Myron Rolle taking year off from football to study at Oxford

Good story on the Florida State star.

If I remember right, former Seahawks running back Dan Doornink also studied medicine in the offseason while playing in the NFL. Of course, that was a different time and place.

http://sports.yahoo.com/nfl/news?slug=jc-rollerhodes052609&prov=yhoo&type=lgns

 

Yeah, this has only been known for about six months.

In fact, he flew from Birmingham, Ala. where the interviews were conducted, to get back for that night's game against Maryland back in November.

http://thequad.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/11/22/myron-rolle-wins-rhodes-scholarship/

 

But at the time, wasn't it not known if he was going to Oxford or to play in the NFL first?

Still an interesting story on how he will be dealing with the year off from football.

 

Nah, he announced he was taking the scholarship pretty much immediately, and then we got a bunch of stories on NFL Live and the like as to what taking a year off would do to his draft stock when he got back.

 

Pat Haden for you youngsters.

 

I would think a Rhodes scholar could find a better way to make a living than playing safety in the NFL.

 

And for you historians of football and SCOTUS, there is probably the brightest and most influential of them all, Byron Raymond White.

 

Judging from his mediocre college career I think an NFL career is, at best, a 50-50 proposition. Guy is smart as hell. He just isn't a very good football player. Luckily, it would appear he has something to fall back on if the league doesn't work out.

 

The sad truth is that his first NFL contract will pay him more than I will make in my career. The Rhodes fall back position has to do with personal fulfillment when finance issues fade to the back burner.

The good news is that Rolle reminds us that some people may choose personal fulfillment over money and he has made his choice in full public view.

 

IIRC, Rolle wants to be a doctor that helps people in developing countries, especially his native Bahamas. Going to the NFL, even for a few years, helps give him a base of financial support. He gets to save some dough to serve as start-up funds and it gives him a special kind of publicity that would help him raise funds for future efforts.

 

And the interesting thing is, later in life,White never liked to talk about his football career. And he hated the nickname 'Whizzer."

(Well, nowadays, I can understand, but back then, it had a different connotation).

 

I know a guy who clerked for a justice in the mid-1970s. There is a basketball court in the Supreme Court building -- "the highest court in the land" -- who played against The Whizzer in pickup games and said he was a dirty motherfucker.