There's never a dull moment or much down time for Kansas City Chiefs guard Laurent Duvernay-Tardif. He's been a medical student at Montreal's McGill University in the offseason since being drafted in 2014 and this year took a detour to the Olympics in South Korea.
There, he's been a TV reporter for the Canadian Broadcasting Company. He puts together short features on Canadian athletes and teams that air nightly in his native country.
When the Olympics conclude this weekend, he'll return to Montreal for his final semester of medical school. His exam is the first week of May and graduation is May 26.
"I'll have to study and really focus," Duvernay-Tardif said this week. "Coach [Andy] Reid always talks about eliminating distractions. That's going to be my main objective when I get back to Montreal. Doing this [at the Olympics] and then studying seriously, that's my plan for the offseason."
Duvernay-Tardif said attending an Olympics has been on his to-do list for some time. Between his obligations with football and med school, he hasn't been able to until this year.
During the Chiefs' bye week in November, he returned to Montreal and met with CBC officials and pitched a plan to work for them in Pyeongchang, using his backgrounds in sports and medicine.
"I told them I could combine my knowledge as an athlete and my knowledge as a future physician to kind of explain the science of the sport and to really go behind the scenes with the athlete in their training environment," Duvernay-Tardif said.
CBC officials accepted.
"It's been a pretty cool experience," he said. "This was something I couldn't allow myself to turn down. I've had the experience of being on the other side of the mic, being a reporter. I've seen athletes winning a gold medal and talked to them right after. It's a pretty special vibe. Just being here and meeting people from all the countries in the world has been a great experience.
"It's different than watching it on TV. To see an athlete win a gold medal, it's a unique experience. Apart from being on the field playing football, it's probably one of the most emotional things I've experienced related to sport."
Features put together by Duvernay-Tardif range from the dietary habits of Canadian athletes at the Games to a Canadian doctor who is the head of that country's medical delegation at the Olympics.
"It's very demanding," he said. "It's long days. You've got to find your subject and find your angle and get it approved by my boss and I've got to find the access and get with the athlete, get our way over there, shoot it and edit it, do the voice-over and then shoot it back to Montreal for approval. I think we're doing good pieces, but it's so difficult to get the access to the athletes. A lot of times you just get 90 seconds to ask three questions, so it's super strict. I'm for sure going to give a lot more credit to every reporter in the Chiefs' locker room because as an athlete you don't realize how much work goes into it.
"I've learned a lot about sport and performance, but also I'm learning a lot about media and what makes a piece really good. You have to have an angle. I try to be scientific but also be a little bit funny."
Duvernay-Tardif will return to Montreal on Sunday and be back in class at McGill on Monday. Because of med school, he will miss the start of the Chiefs' offseason conditioning program -- as he usually does -- but with Reid's blessing. He will return in plenty of time for the start of practice in May, but with an interruption for the graduation ceremony in Montreal.
"That's when I know whether I'll be a doctor or not, I guess," he said.