ESPN: LSU CB Morris Clairborne scores 4 on Wonderlic

[pjfootballer]

It has nothing to do with race (for the large majority of people who have read the story) and everything to do with the perception of major universities giving athletes a free ride to maintain eligibility and the program's ability to win.

I liked this part of your post (and the rest too). Our own Dexter Manley attended OK State and couldn't read. Alot of times I don't feel student don't have disabilities that they've been labelled with, more like unmotivated student (for one reason or another) to want and try to learn. I'm a college educated man, and I'll admit, I'm "very" weak in math other than basic math. I can add, subtract, multiply, divide, but when it came to Algebra, Geometry, Trig, etc., I had to work "extra" hard to pass those classes. I had to put forth an effort twice as hard as my other classes and school was pretty easy in general to me.

[skinsmarydu]

Would love to know he could even get into LSU...pretty sure you would have to score close to a 1000 on your SAT...i would think..

This is the south we're talking about. Do you know how many really stupid people I encounter daily? And I'm not saying HE is...just a generalization. ( I was educated in VA, thank God.)

[RonArtest15]

The fact that he's learning disabled means NOTHING to you all? I feel bad for the kid. I really do. You don't know the circumstances of the test, so why throw stones?

[Jim Bob]

http://msn.foxsports.com/nfl/story/M...c-score-040312

Having a son with dyslexia makes me sympathetic to Claiborne's situation.

His agent shouldn't have allowed him to take the test without the accommodations that they normally give to those with learning disabilities.

[SirClintonPortis]

---------- Post added April-4th-2012 at 07:57 PM ----------



Must be people on the radio because while some people are shocked, most people either think it's just emblematic of how football players don't meet the academic standards (or are not pushed or expected to meet) of higher education, even at the flagship institutions, or feel sorry for the guy.

If he's got a 4, why even take the test if he knows he has that disability? I mean, is it required?

Here's some food for thought, black students are diagnosed as "disabled" in disproportionate numbers compared to white students. Do we know how many, say, Asian students are diagnosed this way? If you tag someone with this label (accurate or not) does this not set them up for a lifetime of underachievement, when they may actually be average but are never asked to achieve at a higher level? That's what I'm getting at...I find it hard to believe that Patrick Peterson AND Morris Claiborne are both sub-10 Wonderlic. I mean do they BOTH have learning disabilities? So Claiborne's is legitimate. Great. How does that explain Peterson? And putting those two aside, does this not speak to other things, things I mentioned previously (expectations, cultural and institutional practices, etc)?

I don't think its required, but he and his agent should have sought accomodations if they were deadset on taking the test.

I have already mentioned that the final score of the Wonderlic is the result of different effects. The combination of effects can vary from person-to-person. Or in equation form: Final score = intelligence+effort+previous knowledge+other factors. But I never started from the SCORE to make an inference about whether or not he has a learning disability, because there is no way to go "backwards" from the just score itself to pinpoint what exactly made it so low. A low score indicates something is amiss, but not necessarily a lack of intelligence. This is because the Wonderlic test itself is not immune to other factors affecting its score, like a lack of knowledge, dyslexia, or the test-taker not giving a damn. In other words, a low Wonderlic score cannot be interpreted as an authoritative measure of "g"( general intellligence) at these low scores because other factors could have strongly influenced the final result. In that case, you have to seek outside information to make proper interpretations the final score.


Claiborne has a learning disability, not just "disabled". Misdiagnosing a learning disability like dyslexia or dyscalculia is harder to do than something like ADD/ADHD, because the symptoms are more distinct and they will affect the person for their entire lives. Most importantly, is what exact learning disorder Claiborne has. If it's dsylexia, then I can see how it a 12 minute test with 50 questions could screw up his score. But as I said, he and his agent should have sought accomodations if they really needed it. I'm not sure what the hell went wrong there.

Since Patrick Peterson did poorly but absolutely no reports of a learning disability ever came out, that probably eliminates a disability as an impact on his final score. But the interpretation of his final score remains somewhat up in the air. It might indeed be that he's not intelligent and thus is a retard playing on the field. But, it might be moreso that he blew off learning **** and learning how to apply what he learned, and that's why his score is low. His score was a somewhat higher 9, so he must have at least gotten most of the really easy "soft" questions right, if we assume a 10 is supposed to mean "literacy".

