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Football IQs

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Steve Sailer, iSteve Exclusives Blog, November

The NFL requires all college players hoping to be drafted to take the 12 minute Wonderlic IQ test of 50 questions. I found the stats for the top 309 prospects in the Spring 2003 draft (the one where USC’s quarterback Carson Palmer went #1). I’ve converted it into IQ scores by assuming that 20 answers right out of 50 questions = 100 and each additional right answer is worth 2 points, although that might be overstating the IQs a little (Some sources say the mean is 21 right.) The average for all the prospects was 103, which is quite good. (I suspect, however, that players practice the test more than the typical job applicant, and I’d hardly be surprised if some of the football superagents didn’t find a way for their clients to cheat.)

Here are the scores by position and for the leading football powerhouses (although the sample sizes aren’t big enough to say much for sure about colleges’ recruiting strategies—if I could find a few more years’ worth of data, we could evaluate Paul Hornung’s controversial comment that Notre Dame [2003 average 109] needs to ease up on admissions standards so it can compete with Miami [92]):

Position	Count	IQ
Guard	19	113
QB	17	112
Center	11	110
Tackle	36	108
Free Safety	11	108
Tight End	21	108
Wide Receiver	40	103
Defensive End	33	100
Int. Linebacker	17	100
Fullback	7	100
Cornerback	26	99
Strong Safety	10	99
Outside LB	14	98
Defensive Tackle	21	97
Running Back	26	95

California	4	119
Stanford	7	117
Colorado	6	112
Wisconsin	6	111
Arizona St.	4	111
Iowa	8	110
BYU	4	110
Notre Dame	8	109
Louisville	4	109
Florida St.	8	108
Hawaii	4	108
Michigan	6	106
Washington St.	4	106
Florida	10	105
Oklahoma	5	104
Penn St.	7	103
Ohio St.	6	103
Nebraska	4	103
Texas	5	102
Illinois	6	102
Boston College	4	102
N.C. State	4	101
Texas A&M	5	100
USC	6	99
Georgia	10	96
Tennessee	10	95
Oregon St.	5	94
Louisiana St.	4	93
TCU	4	93
Miami	10	92
Alabama	5	91
Mississippi St.	4	89

Top 10 Ranked players:

1	Carson Palmer	USC	QB	112
2	Charles Rogers	Michigan St.	WR	80
3	Terence Newman	Kansas St.	CB	96
4	Andre Johnson	Miami	WR	88
5	Byron Leftwich	Marshall	QB	110
6	Terrell Suggs	Arizona St.	DE	122
7	William Joseph	Miami	DT	74
8	Jordan Gross	Utah	T	140
9	Jerome McDougle	Miami	DE	80
10	Marcus Trufant	Washington St.	CB	98

Clearly, the NFL is willing to take guys who score low if they’ve got the physical skills, but it likes its QBs and offensive linemen to have 3-digit IQs. (Only 2 of the 17 quarterbacks on the list scored below 100—those playbooks are complicated). I hope these guys with 74s and 80s have honest agents and business managers to look after all those millions they’re making.

Smartest:

149	Kevin Curtis	Utah St.	WR	156
8	Jordan Gross	Utah	T	140
297	David Porter	Iowa	T	138
65	Jon Stinchcomb	Georgia	T	134

I’ll skip the names of the lowest scorers, but the lowest was a defensive lineman on Utah with a 70. When he lined up across from Jordan Gross (140) in practice, I wonder what their colloquys sounded like?