Aaron Murray won’t win the Heisman Trophy this year. The University of Georgia quarterback from Tampa’s Plant High was in the hunt before the season, but the season has fallen shy for both Murray and Georgia. That said, Murray will still wind up as the SEC’s all-time leader in touchdown passes.
But there’s another award that Murray is still very much in the running for. The UG senior is a finalist for the William Campbell Trophy, which honors college football’s top scholar-athlete. Whether he wins it or not, it’s a reminder that at a time when “student-athlete” is too often an oxymoron, Aaron Murray–with more than 100 career TD passes–is the ideal. As difficult as it is to account for all those TDs and devote so much time to SEC football, it’s even more challenging to do it while honoring your academic commitments to the point of scholar-athlete status.
Well done, Aaron Murray: Georgia Bulldog and Plant Panther.