The Wonderlic intelligence test that has long been part of the NFL’s pre-draft screening process is mocked by many as irrelevant to a player’s football playing ability. But one group of researchers says the Wonderlic can be valuable in predicting how a player will fare off the field.

 

A paper published this month in the American Journal of Applied Psychology found that there’s a correlation between a player’s Wonderlic score and his likelihood of being arrested during his time in the NFL.

 

“The effects are relatively small,” author Brian Hoffman, a professor at Georgia, told ESPN. “But it’s important here because when making multimillion-dollar decisions, a small effect can be very meaningful. A player’s getting a four-game suspension can be a big deal, competitively and financially.”

 

The study also found that a player who was arrested before the draft is almost twice as likely to be arrested during his NFL career as a player who had not been arrested before the draft. That makes sense, and it’s no surprise that many teams will move a player down or off their draft boards if he’s arrested. But the Wonderlic result is more surprising, and suggests that teams may have legitimate reasons to continue using the much-derided test.

 

Report: Players with low Wonderlic scores are more likely to be arrested | ProFootballTalk

No surprises here.

Grass also stains clothes.

All of their mothers should have made them be in Chorus or the Spanish Club instead of playing football. Football is the devil.

Can't fix stupid!

Dumb people get arrested more. Shocking.

 

However much time they spent analyzing this data, it was too much.