John Urschel truly has a good head on his shoulders. 
Baltimore Ravens guard John Urschel began pursuing a Ph.D in applied mathematics last year at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. But yesterday, we learned that he truly has a good head on his shoulders. 

Following the release of a damning study in which all but one of the 111 brains of former National Football League players showed signs of the frightening degenerative brain disease known as chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE), the 26-year-old announced he was retiring from the sport.

Urschel isn’t the first to retire from the NFL because of well-founded fears of long-term, irreversible brain injury. Former Stanford and Buffalo Bills linebacker A.J. Tarpley retired at 23-year-old last year after several concussions. Promising San Francisco 49er linebacker Chris Borland retired in 2015 after just one season rather than risk permanent damage to his brain. Also this week, Patriots wide receiver Andrew Hawkings announced he was retiring, saying he would be donating his brain for CTE research.

We’d be remiss if we didn’t point out that the results of the recent study weren’t great for those who only played football in high school and college, either. 

If things weren’t bad enough, Flacco suffers back injury.

While lifting weights at home in New Jersey, Ravens’ quarterback Joe Flacco injured his back. During day one of training camp, the injury flared up. Following an orthopedic surgeon’s examination, Flacco will sit out from practice for one week. In the meantime, coach John Harbaugh teased the idea of signing free agent Colin Kaepernick, but the team instead signed Arena Football League David Olson. 

Chase Kalisz is picking up where Phelps left off. 
Bel Air’s Chase Kalisz captured the 200-meter individual world title this week in Budapest, an event previously owned by Michael Phelps, who won the 200-meter individual medley at the last FOUR Olympic Games.

“When I had the opportunity to step into the 200m IM, it was an honor,” Kalisz told NBCSN.  

The entire Maryland women’s basketball team will represent the U.S. next month at the World University Games.
For the just the second time, an entire women’s college hoops team will rep the U.S. at the biennial World University Games, which are being held in Taipei this year. The Terps, who lost their two stars, Shatori Walker-Kimbrough and Brionna Jones to graduation and the WNBA (Walker-Kimbrough was selected in the draft by the Washington Mystics), started practice in June to prepare. It’ll be interesting to see how this new-look Terps squad does in Taipei—the medal round begins August 25—and, of course, if all the preseason work helps them get off to a strong start once their regular season begins. 

The Terp women, lest anyone forget, have won or tied for the Big Ten Conference championship each of the last three years.

Baltimore gymnast makes a name for himself.
Donnell Whittenburg, the Baltimore native and U.S. national team athlete we wrote about last year as tried to make the Olympic team, recently added a new move to his repertoire—and the sport. The powerful Whittenburg nailed a triple pike dismount from the still rings, which you can check below, for the first time in the sport’s history at the FIG World Challenge Cup in Koper, Slovenia. Afterward, the move was promptly nicknamed “The Whittenburg.”

The likeable gymnast’s larger goal is the 2020 Olympic Games—which means he still has time to perfect “The Whittenburg,” too.

Chris Tillman is bright light in series against his former team.
We admit that this week wasn’t the best for the Orioles, who lost the series to the Seattle Mariners. But the good news is that we’re still tied for first place in the division and that the three-game series had some shining moments.

One was Joey Rickard’s amazing defensive skills. And certainly another was Chris Tillman’s outing on Wednesday night against his former team. Tillman held the Mariners to two runs for 6 1/3 innings, making this his sixth quality start and holding his ERA steady at 2.61. Whether it’s a coincidence or not, Tillman remains undefeated against his former team. With characteristic modesty, the pitcher told The Sun that the win had very little to do with him. “We just seem to swing the bats well every time I pitch against these guys,” Tillman said. “A big defense night for us tonight, too . . . We took some really good swings off a really good pitcher.”

Towson and Loyola’s lacrosse teams will duke it out in NCAA quarterfinal.
Coming off of an upset over the No. 2 Denver Pioneers on Sunday, the Towson Tigers lacrosse team heads to Ohio to take on regional rivals Loyola. Just a few short years ago, the Loyola Greyhounds were considered the fierce and persistent underdogs in the Maryland lacrosse world, but now Towson is reminding us of a team with that same tenacity.

