Perhaps the BEST B1G Forum anywhere, here at College Football Fan Site, CFB51!!!

FYI there's no hard and fast rule that says that jocks are dumb and that smart people can't be athletic.

There's a positive correlation between intelligence and athletic ability. 

The problem we run into with collegiate/professional sport and with the ridiculous geniuses is that we're dealing with long tail problems. 

Even if there's a positive correlation between IQ and athletic ability, running a 4.38 is a "long tail" thing. And if you can run a 4.38, nobody cares if you're a Rhodes Scholar or if you're dumber than a dog. Likewise if you have an IQ of 160, you're in the long tail. At that point nobody cares if you can run a 4.38 or if you're Stephen Hawking. 

So we see dumb collegiate/professional athletes and dweebish uber-nerds, and assume that the correlation actually runs opposite to the reality. That there's an either/or involved. There isn't. 

The tip-of-the-bell-curve guys in athleticism tend to be dolts, though.  No? 

No. They should roughly fit the bell curve in intelligence, with a slight bump due to correlation. 

It's going to be VERY rare to see someone who is at the high end of the curve in both. But that's just odds. If you define "high end" as the top 2%, the chances that someone would be both is probably not far off 2%*2%, meaning 0.04% of the population will be in the top 2% of athleticism AND the top 2% of intelligence. Or slightly above that due to the correlation effect, but not high enough above that to be meaningful from an anecdotal perspective. 

The point is that collegiate or professional athletes aren't the top 2%. They're the top 0.01%. They're so high on the athleticism side that we don't care if they're dolts. The statistical odds would be that the top 0.01% athletically would be average IQ, not dolts. 

Not true. A lot of these kids are really smart.

a lot being 10-20%

Jones made himself the poster boy for all of this by saying the quiet part out loud. Krenzel was the poster boy for the other side with his medical studies. He went on to use his name to sling insurance around Columbus, after an unsuccessful stint in local sports talk radio.

A buddy grew up in the Columbus are and always found the Krenzel thing hilarious.

It's just all fun and games man. Go Bucks!
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/7PIOJvE2yh8?feature=share

What’s a Krenzel?

It's a Danish pastry, silly.

No, it doesn't "break down". Because it's correlation, but not prescriptive. The fact that there's a weak positive correlation between athleticism and intelligence doesn't mean that you can determine one by looking at the other. I.e. you look at someone that can run a 4.38, and it doesn't mean you'll predict that they're smart, or that they're dumb. You can't look at someone's IQ test result and see 160, and predict whether they're a pretty good athlete or whether they're a bookish dweeb.

But sometimes, yes, the 160 IQ kid *is* out playing pickup basketball with his friends. And sometimes the starting WR is actually a quite good chess player. It's not like one happens to the exclusion of the other--it's that when you select for the extreme of one, you get the entire range of the other.

Sometimes you get the guy in the NFL who is dumber than a box of rocks, but nobody cares because he's an athletic freak. But sometimes you get guys like Richard Sherman or John Urschel who are athletic enough to be in the NFL but happen to also be quite intelligent... https://sports.yahoo.com/six-nfl-players-highest-iq-232514527.html

You guys have talked around the margins of this but I think it is an important point:

There is also a major specialization issue at the far right tail.  

Consider this, from quick google searches:

• 1,696 NFL players
• 450 NBA players
• 1,200 MLB players
• 3,346 Professional athletes

I know I'm leaving out soccer and some other sports but this is close enough for what I'm doing here. 

The total population of the US is estimated at 342 Million:

• Divide by 2 to get the rough male population of ~171 M
• Divide by 8 to get the rough population of pro-athlete aged males of ~21.375 M

So, something like one in every 6k guys are professional athletes.  This is all REALLY rough ballpark stuff but I don't need exact figures to get to my point.  

When we talk about far right tail, we need to remember just how FAR this is.  This is one in 6k.  

• 1% is 1 in 100
• 0.1% is 1 in 1,000
• This is something more like 0.017%

Ie, we are way, Way, WAY out on the far right tail.  

If there is something like a 1:6000 chance of having the athletic ability to be a pro athlete then the chance of also having equivalent intelligence is 1:36000 meaning that there is a maybe 1 in 10 chance that ONE of the current NFL, NBA, MLB players is also that smart.  

Now the specialization issue and the trap:
If you are such a freak athlete that you can be a pro player, it makes sense to focus on your sport in almost every case because even if you ARE really smart, you are never going to make as much money as a say top-1% IQ intellectual employee as you can as a top 0.017% athletic employee.  

Ie, if you can run a 4.38 40 then the difference between an IQ of 100 (median) and an IQ of 115 (1SD above) or even 130 (2SD) or 145 (3SD) is effectively a moot point.  You might be a slightly better football player with a 115 IQ than say 85 but anything above 115 I would guess is irrelevant based on diminishing returns.  Basically, if you can run a 4.38 40 then the only way that IQ really impacts your livelihood is that your IQ not be so low that you are literally too dumb to play football.  

The VERY few (roughly 1 in 6,000 see above) guys who actually make it as pro athletes are rewarded immensely.  They become millionaires in their 20s and can generally retire with enough to take care of themselves before they turn 30.  

Lets say a given kid has a 145 IQ and can run a 4.38 40.  That IQ is REALLY high, he is in the top 0.1% but his 40 time is relatively higher, he is in the top 0.017%.  It just doesn't make financial sense for him to hone his intellectual abilities when his paycheck is going to be determined based on his 40 time.  That is the specialization issue.  

The trap is that sports are very much an all-or-nothing thing for an individual.  About a century ago my grandfathers both played semi-pro sports.  Back before Television, there were semi-pro teams in smaller towns (like Canton where the NFL was formed) because the viewers all had to GO to the game in order to see it so there necessarily had to be more teams to cover smaller markets like Canton.  Television basically wiped that out.  Why bother watching and rooting for somewhat athletic local Canton guys playing somewhat athletic guys from Youngstown when you can get a TV and watch world class athletes playing in the NFL?  

The problem is that for the athletes who are just barely below pro athletes there is no career at all.  You are either a millionaire in your 20s or nothing.  (It isn't quite that stark as there are halfway options in most sports but there aren't a lot of those either).