Maybe There Is a Place for Logic in Pro Football : Is That the Reason Most NFL Teams Are Studying Results of a Personnel Test?

You have 15 seconds to complete the following test. Ready? Begin:

1. If you have three people and person No. 1 was introduced to person No. 2, and person No. 2 was introduced to person No. 3, can you deduce that person No. 1 was introduced to person No. 3?

2. If person No. 1 is taller than person No. 2, and person No. 2 is taller than person No. 3, is person No. 1 taller than person No. 3?

Time’s up.

Did you say no to the first question and yes to the second?

Congratulations. You may have what it takes to play in the National Football League.

On the other hand, if you missed either or both--or ran out of time--that doesn’t mean you’re too dumb to rumble with the pros. You might still make a living splitting heads, if not atoms.

Logic is one type of problem presented on the Wonderlic Personnel Test, which has been given to NFL draft prospects by the scouting combines BLESTO and National Football Scouting for more than 20 years. Other problems--there are 50 in all--involve math, geometry and semantics, and there are 16 versions of the test.

The Raiders and San Francisco 49ers are the only 2 of the 28 NFL teams that don’t belong to a combine. They also don’t use the test to measure a prospect’s potential, and they’ve done all right, with two Super Bowl victories each in the last seven years.

“We evaluate how the player performs on the field,” said Ron Wolf, who heads the Raiders’ personnel operations. “If intelligence came into play in our selection process, we would give the test.”

Tony Razzano, the 49ers’ director of college scouting, said: “We go on everything that’s functional on the field. We give (prospects) a football intelligence grade.”

Elliott Long, a vice president of E.F. Wonderlic Personnel Test Inc. of Northfield, Ill., is not dismayed by the snubs.

“It just would be easier for them to be successful if they paid more attention to it,” Long said. “Those teams that are playoff contenders year after year tend to be teams that place a great deal of credence in the test.”

Foremost are the Dallas Cowboys, New York Giants and Denver Broncos. Some others that use the test tend to downplay its importance but guard the results closely, just the same. Apparently, it’s bad enough to draft a bad player, but downright embarrassing to draft a dumb one.

John Math, the Rams’ director of player personnel, refused to discuss the test at all, and counterpart Mike Hickey of the New York Jets pointed out: “It doesn’t tell you if a guy can play or not.”

Those taking the test have 12 minutes to complete it. Few do. A perfect score is 50. The average for this year’s senior crop was 18.

If the Jets thought the test was sure fire, though, they wouldn’t have drafted running back Roger Vick of Texas A&M; in the first round. When the test was given to 330 draft prospects during the annual mass tryout camp at Indianapolis last winter, Vick scored 6, and it wasn’t a touchdown.

The Jets retested Vick and, Hickey said, the second result was acceptable. “We don’t have an easy offense to learn. It would have been counter-productive to take a dullard.”

Hickey declined to reveal Vick’s second score or explain whatever might have been Vick’s problem the first time he took the test, but Jack Butler, director of BLESTO, said that a low score does not necessarily indicate a dim bulb.

Butler, who once played defensive back for the Steelers, said from his office in Pittsburgh: “It’s a flag that maybe there’s a problem. Maybe he’s a slow reader or has dyslexia (a reading disorder).”

Scout Billy Wilson of the 49ers, a former star receiver with the team, said: “Some guys have had trouble reading the playbook, but on the field they’ve had no trouble at all.”

On the other hand, Wilson said, “When we used to give the test, the highest score I ever recorded was a 44 by a guy who didn’t make it.”

So what’s the test worth to a football team?

Harry Buffington, director of the NFS combine, said from Tulsa, Okla., that the Wonderlic is merely “an indicator of a kid’s reading ability.”

USC guard Jeff Bregel, drafted by the 49ers in the second round, said: “It’s an actual IQ (intelligence quotient) test, isn’t it?”

Wonderlic’s Long said they’re both wrong.

“It’s not IQ,” Long said. “IQ is a broader concept than what this is. We’re measuring a person’s ability to acquire information, integrate that information with what they already know and then be able to access that to meet the problems they’re presented with. The reading difficulty of the test is around the fourth or fifth grade.”

Bregel certainly is no dummy. With a 3.30 grade point average in finance, he was one of only three players from the 1986 academic All-American team to be drafted. Another was Colorado State running back Steve Bartalo, who takes a 3.39 GPA in physical education and a probable future in sports medicine to the Tampa Bay Buccaneers.

The third academic All-American was chosen by the Seattle Seahawks in the supplemental draft a few weeks ago. Who would have guessed that linebacker Brian Bosworth posted a 3.28 GPA in management information at the University of Oklahoma?

