Long 'Rhodes' to the NFL for Rolle

He has a big brain, and in all the right places. He has more character in his right pinky than Ben Roethlisberger has in his whole suspended body. He's everything a National Football League team could ask for, maybe not in the first round, or other early rounds, but there has to be a place for him.

Someone, please, hire Myron Rolle.

The Bucs should, in fact.

Rolle, the former hard-hitting Florida State safety, the Rhodes Scholar, a citizen of the world, watched the NFL draft's second and third rounds Friday night in Florida with his family. His name was never called.

"I've heard anywhere from the third to fifth round," Rolle said the other day in New York at a pre-draft youth football clinic. He also met with NFL commissioner Roger Goodell at the league offices.

"He said he was very proud of me," Rolle said. "He said he's excited to have me in the league and that he hopes he's calling my name between the first and third round. That was the best feeling I had, hearing the commissioner, probably the most powerful man in sports, hearing him acknowledge the things I've done."

You can't put a price on the last year of Myron Rolle's life - or maybe you could. He probably cost himself millions of dollars when he gave up his final season of football at Florida State, and last year's draft, to be a Rhodes Scholar and study for a postgraduate degree in medical anthropology. He wants to be a neurosurgeon, only not just yet.

"If I had gone out last year, I might have been a first-round pick," Rolle said. "It's a lot of money, I know. But it's going to benefit me to have been a Rhodes Scholar. Maybe I can even inspire a person or two."

A person or two?

"But you can be smart and still be on your game in the NFL." Rolle said. "I think I bring leadership, intelligence, intensity and strong, physical play."

He had a good Senior Bowl and NFL Combine. But there has been strangeness. Like his interview with a group from the Buccaneers, when Rolle was posed this theoretical: What if someone was to say you "deserted" your FSU teammates by taking a Rhodes Scholarship?

"I took it with as much humor as you can," Rolle said. "It wasn't Coach (Raheem) Morris who asked. I'm not sure who it was, to be honest. I don't regret what I did; I had to do what I did. Coach Morris told me if I was his son, he'd be proud of me."

The Bucs like Rolle. Don't be surprised if they take him late in this draft or invite him for a tryout. But back to Friday. The Bucs went secondary in the third round. They even went Myron. Only it was Myron Lewis of Vanderbilt.

In England, Rolle was enrolled at St. Edmund Hall, one of the colleges at the University of Oxford. It opened in: 1278. Rolle's favorite course was titled "Medical Pluralism." He took his meals in a dining hall where students wore academic gowns ("A Harry Potter type gown, all black," Rolle said) and bow ties. To stay sharp physically, he practiced with the renowned St. Edmund's rugby team.

Myron Rolle wants to be more than a neurosurgeon. The Myron L. Rolle Foundation works with Native Americans to prevent diabetes and also on the health of foster children across Florida. Rolle also wants to build free health clinics in his family's native Bahamas and beyond.

He applauds the commissioner's decision to suspend Roethlisberger. He believes athletes are role models, or should be.

"You understand the concept that as an NFL player you have a higher responsibility. You have to be more accountable for your actions on and off the field."

Right now, Myron Rolle just wants on a field.

"I'll play for a team in Wasilla, Alaska, if they have one," Rolle said.

Wasilla would be lucky to get him.

So would anywhere else.