Georgia Tech right guard Ryan Johnson was named a semifinalist for the Campbell Trophy, a prize annually given to the top scholar-athlete in college football. Johnson was one of 176 semifinalists across all levels of the game, becoming Tech’s first semifinalist for the award since Brad Stewart in 2018. The announcement was made by the National Football Foundation on Wednesday.
Johnson has the credentials. Beyond playing in 50 games (including 14 consecutive starts for the Yellow Jackets), first at Tennessee and now at Tech as a grad transfer, Johnson is working on his third degree. He earned his undergraduate degree from Tennessee in civil engineering and then a master’s in structural engineering.
He is now in a master’s program at Tech in analytics, an interdisciplinary program incorporating classes from Tech’s business, computing and engineering colleges. Johnson called the honor a credit to all those who have helped him get to this point, a group that includes academic support staff and a coaching staff that he said is invested in helping players succeed academically.
“That’s not just something that I could have done by myself,” he said. “You’ve got 10 other guys on the field that are doing their job and helping me do my job. And you’ve got countless amount people in this program that aren’t seen behind the scenes that are helping all of us get to where we are.”
Handling football with the demands of his master’s program is not easy. He said sometimes he’ll do classwork while in the training room on his laptop or finish coding homework while watching game video with offensive-line coach Brent Key.
“It’s a very rigorous school and the classes here are extremely hard,” he said. “I would describe playing football and going to Georgia Tech like fitting 50 pounds into a 10-pound sack.”
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