Long concedes that the test, as used by the NFL, is not always reliable. Whereas it is administered in other businesses to about a million job applicants each year, ideally in controlled conditions, football scouts are not always particular.

“You hear of guys sitting on the bench between lockers trying to take the test with guys slamming and banging their stuff around,” Long said. “You hear of situations where people are saying, ‘Hey, what do you think the answer to this question is?’ ”

Said Hickey: “Sometimes kids are given those things right after practice, while they’re still in uniform. A scout’s in a rush because he has to drive a long way that night to get to his next stop, so rather than let the kid shower, eat dinner, relax and set it up, he says, ‘Hey, it only takes 12 minutes,’ and the kid slips off his pads and tries to take the test. His mind’s not really there.”

Most players take the test at least twice--once at their schools and again at the mass combine tryouts.

“It’s like getting weighed and measured,” Hickey said. “Sometimes these kids get tired of it. They don’t know it’s going to be important to them. Does the individual explain it to them (by saying), ‘This is another way we’re gonna measure your pro-tential’?

“We’ve had academic All-Americans that didn’t do very well. There was one at USC last year who did not blister the test, and we know he is plenty smart.”

He meant Bregel, who scored 16.

“I really didn’t concern myself with it,” Bregel said. “I knew I wasn’t gonna fail, but I didn’t care whether I got the highest score on it. Most of the scouts I talked to said, ‘Ah, don’t worry about it. If you can’t answer a question, go on to the next one.’ ”

Bartalo scored 33. Bosworth, who leaves Oklahoma with a year’s eligibility remaining, got 29.

Bartalo, who hadn’t known his score, said: “I thought I did pretty well. I think (the test) is a pretty good idea. You want somebody that’s able to think pretty quick and is able to handle situations. That’s basically what the test is: how quickly you can analyze situations and find solutions.

“I didn’t think it was that difficult a test, really. Most of it was basically common sense. I think some people worried about it too much.”

Bartalo, a sixth-round choice, said he wasn’t concerned that the test would affect his position in the draft.

“Personally, I didn’t think it would be (a factor), because they knew I wasn’t just an average dummy off the street,” he said.

“You could see in all the groups that the guys were getting frustrated by it . . . a lot of scribbling going on. You see some people looking at each other’s papers, but a lot of people didn’t have the right answers if they were copying off other people.”

Bregel said: “Some of the questions, they try to confuse you. If you really thought ‘em out and took a little time, you’d get ‘em right, but you don’t have a lot of time to think ‘em out.”

Long begged to differ.

“There are no trick questions,” he said.

But some are abstract, and they become more difficult as the test progresses.

“Most people don’t get past 30,” Long said.

Wonderlic sells its tests for $75 per 100 and they are administered to about a million job applicants each year.

“Out of college I took it for Phillips Petroleum,” Hickey said.

He got the job, too.

Copyright laws prohibit reproducing any actual part of the test here. Long offered the examples at the top of this article, and other typical questions, paraphrased, would be:

What is the next number in this series: 3, 1.5, .75, .375?

Which two of these sayings have similar meanings: (a) A stitch in time saves nine; (b) A rolling stone gathers no moss; (c) A penny saved is a penny earned.

Hickey said of the test: “Certainly, you’d have to wonder if your quarterback didn’t do very well on it. (But) do you really want a Phi Beta Kappa at nose tackle?”

Razzano said: “If a guy can get around a blocker and sack the quarterback, we don’t care if he doesn’t know calculus.”

But Dick Steinberg, director of player development for the New England Patriots, said the test is very important. “As a general rule, the closer you are to the ball, the smarter you have to be,” he added.

The Patriots’ followed their theory in drafting Bruce Armstrong, an offensive tackle from Louisville who scored 37 on the Wonderlic, eight points higher than any other first-round pick.

“We really want our offensive linemen to be smart,” Steinberg said. “But we’re not going to take a guy off the (draft) board unless we find out he really has a learning problem. Sometimes we’ve read the questions to players.”

Hickey was asked if smart players produce better under pressure.

“Some people say that,” he said. “I would hesitate to agree. Some of the data we have indicates a negative correlation. I’ve seen good quarterbacks line up behind the guard in crucial situations.”

Still, there’s a temptation to draw conclusions and attach stigmas from scores of the NFL’s first-round draft choices this year.

The 28 players averaged exactly 20 points, which is two points higher than the average for all 330 players tested and not quite two points lower than the national average for all job applicants.

