John Urschel Goes Pro | Hacker News Reader

John Urschel Goes Pro

hmmdaily.com

112 pointstacomonstrous37 comments

It blows my mind that he had the energy required to be in the NFL and a PhD student at the same time. It's not easy to do either of those part time.

It really is impressive. Laurent Duvernay-Tardif of the Kansas City Chiefs is a similar story. He completed med school and his residency while playing football at the highest level.

https://www.kansascity.com/sports/nfl/kansas-city-chiefs/art...

It's not easy to do either of those full time (speaking as a former PhD student)!

As a current one, believe me, I know.

It really is extremely difficult, I also know.

Every single comment here is absolutely glowing. Completely deserved. Whenever I see a question asked of him or he comments on something, you couldn't script a better answer.

The biggest take away I get from Urshel is that you can always go back to what you love. His dedication is infectious.

They always say the Offensive Line is the most intelligent group of guys on the field. I've heard it as the Dance of the Elephants. While the hitting is fun, there is a while lot of communication, execution, and study that goes into the position. Urshel is a fine example of all of this.

John, if you are reading - you are a hero to my football-playing and future engineer son. Thank you for showing it's possible to follow more than one dream and path.

In case anyone else was similarly curious, here's a link to his first paper: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10569-012-9461-8

This guy should be the role model used in tv commercials. I doubt it'll happen, though.

He already is. He also gets a fair amount of media coverage. All well deserved.

Yeah, there was a cool thing where he played current FIDE Chess World Champion Challenger Fabiano Caruana.

Not sure about him being role model, he's very unusually gifted. Most of us can only aspire to being a jack on one trade, he's a master of two.

He certainly has a lot of natural talent in two different areas, but those things only take you so far at the pro level. There are many glowing stories from former coaches and professors acclaiming his work ethic in pursuing both. As role models go, I think he's pretty good. Especially since very few other athletes ever talk about enjoying math.

You have a point but I suppose I'm a bit defeatist.

I'm not so sure that adopting a high flyer as a role model is going to bring happiness for most people.

Contrary to the article most people shouldn't try to be professional mathematicians. All the people I knew in a mid-ranked program switched into software afterwards to make money.

I guess the intellectual training, abstraction, etc prepares you well for a software career, compared to say psychology (nothing against psych but it's just math is closer to cs, we are kind of poor applied math engineers). But then you end up have to learn programming practices, engineering strategies, etc.

If you can get into MIT's math PhD program, you go for it.

If I become financially independent, this is exactly what I would do (probably in a different field, however). Kudos to John Urschel.

I have thought about this. I'm almost financially independent, but I already have a phd in CS. What should I do? I thought about a "retirement job" where I am a cs prof in a nice place to live. I could go for another phd in math, physics, or astronomy, my interests, but why? I would really like a job where I can hang around and think and learn interesting stuff about tech and science.

Since I was kid I wanted to know many subjects deeply like quantum mechanics, number theory, music, genetics, neurology, robotics, ML and so on. The way I look at PhD is to learn these subjects that I would have anyway but with freedom as well as having someone far more experienced guiding me. This would also help me to identify people who I can collaborate with. Also remember that PhD education is generally free which means it won’t become burden on my financial independence. US and Europe have some great universities at great locations. So I can also satisfy my thirst for travel and getting taste of local cultures. I have little interest in building academic portfolio to get a faculty job. It’s very much learning for the sake of learning. I want to go after big unsolved problems but don’t want to have any pressure. May be some great research might come out of me or may be it won’t. If I was financially independent, I would always be learning something at any point in time and therefore enrolled in some PhD program at any point in time. I might be ending up with may be 4 or 5 PhDs and that had be awesome :).

> I would really like a job where I can hang around and think and learn interesting stuff about tech and science.

If you achieve financial independence, can't you do that without a job?

Having some responsibility is good for your mental health and motivation though

You'll always get that with a job , but rarely without one

I agree, I need something to strive for.

From my years in academia I have published original reasearch in physics. If I am ever super wealthy I’d love to attempt a similar contribution in another field. I’d probably try for some kind of engineering or anthropology. :)

How are you FI?

The usual way in software, 25 years of toiling at the faangm companies. I am probably not quite there.

I'm from Baltimore and met him one day when I was out grabbing some lunch. He couldn't have been a nicer guy. Glad to see him continuing to do what makes him happy.

An unfortunate aspect of our culture: he probably would have had more fame and wealth had he stuck to football.

At least for Urschel, he has a reputation for not being a big spender: https://www.cnbc.com/2017/11/03/nfls-john-urschel-lived-on-2...

He didn't live on a modest $25,000 a year and drive a used car "because I'm frugal or trying to save for some big purchase," Urschel said. "It's because the things I love the most in this world (reading math, doing research, playing chess) are very, very inexpensive."

I don't think that's true. He played offensive line which isn't a high profile position and he wasn't a star. I think he's much more famous due to the Math/NFL combo than he would be in either alone.

Starting offensive linemen are among the highest paid players in the NFL and have the longest careers on average, some spanning more than 15 years.

Dallas is paying its O-Line $41,174,860 this year, $4,574,984 per player on average (including all 9 starters and backups), which is 22.25% of the salary cap.

NFL Offensive Line Spending by Team https://www.spotrac.com/nfl/positional/offensive-line/

And the Giants just made Nate Solder the highest-paid offensive lineman in NFL, "a contract worth $62 million — an average of $15.5 million per year — with a $34.9 million guaranteed."

https://www.bostonglobe.com/sports/patriots/2018/03/14/nate-...

The cited article above notes he earned $1.8m over three years: https://www.cnbc.com/2017/10/27/nfl-player-who-retired-to-pu...

I was strictly talking about fame.

Minimum annual salary in the NFL is $480,000.

Average tenure in the NFL is something like 3 years. Not saying that 1.5mm minimum isn't a lot, of course.

For many, if not most, of the players it must be one year and out ...

(Simple case: ten guys, two hang out ten years, the other eight share ten years of NFL ...)

People who go to grad school in math aren't really motivated by fame and wealth.

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