As has been in the news, Myron managed to get in his Rhodes scholarship interview and play in the November 22nd FSU game against Maryland --- the NCAA delayed the game, someone provided him with the use of a private plane, and he didn't start, but he met both appointments.
As has also been in the news, his interview apparently kicked ass, since he was awarded a Rhodes scholarship before the game started.
Now, Myron --- who is Samari Rolle's distant cousin (I was wondering about that) --- has chosen Oxofrd over the NFL, even though he was told he would go in the first or second rounds of the NFL draft. He will go for a one-year course of study in medical anthropology there, and come back to the US to enter the 2010 NFL Draft.
Priorities right in line here!
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Scholarly Seminole: NFL prospect Rolle also has Rhodes aspirations Story Highlights
• Rolle, a pre-med student, will graduate in two-and-a-half years
• FSU safety is projected as a first-round pick in April 2009
• Former USC QB Haden was a Div. I Rhodes scholar in '75
Myron Rolle started all 13 games at safety for the Seminoles last season.
Greg Drzazgowski/Icon SMI
Related Links
• PHOTO GALLERY: Myron Rolle studying abroad
• SI VAULT: Tracing the history of the Rolle family
By Stewart Mandel, SI.com
If all goes to plan on the field this fall, Florida State safety Myron Rolle will produce the kind of season that catapults him into the first round of next spring's NFL draft.
If all goes to plan off the field, Rolle will be faced with a vexing yet welcome decision: NFL locker room or Oxford University classroom?
Rolle, a preseason All-ACC and All-America candidate, is an astounding anomaly in a sport synonymous with low graduation rates and dumbed-down majors. He's a 3.75 pre-med student who will finish his undergraduate degree in just two-and-a-half years; a National Leadership Honor Society inductee; the recipient of a $4,000 research grant for his work studying human mesenchymal stem cells and the facilitator of a health and living program at a charter school run by the Seminole Tribe of Florida.
"Myron's special, there's no doubt about it," said Florida State president T.K. Wetherell. "To listen to him talk about everything from football to organic chemistry, you think you're talking to a faculty member sometimes."
This fall, a Florida State faculty committee is expected to nominate Rolle for the prestigious Rhodes Scholarship. Only 32 students in the country receive the honor each year, and only two ACC athletes have won them in the past 31 years.
One of those recipients was former FSU shot-putter Garrett Johnson, a finalist at last month's U.S. Olympic trials and close friend of Rolle's. He enrolled at Oxford in 2006.
Jamie Purcell, director for FSU's Office of National Fellowships, worked with both Johnson and 2008 recipient Joseph O'Shea on their Rhodes applications and is now guiding Rolle. She feels as confident in Rolle's chances as she did those of Johnson and O'Shea, the school's first Rhodes recipients since 1976.
Said Purcell: "I don't think there's going to be another candidate like Myron Rolle in the near future."
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Last fall, Florida State professor Timothy Logan was delivering a lecture in his human biochemistry class when he slipped in a joke about the Seminoles' struggling football team. Many of the 200 upperclassmen and graduate students in attendance -- most of them pre-med majors -- chuckled.
Afterward, an imposing, 6-foot-2, 220-pound student who had been sitting in the balcony of the auditorium walked up to Logan, introduced himself and politely expressed his displeasure with the joke.
It was Myron Rolle.
"I'd seen his name on the [class] roster, but I thought, 'It can't be that Myron Rolle,'" said Logan. "I've had two football players in my class in 14 years -- and the first one was a walk-on."
In what was then just his third semester at Florida State -- and during the heart of the Seminoles' 2007 season -- Rolle was not only enrolled in Logan's rigorous, upper-level biochemistry course, but by the end of the term, he was one of Logan's top students.
"I have kids in my class that are as bright as Myron, but most of them don't have the same demands on their time as a major college football player," said Logan. "And most of them didn't do as well as Myron."
Rolle has had his sights set on becoming a doctor since attending a 10-day, National Youth Leadership Forum on Medicine in New Orleans in the seventh grade. It was there he first learned about medicine from practicing doctors and where he first interacted with patients recently diagnosed with illness.
"I sort of fell in love with that profession and had my mind set that I wanted to do [pre-med] while still playing football," said Rolle. "Everything I did in high school built up to where I'm at now."
Rolle, the youngest of five brothers, grew up in Galloway, N.J., a standout in baseball, basketball and football. His parents, both Bahamian immigrants -- his father, Whitney, became a financial manager in Princeton, his mother, Beverly, a secretary at Trump Hotel and Casino -- made it abundantly clear that academics took precedence over athletics.
