FOOTBALL STAR AND RHODES SCHOLAR BEGINS SEMESTER AT OXFORD (930 hits)

OXFORD, England — Instead of chasing after wide receivers in the N.F.L., Myron Rolle came here to chase ghosts around the ancient campus of the University of Oxford.

Rolle, 22, established himself as an elite student and athlete at Florida State, becoming a Rhodes scholar and a top N.F.L. prospect. But he temporarily said no to millions of dollars and risked his N.F.L. draft standing to study here. He is perhaps the most prominent athlete to accept a Rhodes scholarship since Bill Bradley in 1965.

“I feel a little disappointed when I see guys playing on Sundays, especially guys I’m friends with,” said Rolle, a 6-foot-2, 215-pound safety. “But when I walk out of my accommodations in Norham Gardens and spend time with my friends and go to class, I realize that I did make a good choice. It’s been worth it.”

Rolle walks the same streets that the future president Bill Clinton did when he was a Rhodes scholar. Rolle trains on the same grounds where Roger Bannister, an Oxford graduate, ran the first sub-four-minute mile in 1954. And as Rolle prepares for a life as a doctor and philanthropist after football, he aims to take a similar path as his role model, Bradley, the former N.B.A. player and United States senator.

Rolle plans to carve his own legacy after Oxford by attending medical school and becoming a neurosurgeon. He has started a foundation that is building a medical clinic and recreation center on a remote island in the Bahamas.

Although he misses football, Rolle has forged friendships that cross cultures and continents. He takes stimulating classes in which discussions and engaging classmates matter more than papers and tests.

“I think it’s a great message for all of us,” N.F.L. Commissioner Roger Goodell said of Rolle’s decision to attend Oxford. “Even the greatest players don’t play forever. And they’re going to have to think about other careers, and he’s obviously thought about that at a young age.”

Football remains a part of Rolle’s future. He rises at 6:30 a.m. every day for two-hour workouts to prepare for this spring’s N.F.L. draft. Bradley, by contrast, ate five meals a day, did not exercise and gained 30 pounds in the two years he studied abroad, he said in a recent phone interview. Bradley jokingly encouraged Rolle not to follow his lead.

Bradley said he was proud that Rolle had set the groundwork for a life after sports. Rolle and his foundation have made strides toward raising the $5 million it will cost to open the clinic in the Bahamas. Rolle’s decision to study for a master’s degree in medical anthropology here will help him build an education foundation for his medicinal and philanthropic career.

“It shows real character on his part that he’s giving up the chance to sign a big N.F.L. contract and going to Oxford,” Bradley said. “The experience he’ll have will last a lifetime, while the context of his experience in pro football compared to college football will not be as different as his experience in Oxford will be from the non-football life he’s led.”

Rolle has been here three weeks — long enough that reality has overtaken expectation. He said he had no regrets. He said that nothing had better epitomized and reinforced his Rhodes experience than his unexpected friendship with Aisha Saad.

Saad, a Rhodes scholar from the University of North Carolina who is studying environmental policy, is a native of Egypt and a practicing Muslim who wears a hijab. She and Rolle agree that social constructs of undergraduate life would probably have precluded them from becoming friends in college. But on the seven-hour flight to London from Washington, linked by the serendipity of alphabetical order, Rolle and Saad talked nonstop about everything from global warming to gender equity, race, politics and family. (Saad has three younger brothers and Rolle four older brothers.) Some conversations were in English, others Spanish. There was little talk of football.

“I think other people were just as surprised as we were that we got along so well,” Saad said.

The two even played pranks on their fellow Rhodes scholars, making them dance to pass an imaginary toll booth, complete with beeping sound effects, in order to get to the bathroom.

“We got little jigs, shoulder bops and hip wiggles,” Rolle said, laughing.

Worried that Rhodes scholars would be stuffy, Rolle knew by the time he landed in London that he would fit in. Neither he nor Saad drinks alcohol, so they have avoided the popular pub scene, opting instead for four-hour debates.

“You definitely see his competitive side come out,” Saad said of Rolle. “Some conversations, we say, ‘We’re going to table this and continue it next week.’ ”

Rolle said he has enjoyed the classroom and campus experiences as well. His home college at Oxford, where he eats, socializes and gathers his mail, is St. Edmund, also known as Teddy Hall. Typical of Oxford, the building is estimated to have been built in 1278. A chalk sign that hung in the courtyard there Tuesday advertised a hall rugby match.

Rolle has also picked up the local patois. “Once I put that flame on the hob, not the stove, I knew I was officially here,” he said.

Formal classes meet infrequently, Rolle said. Instead there are discussion groups built around a student’s interests. Rolle said his pre-med studies at Florida State left him thinking that the tenets of biomedicine were black and white. But a lecture last week on the difference between illness and disease convinced him that he needed to be more open-minded.

“The fact I’m getting this knowledge before med school may make me a better med student, as I’m not so narrow-focused to think my way is the only way,” Rolle said.
Posted By: Siebra Muhammad
Tuesday, October 27th 2009 at 4:27PM
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