Vince Young's Poor Wunderlic Scores
By
The NFL Combine is young players'
chance to show the League what they can do. Results of the Combine have a
significant impact on the athlete's potential career, affecting everything from
draft status to salary. Personnel directors like it because it gives them a
chance to evaluate prospects in a standardized setting. Players like it because
they know exactly what's expected of them, and they work diligently for months
to get ready for the Combine.
There are interviews, twelve physical
evaluations involving the 40-yard dash, drills, jumps, and bench press, and the
Wonderlic test. The Wonderlic is a twelve-minute, fifty question test, designed
not to measure accumulated knowledge but problem-solving ability. Some would say
it's a basic IQ test.
Typical questions on the Wonderlic are,
"What is the ninth month of the year?" and "If paper costs 21 cents a pad, how
much will four pads cost?" A score of 20 indicates average intelligence, an IQ
of around 100.
Rose Bowl MVP player quarterback Vince
Young, widely expected to be among the first five chosen in this year's NFL
draft, scored a 6. Or, maybe he didn't. The resulting tornado of reaction blames
everything from Young's manager, to racial bias, to a shiny object on the field.
There was so much uproar that the test was re-administered (presumably after a
lot of tutoring) and Young scored a more respectable 16, the same score as Dan
Marino and Aaron Brooks.
Will this affect Young's standing in
April's NFL draft? Opinion is divided. Some staffers say it would cause them to
look more closely at Young, since quarterbacks need to be mentally nimble as
well as physically strong. Others say that his performance in last year's Rose
Bowl speaks for itself. Most coaches and teams leaders are certain that his
repeat score was adequate and the chances his first score deterring them from
choosing him are slim.
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