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posted by CoolHand on Tuesday May 12 2015, @04:25AM   Printer-friendly
from the well-rounded-geek dept.

Kate Murphy writes at NYT about John Urschel whose latest contribution to the mathematical realm was a paper for the Journal of Computational Mathematics with the impressively esoteric title, "A Cascadic Multigrid Algorithm for Computing the Fiedler Vector of Graph Laplacians". "I have a Bachelor's and Master's in mathematics, all with a 4.0, and numerous published papers in major mathematical journals."

But as an offensive guard for the Baltimore Ravens, John Urschel regularly goes head to head with the top defensive players in the NFL and does his best to keep quarterback Joe Flacco out of harm's way. "I play because I love the game. I love hitting people," Urshel writes. "There's a rush you get when you go out on the field, lay everything on the line and physically dominate the player across from you. This is a feeling I'm (for lack of a better word) addicted to, and I'm hard-pressed to find anywhere else."

Urschel acknowledges that he has faced questions from NFL officials, journalists, fans and fellow mathematicians about why he runs the risk of potential brain injury from playing football when he has "a bright career ahead of me in mathematics," but he doesn't feel able to quit. "When I go too long without physical contact I'm not a pleasant person to be around. This is why, every offseason, I train in kickboxing and wrestling in addition to my lifting, running and position-specific drill work."

 
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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 12 2015, @07:07AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 12 2015, @07:07AM (#181834)

    physical domination is a hell of a lot of fun, especially when your physical success is accompanied by mental domination

    Would you like this then? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chess_boxing [wikipedia.org]

  • (Score: 2) by demonlapin on Saturday May 16 2015, @06:23AM

    by demonlapin (925) on Saturday May 16 2015, @06:23AM (#183675) Journal
    No, but only because I've never studied chess or boxed. The principle sounds fun.