STATE COLLEGE – Long chalkboards take up three of the walls in the classroom, a place where seven rows of tables and chairs are neatly arranged. Penn State students pass by the room with the typical haze that comes with a 9 o'clock class on a Monday morning.

With Starbucks coffee in hand, students trickle into the room, take out their notebooks and review their notes on polynomials. Some talk about their weekends, while others sit quietly and gaze out the window into the center of a snow-covered campus. It's a common scene for any early-morning class at the university, but this MATH 041 class is a little different.

Penn State guard John Urschel in a math classroom at Penn State.

In walks Penn State offensive lineman and math whiz John Urschel. Dressed in a grey Penn State football sweatshirt and jeans, the Nittany Lions' graduate student takes his place at the front of the classroom. The table and podium are reserved for the 6-foot-3 muscular student-athlete who makes small talk with his students as he reviews his notes.

Urschel picks up a piece of chalk and writes Monday's lesson on the board: "Polynomials and rational inequalities"

“When I signed up for the class I didn't even know he was on the football team,” one student confesses, flipping through her notes. “I showed up and recognized his face and was like, 'Oh that's where you're from.' He's kind of big to be a math teacher.”

Indeed, there are few things typical about Urschel and his academic prowess. He finished his undergraduate work in three years with a degree in mathematics. He was the student marshal at graduation, an honor given to the student with the highest grade point average in the major, because of his perfect 4.0. Urschel will have his master's degree completed by the end of next year when his fifth year at Penn State concludes.

Penn State's starting right guard is well into an offseason unlike any other. He's taking a graduate level math class, six credits worth of work on his thesis, which he will defend this semester, teaching an undergraduate math course and, of course, attending football workouts. There are also office hours to hold for his students on Mondays and Fridays from 11 a.m. to noon, a growing list of students and teammates he tutors and research projects of his own.

"I finally had to start putting reminders on my calendar because there are so many places that I have to be at now," he says, his head cocked as he takes time to pause and think through answers to every question. "Monday through Friday it's packed."

This winter he had his first paper, "Instabilities in the Sun-Jupiter-Asteroid Three Body Problem," accepted for publication in the journal "Celestial Mechanics and Dynamical Astronomy." He explains the complexities of the project as simple as possible, a message he's used to relaying to teammates and friends. It's the first of many papers for the bright math-minded student.

“My father always told me that he thinks the smartest one percent of people, you know the really, really smart people, need to be doing things that involve original thought,” Urschel said, recalling a conversation with his father, John, who is a retired thoracic surgeon.

“He always used to tell me it's a waste to do things where you do practitioner work or things where you're just following someone else's guidelines. … You should try to do something where you use your intelligence to come up with original ideas, new research to help advance whatever field you're working in.”

The family was optimistic from the time their son was young that he'd be part of that 1 percent.

"A rational inequality can be solved using a similar technique, except the boundary points are found by setting the numerator and denominator equal to zero."

Parents quickly figure out the developmental boundaries of their babies, and for Urschel's mom and dad, these findings were a bit abnormal. Urschel's mother, Venita Parker, is an attorney who is also a former nurse and holds an additional master’s degree in biomedical science. Pair that with John Sr.'s background as a surgeon, plus master’s degrees in economics, mathematics, and engineering and the result was a baby who couldn't be challenged enough.

“He was a money pit,” Parker joked. “You would go and want to get him something colorful so it engages the right side of the brain and the left and all that, don't believe the hype. He'd have the baby building blocks lined up right away and after he figured them out he wouldn't touch them again. … When he got older he had those little kid computer games and he'd be done with it in no time. Carmen Sandiego? Devoured it.”

Urschel was well beyond his peers by the time he started school, but the public schooling system didn't view it that way. Parker was called in for a conference during first grade because of John’s shyness and his habit of straying from class readings; the teacher requested to hold him back and suggested putting him in a “special class.” Parker knew that wasn't the case and requested to have her son tested.

It turns out John was on the other end of the spectrum. The results, he said, showed that for a child his age he was an actual mathematical genius. Off to private school he went.