"My parents weren't playing around," said Rolle. "When I'd score touchdowns, hit home runs, score 25 points in a basketball game -- I'd get maybe a slushie. But if I came home with straight As I was getting two pizza pies from my favorite Italian restaurant."
Myron Rolle currently has a 3.75 GPA as a premed student at Florida State.
Courtesy of FSU Sports Information
To further his education, Myron's parents sent him to a pair of New Jersey boarding schools for high school. As he became a sought-after recruit during his junior year at The Hun School in Princeton -- receiving a reported 57 scholarship offers and becoming the top-rated prospect in the country by some publications -- Rolle began taking campus visits. Coaches quickly learned to tailor their pitch to appeal to Myron's academic interests.
Only Florida State, however, dedicated the first day of Rolle's two-day visit entirely to non-football subjects. He toured the medical school, met with Wetherell and provost Lawrence Abele and spoke with both Johnson, who had just begun the Rhodes application process, and Purcell.
Considering Florida State's reputation as a "party school," recruiting followers were surprised when, just before the start of his senior season, Rolle chose FSU over more esteemed universities such as Michigan and Penn State. But the school laid out a plan that would allow Rolle, who entered college with an astounding 22 advanced placement credits, to achieve his long-term plan of graduating in three years, playing in the NFL and, ultimately, attending med school.
"Whether you go to Princeton University or Florida State University, it's how hard you work," said Rolle.
"The same material is being taught at both schools, and if you push yourself to take honors courses, you really challenge yourself intellectually."
Upon enrolling at Florida State in January 2006, Rolle soon found out just how difficult it is to manage both ventures.
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Rolle, a hard-hitting rover with a linebacker's body, arrived in Tallahassee amidst enormous expectations and wasted no time living up to the billing. He made his debut in the Seminoles' nationally televised season opener against Miami, became a starter the fourth week of the season and finished third on the team with 77 tackles, earning recognition as the ACC's defensive newcomer of the year.
His sophomore season last fall did not go as smoothly.
"He had an outstanding year for a freshman, but was kind of average year last year," said longtime FSU defensive coordinator Mickey Andrews. "He wasn't as productive in terms of coming up with big plays, and he gave up more big plays than we wanted."
In a sport where players are expected to train year-round, Rolle may have fallen slightly behind when, in the spring of 2007, he chose to pursue another one of his academic dreams: Spending six weeks studying abroad in London. While the 'Noles had finished spring practice by the time he departed in May, Rolle missed the beginning of summer workouts with his teammates.
Johnson, who by then was studying at Oxford, helped Myron find locations to train, but, "there's no coach here, the facilities aren't the best and you don't have a training partner," said Johnson, who continued to compete in international events during his two years there while training for the recent Olympic trials. "Also, Oxford's a great place, but the weather sucks here."
Upon returning to Tallahassee, Rolle took a large summer course load to continue his accelerated degree track. Then came the fall, and classes like Logan's, which "many pre-meds tell me is the hardest class they have to take," said the professor. Other courses in Rolle's major require lab work that occasionally forces him to miss meetings or workouts.
"Sometimes I do think about how, if I wasn't a football player and I had more time to meet with my teachers, I could be a 4.0, cum laude student," said Rolle. "And if I wasn't a serious student and could put 95 percent of my time into football, there are so many more things I could do on the football field."
In individual meetings after last season, Andrews urged Rolle to treat football preparation with the same intensity he does his schoolwork.
"I asked him, how much time did you spend watching tape of Florida the week we played them compared to how much time you take to prepare for a chemistry exam?" said Andrews. "He didn't prepare [for the games] like he was trying to get an A. The message hit home. I saw a much more focused guy in the spring."
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Rolle has shed five pounds since the spring and improved his 40 time to within a 4.5 range. He's been plenty busy with other endeavors as well.
He spends his mornings in Logan's lab, conducting research on the connection between energy metabolism and protein synthesis rates, a project with potential implications for stem-cell and cancer-cell research. Florida State awarded him an Undergraduate Research and Creative Activity Award, providing a $4,000 grant to conduct the study. He's completing his final undergraduate classes and will graduate Aug. 9.
In addition, Wetherell approached Rolle about working with the Seminole Tribe of Florida. In a project befitting his career interests, Rolle will spend several days later this month at a charter school on the tribe's reservation near Lake Okeechobee, Fla., teaching fifth graders about diabetes, obesity and other health-related issues. The children will be divided into teams and compete for points, and the winning team will get introduced on the field at FSU's Oct. 25 game against Virginia Tech.
And then there's the Rhodes Scholarship.
