Rhodes scholarship or the NFL?

December 10, 2008 by Aubrey01

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Florida State safety Myron Rolle was recently awarded a Rhodes scholarship. He is the first major-college football player of his generation to win what is considered the world’s most prestigious postgraduate academic scholarship.

He became the most prominent student-athlete to win the award since Bill Bradley at Princeton in 1965. Bradley was later a Knicks star, a senator and a presidential candidate. Other winners have included Pat Haden (U.S.C. and the Rams) and Tom McMillen (Maryland and the N.B.A. and Congress).

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.

Rolle, an aspiring neurosurgeon, will now decide between the NFL and an all-expense paid scholarship for two or three years of study at Oxford University in England.

Rolle’s quest to the win the Rhodes had received heavy attention from the news media because he chose to risk missing all or part of Florida State’s pivotal game at Maryland to have the interview, which took place in Birmingham, Ala.

Don Lemon (CNN) profiles a college football player who has to choose between a prestigious Rhodes Scholarship and the NFL.