Get to Know Left Tackle Brendan Bordner, Who Holds Two Master’s Degrees

Because most of them are pursuing sport as a full-time vocation from the time they’re freshmen, you don’t find too many professional athletes with post-graduate degrees. That’d be a Master’s, PhD or the like.

But for a while last week the Ticats had a pair of players with Master’s degrees, and each of them had two Master’s. Global punter Bailey Flint, who played here last season, has a Master’s in both communications and theatre. He was released as part of the mass cutdown on Saturday but left tackle Brendan Bordner is still with the team and will likely start at left tackle in Friday night’s season opener in Calgary.

Bordner has been impactful in training camp and the preseason games. With two potential starting  tackles Joel Figueroa and Jordan Murray, still out with injury, Bordner’s adjustment to the Canadian game in his first month north of the border has been impressive.

But it shouldn’t come as a surprise that he’s a quick learner: Bordner’s demonstrated a strong history of digesting education like it’s a power shake.

The native of Columbus, Ohio was recruited to Rutgers, which is the eighth-oldest college in the U.S. and has one of the top 30 business schools in the country. After redshirting as a freshman, the 6-foot-5, 305-pounder, spent two years as a defensive tackle for Rutgers, playing in every game.

Then the coaches suggested he move to the other side of the ball, where he hadn’t played since he was in middle school, and he had to learn the basic principles of centre and offensive tackle off Zoom videos before the 2020 COVID delayed-season. He had a second year on offence, mostly at tackle, in 2021.

In all four of his Rutgers seasons, Bordner was named to the Academic All-Big-Ten list. That designates not only an effective player but even more importantly an effective student. While playing in every game and switching to a new position –“which was almost like not being the same game” –he earned his undergraduate degree and a Master’s degree in financial analysis. 

NCAA athletes were afforded an extra year of eligibility because of the pandemic and Bordner decided to exercise it with a graduate transfer to Florida Atlantic University, another Division I school which at the time was in Conference USA, and he made the conference second all-star team at offensive tackle in 2022.

And, of course, he was an all-star in the classroom too.

“They gave me the opportunity to get an MBA in two years, despite only playing for them for the one final year,” he says. “It was a good place to be.”

He spent the second year at FAU completing his MBA, coaching his brother’s high school team and staying in shape for an XFL 2024 debut. When the XFL merged with the USFL and jobs were lost he came north to Hamilton.

You can catch the full interview, and also our discussion on Ticats Today with both Bordner and weak-side linebacker Ray Wilborn, who will start Friday night in Calgary, about having to make quick  adjustments to a new league and a new kind of game. Which is an entirely separate kind of higher education.