Myron Rolle spent six weeks studying abroad in London during the spring of 2007.
Arguably the most prestigious honor an American undergraduate can receive, the 106-year old award affords recipients a full scholarship to one of Oxford's postgraduate programs for up to two years. Notable alumni include former president Bill Clinton, former senator and New York Knicks star Bill Bradley and former Supreme Court justice Byron White.
As originally conceived by founder Cecil Rhodes, the award included a direct tie to athletics -- one of the four stated criteria is "energy to use one's talents to the full, as exemplified by fondness for and success in sports." Prominent football-playing Rhodes recipients include White (known as "the Whizzer" as a star running back at Colorado in the 1930s) and USC quarterback Pat Haden.
However, Haden, a 1975 Rhodes recipient and recently the chairman of California's selection committee, was one of the last prominent football players to receive the award. (Former Ohio State receiver Mike Lanese won in 1985. Former Marshall QB Chad Pennington was a finalist in 1999.) Haden says the obstacles facing a current football-playing applicant are far more difficult than when he applied.
"When I did it, we didn't even have offseason conditioning," said Haden. "Today, [football] is a full-time job."
The application process is extensive. Rolle must write a personal-statement about his life aspirations, interview with the nominating committee and provide eight letters of recommendation -- and that's just to gain entry to the competition. Assuming FSU nominates him, Rolle would then enter one of 16 regional competitions against fellow candidates from Florida, Alabama and Tennessee. Students often compete in their hometown's region rather than their school's, and, not coincidentally, the field is usually dominated by Ivy League and other private schools. (Only seven of last year's 32 winners came from so-called "state schools.")
Rolle is determined to make his application stand out -- so much so that he's contacted intermediaries about potential recommendation letters from presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama and Florida governor Charlie Crist.
"I want to study global health as my master's degree," said Rolle. "Studying with some of the best in the world -- it would open up so many doors if I was presented with that opportunity."
Were Rolle to be named a finalist, another potential clash of football versus academics awaits him. Candidates are required to appear before their region's selection committee (which in Rolle's case would take place in Birmingham, Ala.) on Nov. 22 -- the day of Florida State's game at Maryland. A spokesperson for the American Association of Rhodes Scholars said candidates are usually not allowed to interview on an alternate date. The winners are announced that weekend.
"I'm not sure what we'd do about that," said Purcell. "It's a problem we'd like to have. It would mean he's a finalist."
"I would hope we could come to a solution," said Rolle. "I definitely couldn't miss that game. I wouldn't do that to my teammates."
Rolle will not be the only football player in this year's competition. Chris Joseph, a starting offensive lineman for UCLA the past three seasons, graduated this spring with a 3.95 GPA in geography and is applying for the Rhodes and other international fellowships.
Joseph hopes that he or Rolle can win the award to help shed the ubiquitous "dumb jock" stereotype associated with the sport. Rolle's own team was stigmatized by an academic fraud scandal prior to last season's Music City Bowl for which 12 of his teammates will be suspended for this season's first three games.
"It would be great for college football," said Joseph. "It would debunk the myth that football players are all dumb jocks, because that's definitely not the case."
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Joseph's situation is slightly different than Rolle's -- he opted not to pursue a professional football career. Rolle has planned all along to enter the NFL draft after his junior season ("We're approaching it like this is his senior year," said Andrews), and numerous draft analysts -- including SI.com's Andrew Perloff -- consider him a potential first-round pick.
During his tenure as a Rhodes Scholar in the '70s, Haden would spend half the year in Oxford and half the year with the Los Angeles Rams, which selected him in the seventh round of the 1976 draft. It's unlikely an NFL team would permit such an arrangement today.
So what would Rolle do if faced between the choice of cashing in on NFL millions (Colts receiver Anthony Gonzalez, the last pick of the 2007 first round, earned $5.4 million in guaranteed money) or a tuition-free Oxford experience? He'd likely have to delay one or the other, and both institutions will surely want to know his choice beforehand.
"It's definitely going to be tough," said Rolle. "I don't know what I want to do, but I know I want to win [the Rhodes]."
Haden hopes Rolle gets that opportunity but does not envy the decision.
"That's a hard one to advise a young man on," he said. "You could argue that you could always go on after your football career and get a graduate degree. On the other hand, you only get a chance to be a Rhodes Scholar once in your life.
"It was a life-altering experience for me," said Haden, who met students from around the world, "and the moniker stays with you the rest of your life. I hope if he is awarded the scholarship he'll seriously consider going [to Oxford]."
Rolle would shatter a whole lot of stereotypes if he does.
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