Sunday, October 02, 2005

"If I only had a brain..."

You're going to get a kick out of this one, Packer fans.

My buddy, Steve (you know who you are!), forwarded on to me this story from the Oct. 1 edition of The Green Bay Press-Gazette. Seems that illustrious bastion of factoids, The Wall Street Journal, compiled the available Wonderlic intelligence test scores for each NFL team. Turns out, every time you've shouted "Stupid Packers", "Boneheads," "Dumb *$#^%" you've been exactly right! The Packers have the lowest team composite Wonderlic score in the NFL!

Granted, it doesn't take a rocket scientist to throw a block or make a tackle...although judging by the lack of both of these from much of the Packs' play this year you'd think it does. But a certain level of intelligence is required to problem solve. You know, as in "OK, who has the ball?".

Despite the fact that most of us know that tests are a moment-in-time type of thing, that the test writers write tests to test things that they do well at, that some individuals do better on certain measures of intelligence than others, etc., it still gives one pause to reflect on how this does affect team play. Although as the article points out, they don't make the coaches take any similar test now do they? Hmmm? Hmmmm? Of course not. And judging from some play calling and personnel fiascoes over the last 4-5 years...well let's leave it at that, shall we.

Here's the article for your own perusal.