“To go out and beat the No. 2 see really showed the kind of team that we are,” Towson redshirt senior midfielder Ben McCarty told The Sun. “We were really happy to get that win.” The Tigers better keep that fire going when they meet the Greyhounds (13-3) in an NCAA quarterfinal Sunday at Ohio Stadium in Columbus, Ohio. The two teams have already met earlier this year, when Towson defeated Loyola for the first time since 2007.

“Playing Towson is awesome because they’re close to home,” sophomore long-stick midfielder Zac Davliakos told The Sun. “We know they beat us last time. It really gets you fired up to go out there and try to put your best foot forward.” Watch it all go down on Sunday at 2:30 p.m. on ESPNU.

Ravens’ draft pick Chris Moore plans to give out footballs to fans.
ESPN’s Jamison Hensley had a great story on its website this week about Ravens fourth-round draft pick Chris Moore. Last Christmas Eve, the University of Cincinnati wide receiver got flagged for a unsportsmanlike penalty after he gave away the ball from a 47-yard pass to a young fan at the Hawaii Bowl.

“I was more upset that they took the ball from the kid,” Moore told ESPN. “After the game, I gave him all my stuff and all the gear I could. I felt bad.”

So it’s music to Moore’s ears that, unlike in college football, there is no penalty when players give out a football to the crowd. But, his first touchdown catch won’t be going to a fan. “Every other one after that, they can have them,” he said. “I’m not going to lie about that. The first one has to go to mom.”

After that, though, expect Moore to be handing out footballs Cam Newton-style. Moore is known for going deep—his 21.8 yards per reception in 2015 was ranked eighth in the nation, and he finished with 26 career touchdowns. “When I got the phone call on draft day, I got real excited. I know Joe Flacco has that cannon,” Moore told ESPN. “I love to go deep and I love to make the big plays and get the fans into the game.”

We like this guy already!

2. It’s official: Smartest lineman in the professional football history is a Raven.
We knew John Urschel, our 6-foot-3, 300-pound-plus guard/center, did math in the offseason for fun, publishing peer-reviewed papers about matrix algebra, Fiedler vectors and whatnot. We’ve written about it. But this week he raised his game—tweeting that he’s now pursuing a doctorate in math at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. We don’t really know if that makes him the smartest NFL lineman ever, but we do know makes him a lot better with numbers than anyone on the Baltimore magazine’s editorial team, however.

3. Manny Machado loves his wife.
Which is awesome. Still, we’re not sure about our third baseman’s new tattoo, which he post on Instagram, on his right forearm. It’s a portrait of Yainee, who he married after the 2014 season. Nothing against tats. We have a photo spread coming up in our March issue featuring the tattoos of local chefs, but portraits are tough to translate into ink on flesh—even of a beautiful woman like Yainee. One fan called it Manny’s “first error of 2016.” Judge for yourself, though. No doubt we’ll all see plenty of it when he’s playing in short sleeves this July and August.

4. Under Armour has already won the Super Bowl.
UA, of course, has been a roll of late with their young stars, like Steph Curry and Jordan Speith, winning major titles. Now, our favorite ginormous athletic apparel and shoe company, which signed Cam Newton out of Auburn, is all but certain (okay, the Panthers are only 3 or 4-point favorites, but we think they’re a lock) to add a Super Bowl championship to the list of accomplishments from their already super-marketable stable of athletes. We also understand that Under Armour will be selling special, limited addition $500 gold cleats signed by Newton if he wins the MVP—with half the proceeds going to his foundation. It’s for a good cause, but all the same, we’ll stick with our black Johnny Unitas high-tops.

5. Former Dunbar coach Pete Pompey passes away.
This makes us very sad. Pete Pompey, the former Dunbar and Edmondson basketball and football coach, passed away last week at 75. A Douglass High alum and a standout quarterback at Morgan State in that school’s football heyday, Pompey coached at the two high schools for 31 years, covering 60 seasons between the two sports. Pompey earned national “Coach of the Year” recognition in basketball from USA Today in 1992 and “All-Metro Coach of the Year” honors in football at Edmondson in 1999 from The Sun. More importantly, he served as a father figure for countless boys and young men in the city.

