By Jonah Grinkewitz
John Morton had two questions when it came to picking colleges: Did they have a good civil engineering program, and could I play football there?
ODU ticked both boxes, and after walking onto the team and playing both the long snapper and placeholder positions, he will graduate this December with a bachelor’s in civil engineering.
His passion for college football – and engineering – come from his family. His father’s side is from North Carolina, and they would often attend N.C. State games.
Morton has played since kindergarten, but despite being 6-foot-2 and weighing close to 220 pounds, he didn’t feel he had the size needed to play in college or the pros.
That’s when his dad encouraged him to try long snapping.
“I realized it’s something you don’t need to be the most athletic to do, you just need to put a lot of practice into it, and it ended up working out for me,” Morton said.
After ODU’s starting long snapper was injured on the first play of the season last year, Morton was thrust into action, serving as the long snapper on punts and the placeholder on field goals and extra points. This past season, he was the full-time placeholder.
Morton acknowledged that the kicking unit often has a thankless job.
“Holding is probably the easiest thing you can do in football, but because of that, there is the most pressure to do it perfectly every time,” he said.
On the engineering front, Morton’s father, brother, uncle and grandfather all went through the Navy’s Civil Engineer Corps Collegiate Program (CEC), which inspired him to do the same.
“I’ve always enjoyed math and science, specifically physics, and that applies pretty heavily to civil engineering,” Morton said.
As a member of the CEC program, Morton is enlisted as an active-duty member of the Navy and is paid to go to school full-time. He will head to Officer Candidate School in January.
Despite the time commitment of being a student-athlete, Morton will graduate with three minor degrees in environmental engineering, construction management and engineering management, in addition to his bachelor’s.
His 3.89 GPA also helped him receive the Boone Memorial Scholarship (ODU), the Rich Nettleton Memorial Scholarship (ODU) and the Jim Castañeda Scholarship (Conference USA). He also received the C-USA Commissioner's Academic Medal from 2019 to 2022 and was on the C-USA Commissioner’s Honor Roll during the same period.
“John is the atypical student who has thrived under these multiple demands,” said Gary Schafran, professor of civil and environmental engineering at ODU. “In my 35 years at ODU, I do not recall another student pushing themselves to this level of achievement.”
Morton said that being a member of the football team helped with his time-management skills, and that during the pandemic it gave him a sense of community that was lacking. Once the season resumed, it also gave his family – specifically his mom and Aunt Donna – a chance to throw him a big tailgate party every year at an ODU home game.
Simply put, Morton said, “College is what you make it.”
And at ODU, he made it a continuation of his family’s long history of engineering and football.