your fourth year, all while maintaining a 4.0 GPA, which to me is a lot more impressive than the other stat, which is 6'3", 308 lb. And I went to my elementary school daughter and told her about you and said, 'You know, what do you want to know from this guy, John Urschel?' And she said, 'I want to know when he became really interested in math, when he became and why he became really interested in football, and at the moment why he's choosing football over math.'
She's got some pretty good questions. I think she could have a pretty good future in reporting. That's just my opinion.
Okay. Let's start with math. I've been good at math ever since I could remember. And even before I can remember, my mother would tell me stories about how mathematically inclined I was. She would tell me stories about how she would go to the store and she would buy me, you know, little toys and little games to play with when I was very, very young. And the problem she had was she would always try to get me these kind of quantitative type games. You know, when you're young, maybe you have the little blocks and you have to fit the right block through the right hole. And my mother would tell me that I was impossible to buy these toys for because she would get the toy home, she'd unwrap it, she'd give it to me, you know, I'd grab the blocks or whatever it would be. I'd solve the problem within 30 seconds to a minute. I'd do it, I'd push it to the side, and I'd never touch it again. I'd consider it once I had done it once, I would consider the matter finished and I would consider myself disinterested in it, is what she would tell me. This type of phenomena went on throughout my childhood. And I've always been good at math, but believe it or not, math isn't something that I've always loved.
I was very, very good at it. And I would always push myself to do well in math. I remember when I was in first or second grade, my mother would buy me math workbooks from fifth grade or sixth grade. When I was in seventh or eighth grade, I was studying calculus, and this is just how this went for me. And I enjoyed that process and I enjoyed learning about math and reading about these things. But what I really didn't enjoy growing up was math class in school. This might have been one of my least favorite things. And I know this sounds counterintuitive, but the classes were dead boring and just not interesting. My math professors didn't like me very much when I was younger because I was the kid in the corner not listening, not paying attention, staring off into space, and then getting the math exams they give and then scoring a 100 on them. And it wasn't until university when I got here and I had the option to take whichever courses I wanted. I had the option to take, say, senior-level math classes my freshman year or graduate-level math classes my sophomore year. There's no one there to stop me.
So before we get into football then, already maybe, and I'm not a football player, but I'm seeing a pattern here because those very first games your mother bought you, and I remember buying my kids those games, you fit the blocks into the right size shape. You consider that math. Math is very visual, isn't it?
Yes, math can be very visual. I consider math at a high level really to be an exercise in problem solving.
And is football also an exercise in problem solving? Because people I know in football talk about the complexity of the playbooks and all these plays that you have to memorize and lineups and arrangements, and then still be able to improvise. Are there a lot of similarities between math and football, or am I just reading into this?
There are similarities, and yes, there is a lot to try to gather out of a playbook and to truly understand what's going on. But I'd be lying to you if I said that's the aspect of football that drew me to it, or that I find that aspect of football particularly interesting.
It sounds like you started to fall in love with math when it became a more extreme challenge. Is that correct?
Yes. The parts of math that I loved when I was younger were the challenging parts that my mother would give me. I really did not enjoy math class from elementary school all the way through high school. It just wasn't an enjoyable experience for me.
So, your mother recognized this talent early on. And how about your father? Was he clued into this as well?
My father was clued in, but my mother is the woman who raised me. So, she was the person who was really hands-on with me the majority of my time. I knew my father growing up and he was a part of my life, but my mother was the person who really molded who I am.
So, you didn't like math class, but there were aspects of math that you loved and you found very easy, and you found ways, and your mother found ways for you to challenge yourself, it sounds like, independently of class. So, at what point did you discover football, and at what point did you start loving football?
I started playing football in high school, and I joined the team because my father had played football. He played football at the University of Alberta, and he actually had an opportunity to play in the CFL, the Canadian Football League, and decided to go to med school instead. So I guess, you know, when you're a kid, I looked up to my dad, and when I would visit his house, I would see, you know, photos of him playing football. So obviously I wanted to play.
You know, it just occurs to me a lot of football players have come from disadvantaged families. I can't imagine, in some ways, a more advantaged family to raise a kid to accomplish great things. I mean, here your father had the option to play football but was able and had the desire and did go to med school. You know, your mother is sitting there and looking at your talents and figuring out ways to feed that talent so that the talent can grow. Was there anything your parents did that wasn't right? [laughter]
My mother did a fantastic job raising me. I had the best mother in the world. Believe me, she sacrificed for me every single day and did everything she could to make sure I had more opportunities than her growing up.
Well, what kind of opportunity, where was she from, and what kind of opportunities did she have or not have?
Man, I could talk to you about my mother all day. I've got stories about that. My mother, she grew up in Cincinnati, Ohio. She grew up in a rough, rough neighborhood. And if you don't mind, I'd like to tell you a little bit about my mother's story because it's a story I love and I could talk about all day.
So my mother goes to this very, very rough high school in Cincinnati. I'm talking metal detector type high school. And her parents, neither of them had gone to college. Her mother's a seamstress and her father works at GM. So, blue-collar family, and my mother's the top student in her high school. And it's her senior year and she's talking to people. She's talking to her parents, and of course her parents think, you know, don't go to college. College is overrated. It's fantastic that you're even getting your high school degree. That's, you know, that's better than a lot of your family members did. But, you know, college, it's not for you. You need to finish high school, go get a job. But my mom, she still has doubts. She's still thinking, maybe I want to go to college. But she doesn't know because she doesn't really know anyone that has a college degree. So, she's not sure. So, she goes and she does what most people would do. She goes and she talks to her guidance counselor at her high school. And she tells him, 'Listen, I'm this fantastic student at this school. What should I do with my life? What should I aspire to be? Give me some direction.' And the guidance counselor tells her that she should aspire to be a secretary.
