Regardless of how good a player is, it doesn’t make a difference if they’re not available to show off their skills.
For a long time, the NFL’s pre-draft screening process has included the Wonderlic intelligence test, which many have mocked because it has little to do with football.
However, the American Journal of Applied Psychology recently published research that points at a connection between Wonderlic scores and the likelihood of being arrested at some point in an NFL career.
In the researchers’ sample, players who recorded a score shy of the mean were approximately twice as likely to be arrested in the NFL as those who exceeded the mean.
The author of the paper, University of Georgia professor Brian Hoffman, spoke to ESPN about the findings.
“The effects are relatively small, but it’s important here because when making multimillion-dollar decisions, a small effect can be very meaningful,” Hoffman said. “A player’s getting a four-game suspension can be a big deal, competitively and financially.”
Also, not surprisingly, research found a link between being arrested before the draft and then during an NFL career. The likelihood of a player arrested pre-draft was almost twice as likely to get arrested post-draft compared to those who hadn’t been arrested pre-draft.
Born and raised in Gainesville, Talal joined SDS in 2015 after spending 2 years in Bristol as an ESPN researcher. Previously, Talal worked at The Gainesville Sun.
