Time Management A Key to Rimpf's Success
October 15, 2003 | Football
What did you get out of your college experience?
For most, going to college means challenging classes, new social opportunities, achieving new levels of self-awareness and establishing personal goals.
For some, it also means a chance to participate in athletics at the NCAA level.
For a select few, it's a pathway to professional sports.
And then there's Brian Rimpf.
In four years at East Carolina University, Rimpf has redefined the concept of what can be gained in the college experience. Education? Try a double major in accounting and finance with a solid 3.29 grade point average. He finished his undergraduate work this past May and is now pursuing his MBA. Social skills? Not only is he well liked and respected among faculty, staff, and fellow students alike, but he has kept his life goals on track and married his high school sweetheart immediately after gaining his ECU degree. Athletics? Rimpf is the prototypical student-athlete. Not only has he been a standout academically, but he is also on the verge of some of the highest honors available to his position on the football team, offensive tackle.
Add to this mix a selflessness that has seen him devote an average of nine hours a week throughout the academic year to community service and charity, and you've got a college experience that makes your average student scratch his head with wonder at how so much can be achieved and still get adequate sleep.
"Football teaches you responsibility and how to get things done," Rimpf said. "Usually, during football season is when I get my best grades -- and it has been that way since high school for me. The demands on your schedule make you learn how to manage your time well."
Setting a priority on classwork has been reflected in Rimpf's off-the-field honors. His name has regularly appeared on ECU's Honor Roll and Dean's List, as well as the Conference USA Commissioner's Academic Honor Roll. In 2002, he was named as a second team selection on the Verizon Academic All-District III team. He also was awarded the football team's E.E. Rawl Memorial Award for character, scholarship, and athletic achievement.
"I still find time to relax, but I always get my work done first. If you know you've got your work done, you can enjoy laying around and relaxing a lot more. My parents always stressed getting good grades and doing well in school when I was growing up. It probably started in middle school; when I got home from practice, it was time to do homework. When you develop habits, they stick with you."
Another "habit" that has stuck with Rimpf since his pre-ECU days is Lauren McGann. The two have been a couple since their days together at Raleigh's Leesville Road High School and tied the knot this past May, just a week after Rimpf earned his college undergraduate degree. Just as his day-to-day routine at ECU follows a set plan, so too did his marriage plans ... almost.
"I had been planning the proposal for a year and a half," he said. "I had to plan the proposal around when we could actually have the ceremony, because there are few times in our football schedule when I can miss a week to go on a honeymoon. I figured if I proposed at the end of football season last year, it would give us five months to plan. I wanted to get married on the same day I graduated, but she didn't like that idea too much. So we waited until the following week."
While his football honors are numerous and impressive, the lives that Rimpf has touched through community service work may have a more lasting impact than anything he achieved on the football field. His list of civic involvement reads like a who's who of area charity and outreach programs. Since arriving at ECU, he has been involved in Young Life, SportsWorks Ministries, church youth groups, Boys and Girls Clubs, a local juvenile detention center, the Methodist Children's Home SummerFest, the Cerebral Palsey Telethon, the Pitt County Historical Society, Boy Scouts, plus reaching kids by reading in elementary schools. Rimpf spends an average of nine hours per week throughout the academic year to community service, with the majority of that volunteer work being done on his own, not as part of any team project.
"The first year I was here, I did little things here and there like raising money for Adopt-a-Child with some of the other guys from the team. I got interested in it and enjoyed helping out people. I got involved in Young Life through Lauren, since she was real involved with that in high school and continued that here. Young Life is about building relationships with high school kids in the area. We try to go into the schools twice a week and just show your face and say hello. We also have weekly meetings with 40-50 kids, play games, do skits, sing songs, and then get to the message where one of the leaders will share something from their lives that God has done for them.
"It helps with numbers, as far as kids showing up, by being a football player. Some may show up because I'm a football player, but I think they get to see another side of me and that helps make for a more effective ministry."
On the gridiron, Rimpf is far from being just another football player. He is one of the recognized leaders of East Carolina's offensive line that has paved the way for two consecutive 1,000-yard rushers and helped the Pirates average over 30 points a game over the course of the past three seasons. After gaining Conference USA All-Freshman Team honors as a rookie in 2000, he was honored as a first-team All-Conference USA selection for both his sophomore and junior seasons and earned honorable mention on one All-America squad following the 2002 season.
Entering his senior campaign, he was rated as the No. 16 offensive tackle in the nation by The Sporting News, was a third-team Preseason All-America selection by College Football News, and is on the official watch lists for the national Outland Trophy and Rotary Lombardi Award for the second straight year.
Rimpf has started 31 consecutive games at offensive tackle for the Pirates entering this weekend's game at Army.
"It's been more than I ever hoped for," Rimpf said of his playing career as a Pirate. "My college career has been twice as good as my high school career. Usually, guys coming out of high school are highly recruited, are all-state or have been all-conference a bunch of times, and have offers from everywhere; I was all-conference for only one year in high school. I came here and got conference honors my first year and it was a shock. Once I got that first award, people sort of knew who I was and that has helped me do everything else."
If the C-USA freshman award raised awareness of Rimpf's name at a regional level, it was his play against eventual NFL first-round draft picks Julius Peppers (North Carolina) and Dwight Freeney (Syracuse) in 2001 that vaulted his stock among the national elite linemen. Only a sophomore that season, Rimpf went head-to-head with both Peppers and Freeney in his blocking assignments and effectively neutralized the impact of both national-caliber defensive linemen. Running behind Rimpf that season was Leonard Henry, currently a member of the NFL's Miami Dolphins. Henry rushed for 105 yards against the Tar Heels and blasted through the Syracuse defense for 177 yards. He finished the season with 1,432 rushing yards, sixth-best in the nation.
Last season, Rimpf and his linemates quietly went about work making holes for Art Brown, who ran for 1,029 yards in 10 games.
"I love ECU and love coming here," Rimpf said. "This season hasn't started the way we'd like it, but we've still got a lot of games left and a chance to turn this whole thing around."
