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Alex Beam

Must be smart . . .

You don’t need a fancy college degree, but brains, it turns out, go a long way on the playing field

Brainy athletes are much in the news these days. For six seconds, it looked as though Ivy League phenom Ryan Lavarnway would salvage the Red Sox’ season, although his 0-for-5 outing in the catastrophic final loss to the last-place Orioles didn’t exactly elevate him to the Phi Beta Kappa Society of baseball heroics.

The sports world swooned over this “Yale philosophy major,’’ although it turns out Lavarnway spent only two years in New Haven, not quite long enough to finish that pesky senior thesis. Here is an excerpt from cult novelist David Foster Wallace’s philosophy thesis at Amherst: “Let [phi] (a physical possibility structure) be a set of distinct but intersecting paths j{-i}-j{-n}, each of which is a set of functions, L’s, on ordered pairs {lcub}t, w{rcub} ({lcub}time, world situation{rcub})’’ ...

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Yes, but could he hit the curve?

The other brainiac in the Toy Department - our affectionate nickname for the sports section - is the personable Ryan Fitzpatrick, a recent graduate of the World’s Greatest University. (If only I could use my favorite Woody Allen line: “Must be smart, went to Brandeis.’’ But Fitzpatrick attended Harvard.) The Buffalo Bills quarterback effortlessly shredded the defensive secondary assembled by noted football sharpie Bill Belichick (Must be smart, went to Wesleyan.). I have heard Fitzpatrick hailed as a gridiron genius on “Around the Horn,’’ “Pardon the Interruption,’’ and every sports gabfest in between.

What makes an athlete smart? Not a fancy college degree, it turns out, but a high score on something called the Wonderlic Test. Invented by psychologist Eldon Wonderlic in the 1930s, the test is now routinely administered to college prospects hoping to play in the National Football League. It’s an efficient, 50-question, 12-minute intelligence test that closely correlates with longer and more sophisticated IQ tests. The top score is 50.

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Among other pro sports, only hockey has taken an interest in the Wonderlic, which is used across a wide spectrum of nonsports occupations. Takeaway message: You don’t have to be smart to play football or hockey, but it helps.

It has been widely reported that Fitzpatrick scored a 48 or 49 on the Wonderlic and that Harvard-educated former punter-wide receiver Pat McInally is the only player to ever get a 50. This second fact is true, because Michael Callans, Wonderlic Consulting’s vice president for research, discussed McInally’s score with him. “He’s the only person I’ve ever met who was content with his score,’’ Callans told me. “It’s like losing weight, or being rich - no one ever feels they’ve done enough.’’

Callans allowed me to take an eight-minute version of the Wonderlic, which yields pretty much the same scores as the 12-minuter. Before I reveal that Steve Young (Must be smart, went to BYU. OK, I’ll stop that now.), Tom Brady, and Eli Manning are a lot smarter than I am, allow me to parade my excuses.

I have a checkered history of test-taking. In 1992, I took the entry test for Mensa, the famous society of self-appointed super smarties, cheated, and still didn’t get in. My excuse was that two of the math problems were denominated in British sterling, and one graphic puzzler depicted an upper-class twit with a shooting problem (“The sights of my gun need adjusting. . .’’). Just 10 days ago, I took the Massachusetts motorcycle learner’s permit test and failed after only 10 questions, a Sox-worthy shortfall. In retrospect, studying might have been a good idea.

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But I’m just stalling. I didn’t cheat on the Wonderlic, although I had taken some sample tests on the Internet. It has both math and verbal components, with some observational and logic tests thrown in. Some of the multiple-choice questions are easy: “Which is the seventh month of the year?’’ Others, less so.

Before sending me my score, Callans showed me data urging me to “pursue’’ my present vocation. I got a 30, placing me in the 90th percentile of test-takers nationally, which purportedly means I “gather and synthesize information easily’’ and gives me “job potential for upper management.’’ Ha ha ha.

“But I want to teach chemistry at MIT!’’ I blurted out to Callans. “We really can’t test for that,’’ he replied, soothingly. “You shouldn’t be beating up on yourself.’’ Why not? Brady and Young got 33s, and Manning got a 39.

Well, now I know. Not only can I not hit the curve, but, unlike Ryan Fitzpatrick, I would not have noticed Patriots linebacker Jerod Mayo showing blitz and tossed a perfect strike to Fred Jackson cutting across the middle for the play that sealed the Patriots’ doom. He probably writes great columns, too. It’s all too depressing.


Alex Beam is a Globe columnist. His e-dress is beam@globe.com.