{"doi":"10.1152/advan.00078.2025","title":"The graduate school playbook: comparisons to preparing for a professional football career","abstract":"Being a graduate student is perhaps the most challenging part of the career progression of a research scientist. Only about 1.2% of the US population holds a PhD, with similar numbers or less in other countries around the world. As we were discussing ways to provide advice to our students (including the first author of this perspective), it occurred to us that training for a PhD is very similar to playing professional football for the National Football League (NFL). This perspective highlights the shared traits and strategies between successful PhD graduate students and NFL players. We emphasize the importance of preparation, adaptability, teamwork, and goal orientation in both fields, which sets the stage for understanding how candidates for both fields prepare for their careers. Here, we summarize the 10 ways the two positions are comparable.","journal":"AJP Advances in Physiology Education","year":2025,"id":544650,"datarank":0.0,"base_score":0.0,"endowment":0.0,"self_citation_contribution":0.0,"citation_network_contribution":0.0,"self_endowment_contribution":0.0,"citer_contribution":0.0,"corpus_percentile":null,"corpus_rank":null,"citation_count":1,"citer_count":0,"citers_with_citation_signal":0,"citers_with_endowment":0,"datacite_reuse_total":0,"is_dataset":false,"is_dataset_confidence":0.959,"is_data_producer":false,"deposit_databanks":null,"is_oa":true,"file_count":0,"downloads":0,"has_version_chain":false,"published_date":"2025-01-01","fair_score":null,"fair_percentile":null,"algorithm_id":"datarank_citation_only_1hop_v6","ranking_scope":"data_only","authors":[{"id":250041,"name":"Merry L. Lindsey","orcid":"0000-0002-4090-0391","position":1,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":336921,"name":"Pamela M. Martin","orcid":"0000-0001-6278-4953","position":2,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":1435179,"name":"Marcus T. A. Jackson","orcid":null,"position":0,"is_corresponding":true}],"reference_count":10,"raw_metadata":null,"created_at":"2026-07-19T02:53:12.864581Z","pmid":"40478250","pmcid":null,"fwci":null,"citation_percentile":null,"influential_citations":0,"oa_status":null,"license":null,"views":0,"total_file_size_bytes":0,"version_count":0,"fair_f":null,"fair_a":null,"fair_i":null,"fair_r":null,"fair_zscore":null,"fair_rationale":null,"fair_model":null,"fair_agent_version":null,"fair_fulltext_source":null,"fair_has_llm":null,"fair_computed_at":null,"clinical_trials":[],"software_tools":[],"db_accessions":[],"linked_datasets":[],"topics":[]}