Harvard Alum Matt Birk '98 Continues To Make Impact on and off the Field

Undoubtedly the most successful recent alum of the Harvard football team, Matt Birk '98 has continued to raise the bar for Crimson athletes in major professional sports.

Once again, the center is one of the top offensive linemen in the NFL. With Birk at center, the Baltimore Ravens rank fourth in Rush pwr for rushes through the center. Rush pwr records the number of times when a team successfully attains the two or fewer yards needed for a first down or touchdown on third or fourth down or on any goal-to-go scenario. In other words, when his team needs crucial yardage, Birk is one of the best centers in the league at creating holes.

Birk has started every game for Baltimore this season and has helped the Ravens to their first-place standing in the AFC North, a place they share with the Pittsburgh Steelers. Only three teams, the New England Patriots, the New York Jets, and the Atlanta Falcons, have higher winning percentages than Baltimore's .727 mark right now.

Birk has excelled for every team that's given him a roster spot. On his first NFL team, the Minnesota Vikings, the Twin Cities native was named All Pro twice and was selected to the Pro Bowl six times. Here in Cambridge, he was an All Ivy and All New England selection, and prior to that he was an All State selection in both basketball and football while attending St. Paul's Cretin-Derham Hall, also the alma mater of Twins' catcher Joe Mauer.

Birk has also worked to make an impact off the field, founding an organization called Matt Birk's HIKE Foundation, which seeks to provide educational resources for at-risk children in the Baltimore area. For his work, Birk has been his team's "Man of the Year" seven times. In 2008 and 2009, Birk even earned league-wide recognition, as he was the runner up for the NFL Player's Association Man of the Year Award (the "Byron Whizzer White Award") in '09 after being named one of only three to be named a finalist for the NFL Walter Payton Man of the Year the season before. The All Pro has also pledged to contribute after his career is over, agreeing last year to donate his brain to science in the ongoing fight against football-related injuries.