Matt Anderson

Classroom

Matt Anderson graduated from the Haas School of Business, the second-ranked undergraduate business program in the country. He is currently obtaining his masters degree in the cultural studies of sport in education, a program designed to analyze the relationship between academics and athletics in the collegiate environment.

Anderson was honored with the Claudius N. & James N. White Endowment Award, given to undergraduate students in the business school who demonstrate scholastic excellence in business courses, particularly finance electives and a possible interest in investment banking. He earned the Arlington C. and Beverley B. Charter Memorial Scholarship, which is given to the football student-athlete who exemplifies excellence both on the field and in the classroom. He also earned the Golden Bear Achievement Award three times (2014-16), which is given to the football student-athlete with the highest cumulative GPA. Anderson has also been a member of the Pac-12 All-Academic First Team (2015), CoSIDA Academic All-District® First Team (2016) and Pac-12 All-Academic Second Team (2016).

Character

Anderson has tremendous character as is evidenced in the following statements pulled from a letter of recommendation from Stephen Etter of the Haas School of Business:

“Matt Anderson is truly the one of the most exceptional student-athletes I have met. He is clearly in the top 1% of student-athletes with regard to his academic and leadership abilities.”

“If someone is in need, regardless of the circumstance, Matt puts his own priorities aside and helps the person. Specialists in football are typically not team leaders on the field or in the
locker room. However, Matt is an exception to the rule and clearly is a leader amongst his peers. They follow his leadership naturally. Having Matt on the team is like having an additional coach. Rooms light up when he enters and his peers naturally turn to him for leadership. Matt is unique on the football field as he has confidence without attitude.”

“While he has a strong GPA, I find he is less concerned about this number and more focused on the journey of learning. Matt has very strong research and analytical skills. He has shown strong
verbal and written communication skills during his studies at Haas. He is a tenacious time manager and understands how to allocate his time across all of his classroom activities, homework (including a lot of group project work), athletics and his extracurricular activities.”

Community

Anderson has done extensive work in the community both on and off campus. Serving as an academic study group leader, he was asked to develop and lead study groups for fellow student-athletes with responsibilities that included organizing the group, creating materials, working with students to develop better study habits and monitoring the performance of student-athletes in the group.

Through Pac-12 Careers In Football Forum, he was invited to participate in the first-annual event after being identified as a leader on his Cal team and participated in two days of meetings and professional panels designed to convey information that the student-athletes would bring back to their own locker rooms. He serves as the Beta Theta Pi president, through which he refounded the Beta Theta Pi Fraternity, led a team of seven vice presidents, presided over colony and executive meetings, served as a liason with several other campus groups and university officials and coordinated all community service events.

Through the Fallen Heroes program, he helped support the family members of police officers and fire fighters who lost their lives in the line of duty by helping raise money through auctions. Anderson also worked with youth identified as high-risk youth in the Berkeley and Oakland areas. He was asked on two separate occasions to serve as a strong male figure in the kids’ lives due to a lack of a father-figure.

Competition

As of nomination time, Anderson had played in 28 career games and was Cal’s active career leader in scoring with 235 points to rank ninth on the school’s all-time list and within 53 points of all-time leader, Doug Brien (288 points). Anderson has made 42 of 50 (84.0%) field goal attempts as well as 108 of 111 (97.3%) extra-point tries. He is on the preseason watch list for the Lou Groza Collegiate Place-Kicker Award after being a semifinalist for the honor and honorable mention All-Pac-12 selection as a 2017 junior when he had a banner season in his second campaign as Cal’s starting placekicker. Last season he also established Cal’s modern-era single-season record for points with 117 to rank second all-time while equaling the school’s all-time single-season mark for field goals made (22) and leading the team in both categories as well as PATs (51-51). He also made the first five field goal attempts of his junior season to extend his school-record streak of consecutive field goals made to 17 including the final 12 of his 2015 sophomore campaign.