[Koolblue13]

It's a shame that his name gets put out there like that. Hey everybody, look at the dumb kid. Not saying he is, but that's how it seems.

[sideshow24]

Either that, or he knows he's getting drafted in the top 10 (possibly top 5) anyway, so he completely blew off the test

Is the test a requirement? If not, why not just blow off taking the test?

[pjfootballer]

The fact that he's learning disabled means NOTHING to you all? I feel bad for the kid. I really do. You don't know the circumstances of the test, so why throw stones?

So far I've seen that he has a learning disability, but no one (unless I missed it) has said specifically what his disability is. I'm not making fun of him, but I'd like to know what he has.

[Ghost of Nibbs McPimpin]

I was just reading a thing on BR...I forgot about Jeff George's 10 (but I do remember seeing it, and it being linked to his performance as a player.) Janikowski got a 9. We all know Marino's 13. A couple Qbs who made no noise at all like Michael Bishop scored a 10.

Darren Davis and Pig Prather got 4 and 5, respectively.

[Duckus]

Sad that these test results continue to get leaked year . . . . after year . . . . after year. It is supposed to be confidential.

I saw this suggested on PFT and I think it makes sense - if I was an agent and I thought my player would struggle with the test I would just have them refuse to take it. Why take it and have it leaked out? Just refuse the test.

[GhostofSparta]

Is the test a requirement? If not, why not just blow off taking the test?

To be honest, I made that post before I knew about his learning disability. So my gut reaction wasn't "He's a moron, lulz!" It was more "He probably didn't see the point, since no mock I've seen has him going anywhere but the top 10, so why care about it?" Now I don't know if this test is mandatory, or at least heavily suggested, but a really awful or excellent score really only matters on the margins. People might be shocked, but nobody would think Luck is stupid if he blew off the test and scored single digits. Fitzpatrick nearly aced the thing, but he was a 2nd rounder. For a guy like him, doing well on this (and every other drill) might not mean a couple of draft slots, but a couple of rounds.

Hell, I've taken the test online each year when ESPN posts it because somebody gets a shocking low number, and I almost ace the damn thing every year. But if I were a top 10 draft pick and people were more worried about my 40 time, vertical, and bench press than some stupid test, I'd probably blow it off and do it in 2-3 minutes just to move on to the drill that will mean a couple hundred thousand dollars difference of draft spots.

[Ghost of Nibbs McPimpin]

Quick question:

Are SAT/ACT scores released for athletes coming into college? I ask because I've seen a bunch of scores and figured that it was part of the admissions process, at least for the guys who are "special admits" but I'm not sure. Though people dismiss them or look at them only as tests of knowledge/skill they are loosely correlated to IQ scores.

[brdawk20]

Dammit, I played DB in high school. Nice to know we're the idiots of the team.

I thought the linemen and linebackers were the grunts? DB's win championships!!

Well, look at it this way: in the NFL, a 185 lb. CB ends up taking on a 330 lb. pulling lineman a few times a game. I guess a really smart person might stop and think about it...

[SirClintonPortis]

Fitzpatrick nearly aced the thing, but he was a 2nd rounder.

Fitzpatrick was actually a 7th rounder, not a 2nd rounder.

[brdawk20]

I want to put something out here. I'm a teacher in both high school and college, and I've had my fair share of athletes in the classroom (Shonn Green of the Jets was one of my students). Currently, 13 former students of mine are in D1 or D2 school athletic programs, and three others are in minor league baseball. Most of them are not academically near the top of their class. But not all are stupid. Some of them simply don't test well. Then again, many non-athletes don't test well either, yet are fine academically. Testing is very stressful for many students. BIll Gates got a perfect score on his math SAT's, but considered testing at times to be stressful. Einstein was bored by it and didn't do well. Richard Feynman, one of the great physicists of our time, admits being stressed before tests he took in high school.

Maybe Clairborne is dumb as dirt. Maybe he's not. We don't know anything, except that over the next few years he'll make more money than most of us.