In the Washington Post, sportswriter Sally Jenkins * writes:
[Indianopolis Colt's executive Bill] Polian made one of the great all time decisions in 1998 when he drafted Peyton Manning over Ryan Leaf. It's a no brainer now but it was an agonizing choice back then. Leaf was bigger and more overtly athletic, but to Polian, Manning seemed to have more emotional maturity and ability to deal with adversity. It was exactly the right assessment; Leaf turned out to have buried temperament problems and caused the San Diego Chargers nothing but grief.It wasn't the first time Polian was correct: he also brought Jim Kelly to the Buffalo Bills from the USFL. If Polian has a secret, it's that he tries not to overrate the physical in favor of the mental and emotional aspects of the game. Just because a guy has an arm doesn't make him a quarterback. Rather than pure strength, he puts a premium on accuracy and poise, and a particular kind of processing intelligence that he calls "fast eyes," the ability to assess complex situations quickly.
"Intelligence is awfully important," Polian says. "It's a complex game and they have to be able to comprehend and process lots of information. It's not rocket science but it's pretty close, it's like financial engineering, or the things that pilots do."
Frank Ryan of the 1960s Cleveland Browns earned a Ph.D. in math from Rice U.. (See here for the title of his dissertation.) Yet, he wasn't known as a smart quarterback on the field. His coach had to simplify plays for him to be able to make the right decisions in real time. (What he was known for to his teammates was being brave.)
It would seem as if the NFL, with all its resources, could develop some kind of video game test of "fast eyes" that would be more relevant than the standard Wonderlic IQ test.
It would seem as if the NFL, with all its resources, could develop some kind of video game test of "fast eyes" that would be more relevant than the standard Wonderlic IQ test.
For example, I played a fair amount of touch football growing up and, having a decent arm, I was an okay sandlot quarterback in 2 on 2 games where I had only two mental tasks: focus on my one receiver and avoid the pass rusher. In 6 on 6 games, however, I was cognitively overwhelmed. I have "slow eyes."
You'll notice that my blogging style isn't that different. Instead of putting up a lot of posts, each one making one single point, I tend to start off with a short post, but it keeps growing as I follow out the implications to who knows where. I don't shift focus adroitly to the latest topic of interest in the news. I'd rather keep burrowing into one topic for a long time.
* By the way, Sally Jenkins is the daughter of Dan Jenkins, one of the half dozen top sportswriters of the second half of the 20th Century. I have this theory that women who succeed in masculine fields are much more likely to have fathers who were in that field.
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> I have this theory that women who succeed in masculine fields are much more likely to have fathers who were in that field.
You did say "much more", but this isn't a very strong prediction. I bet it's true of men who succeed also (compared to people who don't succeed in that field). Unless you meant that the women who succeed are much more (at least 50% more?) likely than the men who succeed in that same field to have a same-field father. That's a strong prediction and seems plausible.
After the past few years, "Financial engineering" is a term that should evoke derision instead of respect.
Hey, that's my theory about daddy's girls in male dominated fields. I have overwhelming anecdotal evidence in the Army and engineering. Its hard to get a feeling for what the male/female difference is, since its pretty common for men, too.
But Leaf's temperment wasn't his only problem. He wasn't really that great of a college QB. Apparently, the most important stat for a college QB is completion percentage and his was sub-60. That almost never improves in the NFL.
Sally is an awfully good sportswriter for a girl.
Is there any biological basis for such theory? Maybe this could be a recent phenomenon, demonstrating an increased paternal investment in daughters, due to cultural shifts and smaller families; men without sons have more options now for posterity, however they see it.
In the case of Sally Jenkins, isn't it noteworthy that she seems not to have inherited any trace of her father's sense of humor? She's been doing this stuff so long now, since the late '70's at least, that she should have had at least one non-fiction book by now, ala Rick Reilly, perhaps based on lockerroom antics. I'd find it much more interesting than the speculations of Bill Polian.
"I have this theory that women who succeed in masculine fields are much more likely to have fathers who were in that field."
Wasn't the case for the female programmers I knew...the ones I knew weren't that successful, though.
