Rose Bowl: Ohio State’s Andrew Moses mixed brains and brawn
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Today’s Rose Bowl could be the last football game Ohio State offensive lineman Andrew Moses plays in. And that’s just fine with Moses, who already has one degree from the university and is working on another.
‘It’s nice to be a college student sometimes,’ said Moses, who compiled a 3.86 grade-point average while earning a degree in political science and is now a quarter away from a communications degree. ‘I just try to fit in because you’re not [in class] to be a representative of the football team. You’re there to be a student.’
The 6-foot-3, 280-pound Moses, a backup at center and right guard, isn’t the only true student-athlete on the Ohio State roster. The Buckeyes placed 31 players, including sophomore quarterback Terrelle Pryor, on the Academic All-Big 10 team, the eighth consecutive season the school led the conference in football players with GPAs of 3.0 or better.
‘That’s one of the things that Coach [Jim] Tressel tries to implement when you get here,’ Moses said. ‘You need to be held accountable in all parts of your life. If you’re not getting the job done in the classroom, why would you get the job done on the field? Everything’s connected.
‘If you’re not going to class, you’re going to be running after practice; you’re going to be doing all kinds of stuff you don’t want to do. They definitely do everything they can to make sure that you understand how important it is to succeed in the classroom,’ Moses said.
So although teammates such as Pryor and senior safety Kurt Coleman are likely to make football their career, for the majority of the Buckeyes like Moses the sport is merely a means to an end.
‘Maybe 10 of us, if we’re lucky, are going to play in the NFL. So the rest of us have got to do something else,’ Moses said. ‘I want to do something in my life. That was just something that was instilled in me when I was a kid and I think it was definitely reinforced when I got’ to Ohio State.