Sports of The Times - Balancing Success on the Field and in the Classroom - NYTimes.com Always sit up front in class. That has been Colt McCoy's rule for himself in every class he has taken at the University of Texas. "Does that sound weird?" he asked a former C-plus back-row slacker who was taking notes. Attention to detail, every second of every demanding day, helped McCoy earn a grade point average of 3.20 while starring at quarterback. His next game will be the national championship meeting with Alabama next month. McCoy was one of 16 admirable seniors who found ways to balance football and academics and became finalists for the William V. Campbell Trophy, given by the National Football Foundation to the top scholar-athlete in the United States. At a dinner in New York on Tuesday evening, the award was given to Tim Tebow, the quarterback from Florida who won the 2007 Heisman Trophy. McCoy and Tebow are also among the five finalists for the Heisman Trophy, for the best college football player in the country, to be awarded Saturday in New York. Tebow has earned a grade point average of 3.66 while playing football, including up to 20 hours a week studying film. He is so intense that Coach Urban Meyer has kicked him out of the bunker a few times just to make sure he did not burn out. Yet Tebow, like McCoy, found ways to do volunteer work, too. These 16 seniors must live by some alternate clock, because they seem to cram more into a day than most college students are able to do. The Division I players described pressure to be part of every team activity, while the players at the more modest levels of college football seemed to feel a bit more personal leeway to take care of academics. But all of them played well and studied well, or they would not have been finalists. The top scholar-athlete honor, formerly the Draddy Trophy, has been renamed for Bill Campbell, a two-way player at Columbia from 1959 through 1961 and later the Columbia coach and now the chairman at Intuit. Each of the 16 finalists will receive an $18,000 postgraduate scholarship; some will be trying to play pro football next year while several others will be in medical school. McCoy said he occasionally ran into teachers "who wanted nothing to do with football players." But he would sit up front to show he was paying attention, and if he could not make a class he would tell the teacher. "You work it out, you do your homework on the road," McCoy said. More than once, a teacher praised him at the end of a semester, perhaps an acknowledgment that he or she had changed the perception of McCoy, or of college football players. Joe Pawelek, a linebacker from Baylor with a 3.71 grade point average, recalled how he had missed some spring practice work because of a class in entrepreneurial finance - "a no-brainer," he called the decision; he needed the course for his degree in finance and economics. "The coaches kind of understand, but they also wish you could be there," Pawelek said, "Honestly? It's an everyday thing. Do I relax? Do I work out? Do I study? He said his coaches never pressured him - "but they might have been thinking it," he added. Eric Decker, the leading receiver at Minnesota, on crutches after tearing up his left ankle in midseason, has a 3.42 grade point average in marketing. The unsubtle demands of Big Ten football made him learn to manage his time. Plus, the weight room had a special session at 6 a.m. - when there are no classes or labs. Jarrell NeSmith, a tight end from Division II Tusculum College in Tennessee with a 3.84 grade point average, said the coaches were "a little sketchy" when he needed to miss a workout in his first years. Having watched his mother, Sabrina Smith, work as a nurse, he has long wanted to be a doctor. When labs were scheduled in the afternoon, he was there. Blaine Westemeyer, a Division III all-American offensive tackle at Augustana College in Illinois, has a 3.93 grade point average in biochemistry. He said his coaches understood when he took a program in cellular protein research in Utah. "The Division I schools want their players on campus," he said. Beau Kildow, a wide receiver for Morningside College in Iowa, has a 4.0 average in chemistry and biology. He said, "Some Friday nights you want to get some sleep, but you go to the lab." Or he would try to study in his apartment, which he shared with six roommates. "They're good guys," he said. The 16 finalists played at vastly different levels, but they had one thing in common - an air of calm and discipline that floated outward from the dais Tuesday. The next time I am tempted to snicker at the concept of scholar-athletes, I will think about the grade point averages and the majors of the 16 finalists. Just guessing that sitting up front was the least of it. E-mail: geovec@nytimes.com