UCLA’s Chase Griffin making a big impact off the field
LOS ANGELES, Calif. — Chase Griffin is most known for playing quarterback for the UCLA football team. After having a celebrated high school career for Hutto High School in Hutto, Texas, he enrolled in UCLA.
Griffin was redshirted his first season but started playing as an academic sophomore. He played in all four games in the COVID-19 shortened season and threw four touchdowns off the bench against Stanford. The 5-foot-10 quarterback finished the season with 461 passing yards, six touchdowns and two interceptions. He was demoted to third-string quarterback for this season. He has not appeared in a game but is doing bigger and better things off the field.
For starters, Griffin participated in the summer business academy at Harvard University before his senior year of high school. He then graduated high school early and enrolled at UCLA in January of 2019. He graduated from UCLA in only two and a half years with a bachelor’s degree in public affairs. It is incredibly difficult to graduate so early as a regular student, let alone as a student-athlete.
Griffin excelled in the classroom as an undergrad. He was on the Dean’s Honors List and Athletic Director Honor Roll. He also received the Chancellor’s Service Award, Bruin Leadership Award, Arthur Ashe Jr. Sports Scholar Award and was appointed to California governor Gavin Newsom’s student athlete task force
Griffin began his master’s degree program this school year. He will receive a Master of Education in transformative coaching and leadership in 2023. This master’s program was inspired by UCLA Hall of Fame basketball coach John Wooden. The program seeks to help its students understand people and principles of leadership and learning.
In case pursuing a master’s degree while playing quarterback for a Power Five program was not enough, Griffin decided to become a communications intern for Accelerator for America. Accelerator for America was founded by Los Angeles mayor Eric Garcetti and was built to develop solutions to economic insecurity in America.
Griffin’s backstory has opened him up to a lot of endorsement opportunities. Typically, third-string quarterbacks do not receive many of these opportunities, but the opposite has been the case for Griffin. He has received numerous endorsements, but his partnership with Degree for their Breaking Limits project has been the most significant. He has been a key part of that project, detailing his story as a 5-foot-10 quarterback who became the Gatorade Texas High School Football Player of the Year and started a couple of games for UCLA and won one.
I do not know what is next for Griffin, but I am sure he will change the world.
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