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John Urschel: The 300 Pound Mathematician Who Hits People For a Living
HughPickens.com writes: Kate Murphy writes at NYT about mathematician 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." "Believe me, I am aware that terms such as multigrid, Fiedler, and vector are not words that people use in their daily lives," says Urshel.
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 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."
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 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."
I prefer cycling and climbing myself; not really into hitting things/being hit. Sitting in a chair all the time isn't healthy.
For the rest of us no surprise at all. 40 years ago I studied graph theory with a professor that was also a competitive karate fighter.
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"
Funny how the NFL officials only care about potential brain injury on players who are good at math. If the risk of brain injury was truly that high, nobody should be playing it.
This just shows that you don't know what the word means. I've know a couple of real sociopaths over a lifetime, and they were mean, manipulative, vindictive arseholes. One thing that they were not, was violent. They preferred to destroy people in more lasting and important ways than a few bruises. The closest everyday concept that mcuttatches the condition is evil.
Most blokes like burning off steam though. Not all of them, some are more shy retiring delicate types such as yourself. But for most men, regardless of whether they end up in the ivory towers of academia or cutting blocks in a yard, physical contact is normal. Success tends to correlate with the ability to control it and project it on demand. That's why we see sports as being a good outlet for it. I've known surprising number of martial artists in academia, they were all very straight forward about why they did it: they like punching things.
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Ha, that's nothing!
"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."
This is your indication that you are talking with an adrenaline/endorphin junkie.
I play futbol (soccer) defense, and can completely understand this. Its an otherwise thankless position. If you do it well pretty much nobody but your goalie notices, and if you mess up everyone hates on you. So why do it? Honestly, I believe I got addicted to the adrenaline/endorphin hit. I don't even feel right until I've had my first hard tackle. It is next to impossible to get that fix in real life, but a good physical confrontation will bring it right up. I once hadn't got there yet, and then a (clearly juicing) big forward knocked me to the ground while the ref wasn't looking. I got up laughing and thanking him. Not quite the reaction he was expecting.
I don't know how many here have seen Clint Eastwood's Every Which Way but Loose, but the main character Philo clearly had this as well. It was a major plot point that he had to fight, and had an unusual thing where he got better the more he was hit. Classic Endorphin/Adrenaline junkie.
I think it ought to go without saying that as a mathematician Urschel isn't going to get his body chemical "hit" in his daily life. I've certainly found that to be the case as a software engineer.
I think that the 'surprise' here is related to the (quite numerous, now that the NFL has pretty much lost the battle to keep CTE under wraps) stories about how the head trauma you experience in football has a nasty habit of wrecking your brain in a variety of unpleasant ways.
The fact that not all math professors are wholly sedentary, feeble, and bookish isn't a huge surprise; but seeing one doing something well known to have a high risk of chewing up his brain and spitting it out, that is somewhat curious. I would have expected him to choose something with more below-the-neck contact. Soft tissue damage and broken bones are something that humans cope with fairly well, and Team Medicine knows a lot about dealing with, if natural recuperation isn't cutting it; but brains are touchier; and there is a lot less we can do for you if yours isn't working so well.
I'm a neurotic workout fiend. I have been since I was in my late 20s.
Bear in mind, I wasn't an athletic kid. Not because I had no inclinations, I just lacked confidence and being an introvert didn't help matters much.
So I took up martial arts - any kind anyone would teach me - and my husband would tell me the difference was unbelievable. Much better than just trying to run alone or work out in my basement. Apparently, it wasn't just being in shape that was affecting me: it was also the fact that I would interact with people, and once I knew what I was doing, I'd be able to teach newcomers as well. I also slept better at night and lost weight. It's physical AND mental.
I'm not saying all introverts have to do this, but I become intolerable if I spend too long coming home at night just to sit and watch TV until bedtime. Hubby's come to accept that I have to work out at least five days a week, at least two hours a night, in order to maintain this. And that's fine with both of us, but for anyone to assert that I might be a special case hasn't ever taken part in an athletic activity which promotes interaction with other people.
You'd find that people who aren't training to be pros, but work out that much, are probably more common than you think.
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I know it's just an anecdote, but in my personal experience, at the higher levels of football (college and up: I played in college and have known several people that have moved on to the NFL) it takes a certain amount of intelligence to succeed, simply because the plays and the calls get more complicated. And while the stereotype of offensive linemen is that they are big and dumb, from what I have seen is that they actually tend to be smarter than other players. On my college team at least 2-3 out of our teams academic top 10 every year were offensive linemen, and a surprising number of our offensive linemen went on to graduate school, whether at our school or others. Of course, I may be slightly biased as I was an offensive lineman, I was one of those that went to grad school, and I was on my team's academic top 10 all 4 years.
Another interesting observation I have made is that certain personalities or characteristics seem to congregate to certain positions. For example, if you were to walk through a college or NFL locker room, more often than not you can tell if a player is offense or defense based solely on the state of their locker: offensive players tend to have cleaner, more organized lockers while defensive players tend to have messier, jumbled lockers.
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