The pity, of course, is that he has to choose at all.
If only real life were as simple as high school, you know? Even in an era of specialized athletes, there is still some room for the multiple-sport star in high school, even if it isn’t the way it was when Jim Brown was lettering in everything back at Manhasset High in the ‘50s, when he’d duck away at halftime of Indians lacrosse games so he could help out the track team.
So Kyler Murray has to choose. We have seen how good he is as a quarterback, even if he makes Doug Flutie look like Manute Bol, even if he rolled up his impressive Heisman Trophy numbers mostly against teams in the Big 12, where, by secret vote, they outlawed defense about 10 years ago. He’s legit.
If most of us haven’t seen him play baseball, we must trust that the Oakland A’s, a franchise perpetually beholden to young legs and flexible talent, saw fit to award him more than $4.5 million in making him the ninth pick of last year’s baseball entry draft. The A’s can’t afford publicity stunts, and they can’t afford to whiff on first-round whims. He’s legit.
But even as the years pass and we recall the last era, when Bo Jackson and Deion Sanders defied convention and played both sports well, it is clear more than ever that we’ll never see that again. For one thing, we will forever be haunted by what Jackson could have been, in either or both sports, if he hadn’t ruined his hip in that playoff game against the Bengals in January 1991. And while Sanders cruised into the Pro Football Hall of Fame, there are still those who rue the baseball career he never had because, ultimately, he had to choose one over the other.
That, ultimately, makes doing the double impossible in 2019. No baseball team in its right mind would ever allow Murray to do what the Yankees and Braves allowed Sanders to do — leave a baseball season at the start of football camp. And no football team in its right mind would ever allow him to do what the Raiders allowed Jackson to do — postpone football until the end of a baseball season, which now might mean a date as late as Nov. 1.
So choose he must.
And for now, he chooses football.
For now he releases a statement, as he did Monday, which says: “Moving forward, I am firmly and fully committing my life and time to becoming an NFL quarterback. Football has been my love and passion my entire life. I was raised to play QB, and I very much look forward to dedicating 100 percent of myself to being the best QB possible and winning NFL championships.
“I have started an extensive training program to further prepare myself for upcoming NFL workouts and interviews. I eagerly await the opportunity to continue to prove to NFL decision makers that I am the franchise QB in this draft.”
For now, that means returning most of the money the A’s gave him last year, when they agreed to allow him this one-shot chance to quarterback the Sooners, and he maximized that window. For now, if we trust the Athletics’ eyes, it means that baseball loses out on someone who could have been a bright talent and, even with a modest career, could have earned close to $100 million in his career.
For that reason alone, this is a curious decision. The first impression of many NFL scouting analysts is that Murray will likely go in the first round, and that means four years of guaranteed money, so his bank account will flourish nicely regardless of how any of this turns out.
But Murray the Franchise QB is a decided risk for both the player and the team that selects him. He would be the smallest quarterback in the league, and that matters. Quarterback is the toughest position to project over the long haul, and that matters, too. It is also a place where catastrophic injury looms with every snap. Ask Teddy Bridgewater. Ask Deshaun Watson. Ask the hundreds of other ex-NFLers who wander through their golden years in a fog of CTE. If a behemoth like Bo can see it all end in one fateful play, it can end for anyone that way.
Some say now that football is the easy decision because there will be no long bus rides and fleabag hotels to endure in the minor-league grind. That may be so. But if all things are equal, and if the potential for stardom is the same in both sports, he may have just chose the easier decision and the harder journey.