Starting football center Brandon Mason earned a spot on the prestigious 2004 ESPN The Magazine Academic All-America first team in the university division category. The team was released Wednesday, Dec. 1 by the College Sports Information Directors of America. Details...
Mason, a graduate student in the Martha and Spencer Love School of Business MBA program, is a native of Martinsville, Va.
The University Division represents all NCAA-IA and IAA programs combined. A second-team selection in 2003, Mason becomes the first Elon football player to receive first-team Academic All-America recognition from CoSIDA in 25 years. The Phoenix center joins end John Rascoe (1973) and defensive back Bryan Burney (1979) as Elon’s lone first-team CoSIDA Academic All-American football players.
This honor marks one of many recent accolades for Mason. Last month, the National Football Foundation and College Hall of Fame declared him one of its 2004 National Scholar-Athletes and $18,000 fellowship recipients.
He will travel to New York City next week as a guest for the Foundation’s 47th Annual Awards Dinner at the Waldorf-Astoria on Tuesday night, where he will sit on the dais for the College Football Hall of Fame induction ceremonies. Mason’s accomplishments, along with those of the other 14 national Scholar-Athletes, will be highlighted for the 1,500 guests at the black-tie dinner.
The 6-3, 260-pound Mason was tabbed to the First Team All-Southern Conference last week by the league’s coaches for the second year in a row. He was also slated to the First Team All-SoCon by the conference’s media last week. Mason was named the TIAA-CREF Southern Conference Student-Athlete of the Week for all sports on Nov. 17.
In 2004, Mason snapped the ball on 677 of the team’s 698 offensive plays, missing just 13 assignments for 98 percent made, amassing 106 knockdown blocks (9.6 per game), allowing no sacks in 287 passing attempts and paving the way for Southern Conference leading rusher John Taylor.
Last year, Mason appeared on the Division IAA Athletics Directors Association Academic All-Star Team for the second consecutive season. He has also been a member of the Beta Gamma Sigma, Chi Alpha Sigma, Phi Eta Sigma, Phi Kappa Phi and Sigma Beta Delta national honor societies.
The May 2004 Elon graduate fashioned a 3.81 career grade-point average as a business administration major and an accounting minor on his way to Magna Cum Laude status. Mason, a red-shirt as a true freshman for the 2000 campaign, is currently in his first year in the Elon MBA program.
During his undergraduate career, Mason was named to the President’s List six times, the Dean’s List twice and the Athletics Director’s Honor Roll all eight semesters. He was chosen as both a TIAA-CREF Academic All-Southern Conference selection and a Division IAA ADA Postgraduate Scholarship finalist in 2003.
Mason has been declared the NCAA-IAA Offensive Lineman of the Week four times during the past three seasons – twice in 2004 – by Don Hansen’s National Weekly Football Gazette. He has also served his team as a captain and as a member of Elon’s Student-Athlete Advisory Council the past two years.