Now, thankfully for me, my mother didn't listen to her parents, didn't listen to this guidance counselor who, man, if I could find him, I might have some words for him. She decides to walk to the local university, the University of Cincinnati, meets with an admissions officer, and puts in an application to the University of Cincinnati. Nowhere else. Well, I've got news for you. My mother got accepted to the University of Cincinnati, and she got a full academic scholarship. My mother became a nurse, later found her passion in law and became a medical malpractice lawyer. And that is a story about coming from really coming from nothing, not even having good examples in your life of what you should aspire to, what you should try to be. And my mother not limiting herself by what other people around her are doing or what she sees, and holding herself to a higher standard. And she was the example for me growing up.
Well, that's a pretty powerful example and clearly explains a lot of why you're excelling at a very high level in these two very difficult disciplines, math and football. And by the way, if on this Wavemaker show I can somehow in the future arrange a meeting, a conversation between that guidance counselor in high school and you, would you be open for a little conversation?
I'm all about it. You can even, you know, fly us down, put us in the same, you know, radio room. I'm okay with that.
Well, it's interesting because what that has to do with something your mother has, something called, and I'm going to quote from somebody I interviewed just recently, a very well-known and influential professor at Stanford University who's a developmental psychologist. Her name is Carol Dweck, and she wrote a very popular book called Mindset. And I think you'll relate to this, and tell me what your reaction is to this. But what Carol Dweck did was about 40 years ago, she was just out of graduate school and she had these two groups of kids come into her office for a study and she would give them puzzles to do. And when the puzzles got more difficult, there was one group of kids that would stick in there for the challenge and they would actually express how much they love taking on the challenge. Sounds like you were when you were a kid. And then there was another group of kids. They would totally fold. They would shy away from the challenge. They would leave the room. They did not want to fail. And she set out in her life's work to figure out what creates the what she called the growth mindset kind of kid who thinks if I just work hard enough, I might be able to get there, versus the fixed mindset kid. This is Carol Dweck's terminology, which is I'm either smart or I'm not. I'm either talented or I'm not. And I'm not going to take on any challenges that might prove or indicate that I really don't have what it takes. You seem to come from a place that is the classic growth mindset.
Absolutely. That's something that my mother has instilled in me and something that I thoroughly believe. I'm of the thought process, this is me personally, that my whole life people have been trying to sell me short and tell me that, you know, I'm not good enough to do this, I'm not good enough to do that. And the way that I go about things is I just smile and I have these goals, these passions that drive me, these things I want to achieve. And man, you know, when your work ethic is unreasonable, I believe it's okay to have unreasonable expectations and unreasonable goals. Things like playing in the NFL, things like graduating with your undergrad and master's with a 4.0. Things in the future I want to do, like get my PhD in math from a top, top university, say a Princeton, a Stanford, MIT, a Caltech. Things like being a titled chess player. These type of goals, these are things that aren't reasonable, but these are things that I'm thoroughly attempting to achieve, and I'm going to give them everything I have.
Now, in some ways, as you're speaking with such confidence, it almost sounds like, well, this stuff is all coming easy to you. But clearly it was not easy getting into the NFL. I don't know if it was tougher getting into the NFL than getting a master's in the particular area of math you focused on. Tell me about the times in both football and math where you were just knocked down and through sheer will got up, or has it all come easy to you?
Okay. For math, I can't say that I have a great example of when I've been knocked down and had to try to get up. I think my math career has been a fairly smooth one. I do have a good story, and I'm sorry that I'm giving you all these tangential stories, because I do have a story about a struggle that me and my mother did face with me mathematically and academically when I was a young child. When I was in first grade, believe it or not, the elementary school I went to wanted to hold me back. They not only wanted to hold me back, but they wanted to put me in a special program for children who were slow.
And what reason did they give you or your mother?
Well, the reason they gave my mother was that because I wasn't paying attention in class. I wasn't interacting with the other students. I kept to myself. And I guess, you know, my drawings weren't very good and I didn't really like to draw and I was pretty antisocial and they thought something was wrong with me and they thought I was mentally challenged. And thankfully, thank God for my mother. My mother tells them that I'm not mentally challenged, obviously. And they keep insisting that they hold me back. They keep insisting that I need to go into a special program for children like me. And my mother makes them give me a standardized test to test my intelligence. Needless to say, I kill the exam. I'm far, far off the charts mathematically. And now the school is talking about bumping me up two grades. And I'd say that is really the only academic roadblock I can think of to give you.
So tell me a little bit about your journey to the NFL and maybe what some of those turning points were that got you to be able to play at the very highest level of football.
It's been a long journey for me. In high school, I was a good player, but I wasn't highly recruited. I was offered a scholarship in January of my senior year, about a couple weeks before signing day, by Penn State. I also had late offers from Stanford and Boston College. At Penn State, I believe we had 25 people in our recruiting class and I was the second-to-last person offered. I was the seventh offensive lineman offered.
Let me ask you this. In terms of your self-conception, you were the second-to-last person offered. Did you feel that that's where your playing level was at the time, or that they were just, you know, not appreciating your talents?