Honorable Mention: Michael Phelps Distracts ASU Opponents with Speedo.
Baltimore native and legendary Olympiad Michael Phelps is now working as an assistant swim coach at Arizona State University. Apparently, one of the new duties of the job is to help the school’s college basketball team win by cheering in a speedo in the student section’s infamous “Curtain of Distraction” with 13:47 left to play. Needless to say, the Sun Devils beat the Oregon State Beavers 86-68.

Are people surprised to learn you have a master’s degree in mathematics?
I think my teammates aren’t really surprised. Football players are extremely intelligent, especially at the professional level. If you’re not, you don’t make it to this upper echelon. For the most part, they just respect it. It’s something I enjoy off the field and other people have different hobbies they enjoy. Mine happens to be mathematics.

Have you encountered any other Ravens of NFL players who are interested in math or science?
Uh, no, not necessarily to the degree that I am, though [Ravens linebacker] CJ [Mosley] does enjoy talking math with me sometimes, though I don’t think he has a math background. We talk about different cool math properties and things like that.

You recently published a paper titled “A Cascadic Multigrid Algorithm for Computing the Fiedler Vector of Graph Laplacians.” Translate.
In layman’s terms, I’ve come up with a more efficient way to compute a certain quantity, which has uses in unsupervised learning, which is a subset of artificial intelligence.

Do you have any other brainy hobbies?
I do aspire to be a ranked chess player. In the off-season I do a lot of kickboxing. When I’m done playing football, I’m going to try my hand at chessboxing.

Um, what?
So, the way it works is there are six rounds of chess, five rounds of boxing. If you knock the opponent out, you win. If you checkmate the opponent, you win. If the chess is a draw, then the boxing goes to decision.

Because you are as interested in intellectual pursuits as you are in physical ones, you’ve said that sustaining a head injury was one of your biggest fears. You got a concussion this summer in training camp. Did that cause you to reassess anything?
No, not at all. If anything, it was a little bit the opposite in that, my whole career, I really always thought that if I was playing football and I got knocked unconscious, I would stop playing, on the spot. And then I got knocked unconscious in training camp, and I missed football while I was [recovering]. I couldn’t wait to get back. One of the worst things I feared in football happened to me and I’m still playing. So no—I love playing football. This is what I enjoy doing. I enjoy doing math, but you’re only young once. I’m going to play football as long as I can.

You’ve said your mom is really concerned about head injuries. How’d she react to your concussion?
Like a typical mother: hysterical, trying to take care of me, just concerned.

But she supports you rededicating yourself to football?
Of course. I mean, as much as she can comfortably support me. At the end of the day, I’m a grown man. My decisions are my own.

Well, sure, but we all like to make our moms happy.
Yes, this is true.

You were born in Canada, grew up in Buffalo, went to Penn State, and now live in Owings Mills. How do you like it here?
I like Baltimore a lot. My favorite food spot is The Food Market. Mostly, I spend my time in Baltimore doing math in coffee shops. Like, my local Starbucks, all the ladies that work there know me by name. They know what I order every time. They don’t even really ask me. So that gives you a sense of how often I’m there just mathing it up. I take my laptop, a pad, pen, maybe a couple papers that I’ve printed off line, work on some research or do some reading. I’m staying very active mathematically.

I’ve also read that you live very simply, on about $25,000 a year and that you drive a used Nissan Versa.
For me, all the things I really enjoy in life are very, very inexpensive. There’s no point in me buying a big SUV. I wouldn’t get any enjoyment out of it. I don’t wear a lot of bling or gold chains. I’m not making it rain at the club. I enjoy playing football and doing math, and those things are pretty cheap.

Here’s what I don’t get about the Nissan Versa: You’re a big guy. How does that work?
It’s surprisingly spacious. Do not doubt it.

[Laughs] Okay! I’ll take your word for it.
If you’re looking for a new car, I’m just saying, you might want to consider it.

Can’t let you go without asking about the Ravens season. It’s off to a pretty rocky start. What will it take for things to gel?
The biggest thing is: do what we’ve got to do to win; every single person be accountable for their responsibilities—and that’s it. It’s a long NFL season. No one’s discouraged. No one’s packing it in. What I’m saying is the season is still early and there’s a lot of football left to play. And we’re a good football team.