Encouragement from Dad might be helpful with breaking gender barriers, though; if your dad is on your side, that's at least one man who thinks you can pull it off, and that's important for this self-image thing that seems to affect women so much.
Yes, I know a lot of the research on women and 'stereotype threat' is done by feminists looking for discrimination, but it does partially ring true with what I've seen; the few female nerds I know needed to have other women they felt comfortable with. There's nothing romantic for women about being a loner, whereas with men it's got this sort of bad-boy romance to it, 'me against the world' and all that.
It would seem as if the NFL, with all its resources, could develop some kind of video game test of "fast eyes" that would be more relevant than the standard Wonderlic IQ test.
I have the vaguest recollection of some physiological tests being administered to a baseball great [or greats] in the 1960s - I think the subject was Mays, although it might have been Mantle - and, as I recall, the biggest outlier was the peripheral vision, which was many standard deviations above the mean.
I get the same feeling when I watch a great point guard in basketball, like an Earvin "Magic" Johnsaon: While he might not literally have eyes in the BACK of his head, with 3- or 4-sigma peripheral vision, he could very well effectively possess eyes on the SIDE of his head.
I have this theory that women who succeed in masculine fields are much more likely to have fathers who were in that field.
Emmy Noether, daughter of Max Noether.
Why are you crying?
I vaguely recall that a fair number of basketball stars have bulging eyes -- better peripheral vision, but you get scratched in the eye more.
Re: father/daughter careers, isn't intelligence passed on the X chromosome? Sons get mom's brains, daughters have 50% chance of getting dad's. Fathers who want a chip off the old block to take over the family business (umm, Murdoch) would do better having a daughter take over instead of a son.
As for "fast eyes", Polian made an astute analogy, "its like... the things that pilots do". This is a topic that the Air Force and Navy have studied in some detail. "Fast eyes" is what they call "situational awareness". Since the Pentagon spends more on testing and training than any other institution on the planet, I have no doubt they've developed situational awareness tests. I'll poke around the interwebs and if I find anything on that, I'll add it to this thread.
Situational Awareness "SA." The ability to know and understand what has happened, what is happening, and what will happen, as well as where you are in time and space. By the time loss of SA is recognized, it has been gone for some time.
http://www.christianfighterpilot.com/fighterpilotspeak.htm#Situational_Awareness
http://qq.urbanup.com/2375955
For years she has been the only writer for the Post with any balls. Wilbon, Boswell, Kornhole, Feinstein all jumped on the Shanahan is a racist theme whe he had the temerity to bench an awful Donavan McNabb.... Sally saw reality
Dan in DC
Steve is not alone in his hunch that women who succeed in masculine fields are likely to have father's in that field. I observed something very similar in my math and science classes at college and in my area of research.
OK, the Wombat SA test that's what you'll want to test your QB prospects with. :o)
http://www.aero.ca/e_W-Presentation.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Situation_awareness
Steve,
OT, but
did you know Dan Jenkins even did some entertainment writing for a time? He followed around a tv star or two and his articles appeared in TV Guide. (late 50s).
My favorite Dan Jenkins' writing, however, is on golf.
"I get the same feeling when I watch a great point guard in basketball, like an Earvin "Magic" Johnsaon: While he might not literally have eyes in the BACK of his head, with 3- or 4-sigma peripheral vision, he could very well effectively possess eyes on the SIDE of his head."
It would seem such vision would be crucial to a qb as well. Similar to the "eyes in the back of the head" description is how they refer to the "clock in the head" a top level qb possesses--that he knows, even when he can't see what's to either side of him, how much time has elapsed, whether he has taken a three or a seven step drop, or whether he's running around back there.
I think the choice of Manning over Leaf would have been made easier first, because of family lineage. His dad was very good on a very bad team.
Second, Manning had chosen to been immerse himself in football from the time he came out of the womb; he ate it for breakfast, lunch, and dinner.
That he studied football *and* that he loved studying football was always known.
Fighter pilot, quarterback, race car driver, etc.
Dan Jenkins of Semi-Tough? What an amazingly politically incorrect novel that was.