But the family knew even the private school and math competitions wouldn't be enough to challenge their son. Parker put a desk for him in their home and constantly gave him math workbooks that were four and five years above his grade level. But he'd tear through them, with an excitement for numbers unlike any other.

They tried games of chess, but from the age of 10 on he'd always win. Next came the

Penn State guard John Urschel devours some Rubik's Cubes and mini footballs for a Pride magazine photo shoot in a math classroom at Penn State.

Rubik's Cube, which John solved in about a minute. They supplemented his learning with educational trips, like the one he took with his mom to see Les Miserables and the experience he gained backpacking across England with his dad.

Even birthday presents couldn't just be given to him. The family created scavenger hunts with clues that led him to his gifts. The math competitions weren't challenging enough; Parker recalled sitting in the audience fearful her son froze from the pressure because he didn't lift his pencil to solve an equation.

“All the other kids wrote it down and John just looked at the screen,” Parker said. “I'm panicking, thinking maybe he doesn't know what to do, maybe he's nervous. Then John just spits the correct answer out and I'm like, 'Wow.' … He sees things in a different way than normal people do and can just visualize where things go.”

Added John Sr.: “He can take these very abstract notions and concepts that are written on a page and get some representation in his brain that fundamentally doesn't have any shape or picture. The rest of us struggle with that.”

John was always taller than his classmates and appeared older. That's why no college student batted an eye when the Williamsville, N.Y. youngster audited a college business calculus course at the nearby University of Buffalo as an eighth grader.

“My dad said, 'Hey, you might have fun with this,' and I did. I had a really good time and really enjoyed it,” Urschel recalled. “The professor was fine with it. It was funny because all of the other students were actually asking me for help. … Turns out I was the one who was top of it and they didn't even know I was a middle schooler.”

This carried over to high school, where Urschel started playing football as a way to meet new friends heading into ninth grade. By his own account he “didn't do too much higher level math” during this time as he focused on becoming a better English and history student.

Still, he took Advanced Placement Calculus AB and BC and, as expected, aced them both.

"Since division is prohibited, the boundary points from the denominator are represented by open circles."

Only a handful of Division I football players base their college decisions off engineering programs, but it was a big part of Urschel's. Bypassing Ivy League schools for a chance to play football and crunch numbers at Penn State made sense to him.

During his official visit, a time where recruits worry about where they'll stack up on the depth chart or if they'll jive well with their coaches and teammates, Urschel wanted to know what engineering classes were offered. He had already scored a 790 on the math portion of the SATs without any preparation and wanted to know if the classes would be hard enough.

He was intrigued, committed to Joe Paterno's football program and enrolled that summer. But mom and dad weren't about to let John slack off as he headed out on his own.

“I remember when my dad dropped me off at college he said, 'Your goal should be to get an “A” in every single class?' ”John recalled. “I'm like, 'What are you talking about? There's no way?' ”

Penn State guard John Urschel #64 blocks during the second quarter at Beaver Stadium.

The required first-year writing course, English 015, gave Urschel trouble from the start. The creative writing was the worst part for him, but he pulled through with an 'A' and from there it was smooth sailing . . . except for the whole engineering thing.

In engineering they gave solution manuals to the problems and John wanted to figure out how to find the answers on his own. It was too easy. He switched to mathematics where his knowledge dazzled many of Penn State's top professors.

"It's really amazing," said Victor Nistor, a professor of mathematics at the university who had John in his financial mathematics class last spring and again this year for a graduate-level course. "He told me, 'Don't take it easy on me.' … He may be one of our best mathematics majors ever. He's my only football player ever. His math work might more interesting than the football side of things."

Urschel spent bowl trips and time away in the summer with his math books in tow. While teammates tried to relax and get away from everything school-related, John wanted to learn more about Hamiltonian Dynamics and regularly reads additional math textbooks for fun. He's so dedicated to his school work that sophomore year he felt his grades were slipping so he unplugged his television and sent it home.

“I needed to focus more,” he said.

