Slippery Rock graduate and former quarterback Brayden Long was named to the highest academic honor in the nation Wednesday when he was announced as the 2024-25 NCAA Division II Academic All-American of the Year by the College Sports Communicators.

SLIPPERY ROCK, Pa. , Aug. 1, 2025 /PRNewswire/ -- Slippery Rock University graduate and former quarterback Brayden Long was named to the highest academic honor in the nation Wednesday when he was announced as the 2024-25 NCAA Division II Academic All-American of the Year by the College Sports Communicators.

The CSC Academic All-American of the Year award goes to just four total student-athletes in the nation with one honoree from each NCAA division and one from the NAIA. In order to be considered for the honor, a student-athlete must be named as the Academic All-America Team Member of the Year on their respective Academic All-America teams throughout the academic year. Long is the lone honoree from Division II out of the more than 134,500 student-athletes currently competing in the division.

Olympic gold medalist swimmer Gretchen Walsh (University of Virginia) was named the Division I winner, while Middlebury College women's lacrosse standout Hope Shue earned the Division III honor and Oregon Tech baseball catcher Tyler Horner was named the NAIA winner.

Long, a 2024 graduate from Hanover, Pennsylvania, becomes the first Slippery Rock student-athlete from any sport to be recognized as the national Academic All-American of the Year and the first male student-athlete in Pennsylvania State Athletic Conference history to be recognized. The PSAC has now won back-to-back national Academic All-American of the Year honors after Gannon women's basketball player Sam Pirosko was selected in 2023-24. Prior to that, only Clarion women's swimmer Kristin Day (2024-15) and Clarion women's diver Jamie Wolf (2006-07) were honored from PSAC schools, making Long just the fourth athlete in PSAC history to be recognized.

"Brayden is the kind of special student-athlete that doesn't come along very often," said SRU head coach Shawn Lutz. "We are so proud of him for the way he represents himself, our football program and our University both on and off the field. This is a tremendous honor that recognizes him for not only being one of the very best football players in the country but also for being an exceptional student and person off the field."

The Academic All-American of the Year is one more award in a growing list of honors for Long, who continues to be the most decorated football student-athlete in the country in terms of academic and athletic honors in 2024-25. Earlier this month he repeated as the PSAC Male Scholar-Athlete of the Year, becoming just the second male athlete in PSAC history to be named Scholar-Athlete of the Year twice.

In addition to the PSAC academic honor, Long was named the 2024 Football Academic All-America Team Member of the Year for Division II and was the first team quarterback on the Academic All-America team after graduating with a degree in sport management with a perfect 4.0 GPA. He was also the only Division II finalist for the 2024 William V. Campbell Trophy, known as the "Academic Heisman," and was the only Division II member of the National Scholar-Athlete Class presented by the National Football Foundation.

Long was recognized on stage with some of the biggest names in football at the National Football Foundation Awards Dinner and College Hall of Fame Induction ceremony in Las Vegas in December. He was also recognized alongside Heisman Trophy winner Travis Hunter at the Maxwell Awards Gala at the College Hall of Fame in Atlanta in March.

He was also only Division II football player in the country to win one of the regional Scholar-Athlete of the Year awards in 2023-24 when he was named the Atlantic Region Male Scholar-Athlete of the Year by the Division II Conference Commissioner's Association. Those honors followed a national recognition when he was the only male athlete from the PSAC to win one of the NCAA Division II 50th Anniversary Scholarship awards.

On the field last fall, Long quarterbacked The Rock football team to the national semifinals and a No. 3 final ranking after throwing for 3,470 yards to rank third among all players in Division II. He also ranked ninth in the nation in passing touchdowns with 28 and was 10th in the nation in points responsible for with 208 after rushing for six TD to account for 34 total touchdowns. He completed 65.1 percent of his passes for 3,470 yards with just eight interceptions on 450 attempts and became the only QB in SRU history to top 3,000 yards in two separate seasons.

He leaves the program ranked No. 1 all-time in completions (631) and completion percentage (67%) and No. 2 all-time in passing yards (7,527) and passing TD (64), despite starting only two seasons. He went 24-5 overall and 5-2 in NCAA postseason games as the starting quarterback and led SRU to at least the national quarterfinals in both years as the starter. Long was named to All-PSAC, All-Region and All-America honors for the second straight year and was one of the eight national finalists for the Harlon Hill Trophy as the Division II Player of the Year for the second straight year. He finished in the top six in the national voting for the Harlon Hill Trophy in both 2023 and 2024 and was named the SRU Male Athlete of the Year in both 2023-24 and 2024-25.

Long was hired earlier this month as a full-time assistant coach at Shippensburg University, where he will coach quarterbacks and wide receivers. It won't be long before he returns to Mihalik-Thompson Stadium as the Raiders are set to visit SRU Sept. 20 for a 6 p.m. game.

View original content to download multimedia:https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/srus-brayden-long-named-national-academic-all-american-of-the-year-302519763.html

SOURCE Slippery Rock University