Proving that they are more than lumbering oafs, offensive linemen posted the two highest scores. Armstrong was in a class of his own at 37, and Harris Barton of North Carolina, picked by the 49ers, had a 29.

And although the Raiders say they don’t care, they must be secretly pleased that their offensive lineman, 300-pound John Clay of Missouri, was right on the first-round average at 20 with the same score as Miami quarterback Vinny Testaverde, who went to Tampa Bay as the first player selected.

No wide receiver scored over 18, but the running backs went all the way from a 27 by Temple’s Paul Palmer, bound for the Kansas City Chiefs, down to the 6 by Vick.

Player agent Leigh Steinberg indicated that Bregel’s so-so score was an exception among his clients.

“I don’t mean this to sound elitist, but it tends to be more fun to work with bright young men who can understand the subtleties of contracts,” Steinberg said. “I feel much more comfortable knowing that they scored well.”

For some, Steinberg said, the test presents considerable pressure.

“You have a player who is acutely conscious of the fact that this may have some bearing on how he’s drafted, so it’s not a relaxed situation,” Steinberg said. “And then you have players who don’t take it seriously at all.

“There is a very heavy premium on answering rapidly. It is a very difficult test to finish in 12 minutes. There may be some people who, given a half-hour, would get every question right. But it’s the same premium (that would apply) for a quarterback scanning the field and having to make a quick association and decision.

“I don’t know that it’s very important that a defensive lineman or a defensive back have that type of skill. Even if (the result) leads you to believe he’s not a nuclear scientist, I’m not sure that it matters.”

Steinberg added: “People who come from educational systems that don’t emphasize the type of reading skills that are in that test are going to have problems.”

Again, Wonderlic’s Long disagreed.

“In the late ‘60s and early ‘70s there were very serious cultural concerns in terms of black and Hispanic people taking the test, and we made no changes based on that research,” Long said. “We found no problems that warranted a change.

“The people who score higher tend to be quicker at learning the kind of information players need to participate and, second, to adjust week to week (for) teams with different strategies.

“Football is in an ideal situation to evaluate the test because all the franchises know the scores of all the players, plus you get the performance statistics of all the players. I had one head coach we worked with say, ‘I can predict how many times during a season a lineman will be drawn offside by knowing his Wonderlic score.’

“The danger of the Wonderlic is that it can end up being the beginning and end of someone’s ability, and that’s a mistake. Where people have the personal drive, motivation and work ethic, they can bring themselves to a very high level of performance. But if you have a superior cognitive ability it makes it easier to use those other abilities.”

Long had a final thought for the reporter writing this story: “I hope you’ll treat it with sensitivity. The people out there who are getting a low sense of self-esteem from their test scores being put out are being wrongly hurt.”

HOW FIRST-ROUND DRAFT PICKS FARED IN TEST

The NFL’s 1987 first-round draft choices and how they scored on the Wonderlic test.

No Player Pos School Drafted By Score 1 Vinny Testaverde QB Miami (Fla.) Tampa Bay 20 2 Cornelius Bennett LB Alabama Indianapolis 18 3 Alonzo Highsmith RB Miami (Fla.) Houston 14 4 Brent Fullwood RB Auburn Green Bay 9 5 Mike Junkin LB Duke Cleveland 28 6 Kelly Stouffer QB Colorado St St. Louis 28 7 Reggie Rogers DE Washington Detroit 10 8 Shane Conlan LB Penn St. Buffalo 21 9 Jerome Brown DT Miami (Fla.) Philadelphia 15 10 Rod Woodson DB Purdue Pittsburgh 13 11 Shawn Knight DT BYU New Orleans 24 12 Danny Noonan DT Nebraska Dallas 24 13 Chris Miller QB Oregon Atlanta 23 14 D.J. Dozier RB Penn St. Minnesota 16 15 John Clay T Missouri Raiders 20 16 John Bosa DE Boston College Miami 26 17 Jason Buck DE BYU Cincinnati 25 18 Tony Woods LB Pittsburgh Seattle 15 19 Paul Palmer RB Temple Kansas City 27 20 Haywood Jeffires WR N. Carolina St Houston 12 21 Roger Vick RB Texas A&M; New York Jets 6 22 Harris Barton T North Carolina San Francisco 29 23 Bruce Armstrong T Louisville New England 37 24 Rod Bernstine TE Texas A&M; San Diego 18 25 Terrence Flagler RB Clemson San Francisco 20 26 Jim Harbaugh QB Michigan Chicago 26 27 Ricky Nattiel WR Florida Denver 18 28 Mark Ingram WR Michigan St. New York Giants 18