When he went to visit his mom during winter break he suggested the two play chess. She didn't have a board, but John didn't care. The solution was simple.

“He said let's do it mentally,” Parker recalled. “I told him no way. But John created a chess board and mentally would make the moves. … I think that's probably part of the reason John initially took to football because it has that mathematical, X goes here, Y goes here, Z goes here. It reminds him of a math equation.”

After scoring a perfect 800 on the math portion of the GRE and posting an overall score of 1460, few students are near Urschel's intellectual level.

Teammates know where to go for math help, though John insists he won't touch accounting since it's "not really the same type of math" he enjoys. Former teammate Justin Brown, who transferred to Oklahoma for his senior season, used to be tutored by Urschel.

When Brown came back for a visit this year and was looking for his friend during a post-game tailgate, he told former teammates all he needed to do was say he needed help with a math problem and John would show up instantly.

Former quarterback Matt McGloin still busts John's chops all the time because the offensive lineman insists on wearing his watch on military time.

“It'll say like 1800 or 1900 and I'll try to get him to quickly tell me what time it is, thinking maybe I'll catch him thinking or something. He gets it right every time,” McGloin joked. “He said it makes more sense mathematically to keep his watch that way.”

"That's all. We'll pick up with interval notation and more new material on Wednesday."

It's no surprise number lines and interval notations fill up the front chalkboard in Urschel's class. The students, on this day all 22 of them, are hooked on his lesson as he supplements their learning with knowledge of his own.

Penn State kicker Sam Ficken is congratulated by guard John Urschel after an extra point during the fourth quarter of the 39-29 win over Northwestern on Homecoming Saturday at Beaver Stadium.

He likes to say it's for “mathematical curiosity” as he factors cubic polynomials and graphs the solution for -6 multiplicity 2. His students won't need to know this for a test, but just in case they want to find out, here's how it's done.

His large hand is wrapped around his notebook while the other is covered in chalk. The handwriting is neat and these aren't just regular “X's” he's writing. These are eloquent variables, and the curved lines of what would otherwise be letters reflect this.

He encourages students to help him figure out the boundary points for the numerator and draws a laugh from students when he jokes that he needs their help because he's “bad with this stuff.”

It's that side of his personality that lets you know behind all the number-crunching is a person who aside from the classroom and football field isn't too different than everyone else. Once new teammates learn about his interests they adapt, or like many of them have, ask for subtitles when he's explaining his research or what's going on in his classes.

Additional student questions can surface during office hours, the time where Urschel strolls from his classroom over to his desk in an adjacent building at the center of campus. With his messenger bag hanging across his body, it's like he's just another student at a campus with 40,000-plus.

He shares an office with three others and his desk holds extra math books and has problems tacked overhead. It's a place of solitude for him, or if nothing else a place to answer questions and eat lunch before he spends two hours working out with strength and conditioning coach Craig Fitzgerald in the football building.

After those grueling Friday workouts at the crack of dawn when teammates go back exhausted and fall asleep, Urschel is on his feet in the Boucke Building talking through math problems. Later in the evening he tutors before getting a chance to do his own work and starting the routine again.

Rest assured Urschel's payment for teaching a Penn State course is not a violation of NCAA rules. Under Bylaw 12, student-athletes are allowed to have a job while on scholarship so long as they are actually doing work and being compensated at the same rate as everyone else who is performing the same task.

But to him it's not work. What he's doing on Monday, Wednesday and Friday in a 50-minute class is an extension of his desire to show others that they too can find enjoyment in a subject many struggle with. To him solving equations and finding the answers to complex problems is a labor of love.

“I'm just really passionate about helping people learn math,” he said. “If you just teach the material and don't make it interactive and interesting, people will grow to not enjoy it.”

He's certain there's a doctorate in his future – and his professors hope it's at Penn State – but after next season he wants to give the NFL a shot. At the very least he'd make an interesting interview for general managers and surely the Wonderlic test will be no match for him.

“I guess you could say it's a little unusual,” he said. “I'm enjoying the process and this is just the beginning for me. Trust me, there's more to come.”