"Re: father/daughter careers, isn't intelligence passed on the X chromosome?"
HUH? The sperm cell that unites with the ovum to produce a zygote has 22 autosomal chromosomes in addition to the X (making a total of 23) it contributes. The 22autosomals of the father and the 22 autosomals of the mother intertwine and match up.
It does seem true that the Y seems not to have much on it, but the autosomals from dad and the autosomals from mom contribute genetic info. I've never heard that the sex determining gene carries the info that codes for intelligence.
They're trying to identify the genes, rather the combo of genes that comprise what we call intelligence, but unless I am off my rocker, I don't think that they feel those are relegated to the X.
Am I off my rocker? Or did I misunderstand you?
If smarts were only on the Xs, women would rule.
I need to proofread:
Make it," The sperm cell that unites with the ovum to produce a zygote has 22 autosomal chromosomes in addition to the *Y*."
Steve, if you're such a fan, why do you leave it to me to quote Dan Jenkins?
-Brutus
"I have this theory that women who succeed in masculine fields are much more likely to have fathers who were in that field"
Like Andrew Viterbi's daughter Audrey.
Having read studies indicating that blue eyes are "slow" and brown eyes are "fast" with regard to reaction times, I was surprised to discover a significant overrepresentation of blue-eyed people among Hall of Fame NFL quarterbacks:
Blue: 17 (Aikman, Blanda*, Bradshaw, Dawson, Elway, Fouts[?], Griese, Layne, Marino, Montana, Namath, Starr, Staubach, Tittle, Unitas, Van Brocklin, Young)
Mixed: 2 (Graham, Kelly[?])
Brown: 3 (Jurgensen[?], Moon**, Tarkenton)
Undetermined: 1 (Waterfield)
*QB/Kicker
**African-American
Note that the above list is limited to "Modern Era Quarterbacks" which the Hall of Fame lists under a different category than "Pre-Modern Era" QBs. (The eye colors of pre-modern era players are rather difficult to determine.)
I thought this thread would go off onto which NFL QB had the most 'fast eyes'. Well, for what it's worth, Joe Montana had the best set of eyes of any QB I've ever seen. I saw every one of Montana's games on TV and I can definitively claim that Montana never once threw into double coverage--never--and never threw to a receiver that wasn't open. And I'd bet of his interceptions, in fully half the cases the receivers had their hands touch the ball. Hell, lead handed Russ Francis alone probably accounted for 30% of them by himself.
Stabler? Blue?
Whoops, sorry--I didn't realized you were limiting to HOF qbs and Stabler is not a HOF-er.
RE: the smarts
Oh, another thing, we don't get the same chromosomes our fathers and mothers had because of recombination. Dang, I should have paid more attention to those few chapters on genetics. It's been many years. :)
Re: Blue eyes and reaction times - From what I remember reading about this in C. Coon's book from the early 80s, Racial Adaptations, (and in some other places too such as Entine's book on race and sport) brown eyes have quicker reaction time to visual stimuli than blue eyes. Coon went on to say that among white professional baseball players and cricketers in the US and UK, respectively, dark eyed players are overrepresented among position players/batsmen, but not among pitchers/bowlers compared to the general population. Coon went on to say that there is evidence that dark eyed people have a better sense of color, while light eyed people have a better sense of form and better "panoramic vision" (whatever that is) and noted that successful fighter pilots (i.e., aces with 5 or more kills) are disproportionately likely to be blue eyed compared to the populations from which they are drawn.
Stabler is not a HOF-er
No?
Well he sure threw a gorgeous spiral on his passes.
"Stabler is not a HOF-er "
"No? Well he sure through a gorgeous spiral on his passes."
Yep, if one is a former Raider, one is treated a bit differently.
Regarding the IQ of top QB's I would definitely say it's important, Manning, Brady, Brees, and also now Rodgers all strike me as having not only higher than average IQ's for NFL players but for QB's as well. On the other hand, average intelligence assuming no major injuries early in their careers might suffice for some guys if they have certain physical attributes. Favre, Rivers, Roethlisberger, and McNabb seem average in IQ to me, but have done pretty well nevertheless. The thing they all have in common is that they are all physically big and have big time arms.
