Monday, October 3rd 2005
Too smart for their own good
Last week, the Wall Street Journal posted an interesting article about football players and IQ tests. How interesting? I don’t know, as you have to be a subscriber to read it. But the blogs have been discussing it, and that’s all that matters.
We’ll have to make do with second hand sources:
Friday’s edition of The Wall Street Journal carried an analysis of how college players fared on the Wonderlic Personnel Test, which is administered to prospects at the NFL’s scouting combine.
The article focused on “the NFL’s Smartest Team” (St. Louis Rams), but included a listing of how players fared by college. The analysis was limited to schools that have at least 20 players with reported Wonderlic scores over the past seven years. The WSJ came up with 39 schools.
For reference, the average score on that test is 21. The average score of the “smartest team” in the NFL, the Rams, is 21.
But who cares about that? How do our schools rank up?
School / Score / Tests Taken
1. Stanford 28.8 21
2. Purdue 25.3 21
3. BYU 25.2 29
3. California 25.2 22
5. UCLA 24 21
6. Oregon 23.5 22
7. Wisconsin 23.2 29
8. Iowa 23 33
9. Oregon State 22.8 21
10. Nebraska 22.6 34
…
21. Southern Cal 20.3 30
…
39. Miami (Fla.) 16.3 40
Any thoughts?
Pac-10 represent. We have half the conference in the top ten. Not bad.
Comment by Nick — 10/4/2005 @ 5:33 pm
I hope this isn’t true, but I’ve read the argument that Cal’s record is so far misleading because we haven’t played anyone really good yet.
http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/wire?section=ncf&id=2181154
Comment by Fresh Prince — 10/5/2005 @ 9:44 am
It’s 1996 all over again. And my wonderful Young Alumni season tickets put me in section Q, right next to the visiting OSU fans.
On a related note, I hear that Coach Jeff is quite adept at keeping our boys in shape academically. Not that Coach Tom was terrible at it, but I’m guessing that his academic regimen also didn’t hold a candle to today’s…
Comment by Tio Jaime — 10/19/2005 @ 11:10 pm