Discarding His NFL Dream Doesn’t Make Scott Sicko a Role Model

Update: On Tuesday, Sicko signed with Dallas. Kudos to him for having the gumption to change his mind, and praise to him for doing what he wants despite the fact that it repudiates a fair bit of the laudatory coverage he received. At the very least, Sicko will be telling some story about his NFL foray.

Scott Sicko wasn’t drafted this weekend. The New Hampshire tight end was passed up all 255 times an NFL team could have picked him, but his size (6’4”, around 250 pounds) and production (57 catches for 725 yards and nine touchdowns in 2009) made him an appealing enough player for at least five teams to contact him about coming in as an undrafted free agent. But Sicko turned them all down, and will continue his education. And he will be praised for that, because refusing an opportunity to pursue a career in football after not being drafted is noble. Or something.

Here’s what Sports Illustrated’s Peter King wrote of Sicko:

⇥⇥⇥It’s nice, in the midst of a weekend when football seems more important than breathing to some, that we have a different kind of role model for our kids. I hope they read everything Scott Sicko just said here.What Sicko said was a lot of platitudinous mumbo-jumbo about wanting to be a teacher, and being fine with going back to school. “I love knowing where we’ve been as a country, and how we got to where we are today,” he told King. “I’ve had so many great influences as teachers, and I think it would be fun someday to teach, maybe in college.” Sicko also said, “I gave everything I could to football.”

At least on that last point, he’s wrong.

See, Sicko could have gone to a camp as an undrafted free agent. Football players occasionally do that. Tony Romo did. Kurt Warner did. John Randle did. Miles Austin did. This list of undrafted Pro Bowlers is pretty impressive. Scott Sicko won’t make that list, it seems, because it “just felt right” to pass up the chance to compete for a job.“If I were to be drafted I would have had more confidence of a much longer career in the NFL,” Sicko told the Albany Times Union. I’m sure Taco Wallace, Dave Yovanovits, and Siddeeq Shabazz all felt they were going to have long NFL careers, too. If Sicko hasn’t sounded a bit selfish and entitled to you yet, consider the hard work Sicko’s agent did to keep teams interested, hard work that was apparently flushed away after the draft was completed.

I can’t fault Sicko for choosing a profession that will probably permit him to change many youngsters’ lives for the better. But I wonder what will happen if his students ever ask him for advice about following their dreams -- and I have no idea why anyone is lauding the way Sicko made this decision.

“Playing in the NFL was always a dream of mine,” Sicko said. And now that dream is dashed, and it’s Sicko’s own fault, because of what seems like a toxic mix of entitlement, self-satisfaction, self-absorption, and unwillingness to risk failure for a chance at fulfilling a dream.

Those are all the ideal traits in a role model, right?

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