Looking at it recent history wise, Montana, Elway, and Young all seemed to possess above average IQ and were Hall of Fame players, but Marino and Bradshaw both strike me as maybe possessing average IQ's but like the 4 modern guys I mentioned where both big, tall guys with strong arms and also made the Hall of Fame. So maybe you need an average IQ and the right physical attributes to be good, but you need above-average IQ's to be great.
"It would seem such vision would be crucial to a qb as well. Similar to the "eyes in the back of the head" description is how they refer to the "clock in the head" a top level qb possesses--that he knows, even when he can't see what's to either side of him, how much time has elapsed, whether he has taken a three or a seven step drop, or whether he's running around back there."
As with situational awareness, a lot of this is the ability to run short=-term simulations in one's head very quickly.
In other words, its not just peripheral vision, its processing speed under pressure, which is related to but not the same as g.
Lots of very smart people are worse than average on situational awareness and simulating under pressure. I'm one of them.
-Osvaldo M.
"Fast eyes" sounds right - I saw Joe Montana in his prime. But I fail to see a connection to IQ. It seems to me that Vitamin A metabolism should be more relevant.
I read a lot but I don't read particularly fast - or at least not as fast as I would wish to. At best I can manage two books a week. I knew a guy in the Army who read more than two books a day. He didn't seem extra smart but he went though books at a prodigious rate. Fast eyes.
I'm told that Vitamin A is involved in erasing the "screen" in your retina so that you can read the next line. This means that there is a speed limit to how fast your eyes refresh and therefore how fast you can read.
So maybe if we want a quarterback with fast eyes we should give prospects a speed reading test rather than an IQ test.
Albertosaurus
It would seem as if the NFL, with all its resources, could develop some kind of video game test of "fast eyes" that would be more relevant than the standard Wonderlic IQ test.
Who, exactly, would have an incentive to push for such a test?
Teams that draft well have an incentive to keep things as they are so that they don't lose the natural edge that comes from having the best scouts.
Teams that draft poorly are inattentive to things like this because they're stuck in a (stupid) paradigm of drafting based on 40 times and College stats.
Since nobody has any incentive to make the change Steve suggests, it will go unmade, even though it would improve the efficiency with which top QBs are allocated to top picks.
The incentive to draft better is for a marginal franchise (Detroit, Buffalo, Cleveland, Cinncy) that cannot move and has a heavy debt load.
Winning puts men in stands, increases ticket sales, increases corporate luxury box sales, increases merchandise sales, and increases local TV contracts.
This was basically the Oakland A's approach with money ball. Also Boston's Red Sox, and a few other teams. Better drafting and free agent signings allow otherwise non-competitive teams to advance quickly.
Whiskey,
The franchises you mention would have the incentive you claim they'd have, but they're so poorly run that they would never realize the need for change or have the influence to enact such changes even if they did realize it.
The NFL rewards winning, but it doesn't punish losing, at least not on the organizational level.
TV money is a constant, gate receipts have more to do with the corporate politics of luxury boxes and stadium contracts than with the ability to get Joe Six-Pack through the turnstiles.
Fans love winners, but losing teams can be remarkably profitable, and for those that are, nothing more than the occasional tough talk or coach firing is required.
"So maybe if we want a quarterback with fast eyes we should give prospects a speed reading test rather than an IQ test."
I don't know, Sport; I don't see Evelyn Wood leading anyone to the Superbowl.
Smarts and football smarts ain't the same!
I suspect that the dopamine system has a lot to do with "thinking on your feet".
I know people with ADHD who have extremely high intelligence, but suck at math because of their inability to focus on one thing for long periods of time. On the other hand, I know people who are excellent mathematicians, but whose creativity is limited by their tunnel vision.
There's even been some pop biology about how genes in the dopamine pathway are "hunter genes" or "Edison genes" that became detrimental when farming replaced hunting.
Dutch Boy said...
Smarts and football smarts ain't the same!
I suspect the latter is closer to street smarts, desert smarts, prairie smarts, jungle smarts, etc.
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