I wasn't sure what to expect from McCray. He was probably a bottom of the roster guy. At least Ginda is excited about his chance to play. Best of luck to both of them. As with Hoops, I am glad it wasn't Poling. People seem to be pretty high on him making the team, even if it is as a special teamer. We need good players on that squad, too.
I’m glad Mike McCray made his decision. Staying in a job for the wrong reasons is a very good way to shred your soul. I discovered the hard way that if you bang your head against a break wall long enough something will break, and it ain’t the brick wall.
Good for him. Really. It's best for everyone to make the decision now than further down the road. And that really had to be a tough one to walk away from this, so Kudos to him! Good Luck McCray.
I have really mixed emotions here. If he wasn't in love with football, then yeah, he should probably walk away. HOWEVER, he played four years of high school, 4-5 years of college and now he realizes that? Why not go through camp, see if you make the team, and then make the decision? Because I guarantee you that in six months, he's going to be second-guessing himself and wondering if he has what it takes to play pro ball. He should have given it this season to be sure either way, plus have the opportunity to bank a little money. Even at rookie levels, one year could have paid for his first home and a nice car. I just can't see walking away from that TODAY...there has to be more to the story. If I had to guess, he's chasing a girl and will regret it the rest of his life.
He could have lost a little bit of interest with each passing year, your first pro camp is where the rubber is probably going to meet the road. Key, I like your posts, but I think you're really jumping to conclusions there at the end. If anything, the time this is going to afford him in spending time with his young family may have factored in. He'll find a steady career somewhere else, no doubt.
Good luck to him. I would find it incredibly difficult to not at least pursue the dream of a big NFL paycheck.
Maybe I am jumping to conclusions- it just seems very strange to quit the day before practices start. I mean, I can see a guy doing it for a week and calling it quits...there almost has to be some outside factor that wasn't mentioned (sick family member, chasing a girl, or whatever).
It can be a concussion scare. That LB that was drafted out of Wisconsin a couple years ago called it quits after the games started.
As I said earlier I walked away from a job because (short version) I no longer enjoyed. I was very good at my job and I was very well paid. So I believe I have some insights into why he walked away: 1) Just because you are good at something doesn’t mean you enjoy doing it. 2) When you are good at an activity there is social pressure from family, friends, team mates, coaches, school/college etc. to continue doing it. So, if you are good at something it is very easy to feel pressured into continuing to do it even if you don’t want to do it. 3) You have the “sunk cost fallacy” - the idea that if you have already invested a lot into something you have to keep investing in it or you will lose what you previously invested. 4) A lot of your identity is built into your job. In McCray’s situation he has been a “football player” since at least high school. Emotionally it is very hard to give up a significant part of your identity. Psychologists often refer to losing a career as having a similar emotional impact as getting divorced. 5) Most of your friends and social network are centered around your career, and you know that if you give up your career that you will lose most of your friends and social network. 6) Most people feel an obligation to their employer, so walking away from an employer can feel like an act of betrayal. Therefore, in addition to the external pressures there are a lot of internal pressures to keep doing a job you no longer enjoy. So while on the outside it looks like a sudden decision, it’s a decision that has been building up for several years. I’d bet London to a brick that he is feeling happy today for the first time in years.
I don't disagree on any of your points EXCEPT that your experience was completely different from his. You were good at it and paid well....he was good at it and never got paid at all (besides the $10k signing bonus....which he may or may not get to keep). Plus, you proved yourself where he didn't....I think that one thing alone makes all the difference in the world. I'm sure he is happier today, but he's going to spend his entire life second guessing that decision because he'll never really know if he's NFL caliber or not. If he would have stuck it out another two weeks then he'd likely have that answer....I was simply questioning the timing. It almost sounds to me that he was more afraid of failing and taking the chance to prove himself a success. That's the only reason I can think of that he didn't finish out the month (again, unless there's a family illness, a doctor talked him out of it or something like that).
There are only about 3,000 roster spots in the NFL for training, which gets cut by almost half for the season proper. When you consider the millions of kids who play High School football, just making an NFL roster puts you in the top 1% of the top 1%. If his experience was similar to mine, and reading his message I see him saying similar things to what I felt at the time I walked away, he was feeling trapped and not seeing a way off the teadmill. It’s not about the chance of proving yourslf, it’s about doing something that actively makes you unhappy because you feel you have no other choices. He did the right thing because your sanity is worth more than your physical health or financial well being.
Have you ever played competitive sports? Because I've never met an athlete alive that didn't wonder if they were good enough to play at the pro level. And you're right...the vast majority of us aren't. He was already in a very elite category for sure. But he can't say he was an NFL player since he never took the field, and that's going to bother him for life.....even if he's wildly successful doing something he loves. He will always wonder in the back of his mind if it was the biggest mistake of his life. Look at it this way- it's like running a 10k race and quitting 7 steps before the finish line. No matter what happens, virtually every athlete at every level is going to take those last 7 steps.
The Dolphins have had recent experience with 2 guys who because of their size and athleticism were pushed by others into being football players - Dion Jordan and Jonathon Martin. Neither of those guys had the drive and desire necessary, both of them flushed their lives down the drain in different ways because they felt pushed into doing something that didn’t make them happy. It’s easier for McCray to walk away because he wasn’t highly drafted, but it’s still a tough decision to make. It might seem that the easy way out is to try and fail, however pride kicks in and starts messing with your head.
McCray could have absolutely decided he wasn't going to play after college. Stephen Ross may have asked him personally to come try out for the team to see if he would change his mind, and that there was no harm no foul if he decided it wasn't for him. This is all just guesswork, though.
