Didn't They At Least Pretend They Went To College?

The Pack gave it a good try in the second half, but it wasn't good enough. At least we're a quarter a way done with the train wreck that will be this season.

But that's not the main discussion of this post. It was noted on Ben Maller's website that the Packers have the lowest average Wonderlic score of any NFL team. They came in to this season with an average score of 19.1 out of a possible 50. You get one point for each correct answer, and the questions start off easy, and get harder as you go along.

For those of you that aren't familiar, the Wonderlic (or Wonderlic Personnel Test) is a 12 minute, 50 question test. It is used by thousands of companies to test potential new hires, and the NFL has used it as it's standard test for decades. Every potential player will take the test prior to the draft, and it is a mandatory exam for everyone attending the predraft combine. The questions range from logic, to math, and visual questions ( pattern recognition ).

The average for the NFL is 19, compared to a national average of 21. A score of 20 can pretty much be equated to an IQ of 100. It's a bell curve type score, so a 10 (minimal literacy) would not necessarily equate to a 50 IQ, and a WPT score of 50 doesn't mean an IQ of 250. Only one player in the NFL ever scored a 50, a punter from Harvard. In the general populous, only 1 in 100,000 ever score a 50.

Positions tend to grade out in categories. Offensive linemen tend to grade the highest (26), followed by quarterbacks(24), followed by safeties(19). Fullbacks at 17, and tailbacks round out the list at a lowly 16. Brett Favre scored a 22, while Brian Griese scored a 39. You can see how their careers worked out so far. Dan Marino only scored a 16.

Average scores for various professions; Chemists 31, Programmers 29, Sales 24, Bank Teller 22, Security Guard (non police) 17, Warehouse 15.

Now, I know that athletes (especially the ones on track to make millions of dollars for the University) are given special treatment, but c'mon. Even if you sleep through every class, won't you absorb at least a little something?? The NFL requires that you play college ball for at least 3 years before turning pro. Three years of classes, even with minimal participation should get you a higher score than your local warehouse worker. (nothing against manual labor - just trying to illustrate a point).

Those playbooks are THICK - and there's hundred of adjustments. If you have the brain capacity to master that, you should be able to master basic math. If you can recognize a pattern in the offense ( say, every time they line up in the "I" formation, they run ), how can you not tell that after an arrow points up, then right, then down, that the next one should point left?

Other tidbits:
Stanford has the highest average score for incoming football players at 28.8
Wisconsin has the second highest Big Ten score behind Purdue with UW at 23.7
The "U" ( otherwise known as University of Miami, FL) comes in with a whopping 16.3

But hey, when you weigh 265lbs, and can run a 4.4 forty yard dash, most people won't make fun of you for scoring at a ninth grade level when you're 21 years old. Even if you did sleep through 3 years of college.