Has NFL Draft Become Thinking Man’s Game? : Pro football: It isn’t all X’s and O’s anymore. Coaches and general managers also consider how prospects fare on Wonderlic exam designed to measure learning ability.

During the NFL’s national scouting combine in February, somewhere between a poke and a prod, Penn State running back Ki-Jana Carter found himself sitting at a desk.

In front of him was a pencil. And a brown four-page booklet. And somebody who looked suspiciously like a teacher.

“What is this?” he said.

Slowly, he scanned the front sheet.

“DO EXACTLY AS YOU ARE TOLD,” it read. “DO NOT TURN OVER THIS PAGE UNTIL YOU ARE INSTRUCTED TO DO SO.”

“Wait a minute,” he said, looking around at other befuddled prospects. “Nobody told me about this.”

The next thing he knew, the proctor was pulling out a stopwatch.

For the next 12 minutes, he was face to face with the NFL’s annual little secret--the Wonderlic Personnel Test. It is a 50-question exam of learning potential given to all prospects; a test whose scores are rarely revealed but never ignored.

During the annual draft held Saturday and Sunday in New York, general managers will be proclaiming the results of 40-yard dashes, vertical leaps and passing drills.

But they will be whispering Wonderlic test scores.

They will announce that they drafted a player during a certain round because of his physical ability.

They will not tell the truth, that what really clinched their decision was his test score.

Did he know if there was a difference between ignite and ignorant ? Could he read five confusing proverbs and figure out which two are similar?

And how about cases of fruit? If one contains 14 dozen pieces and costs $4.50. . . . Well, it doesn’t take a grocery clerk to figure out that this test has nothing to do with football.

Or does it?

“You’re darn right we look at those scores,” said Carmen Policy, San Francisco 49er president. “A player needs a baseline mental capacity to play this game. When you’re talking about quarterbacks and offensive linemen, you need even more intelligence, especially in our system.

“For us, the Wonderlic is a way of measuring that intelligence.”

The average score for an NFL draftee is 21, meaning 21 questions were answered correctly during the 12 minutes allotted for a test that some critics say is culturally biased.

Team officials want quarterbacks and offensive linemen to score closer to 25. Cornerbacks--the ultimate instinct position--can score as low as 13 or 14. Players can take the test as many times as they wish, with only the best score given to teams.

“But we note which players need three tries,” said Carl Peterson, Kansas City Chief general manager. “With today’s complex playbooks, we need people who can understand.”

This year’s confidential test results obtained by The Times reveal that those 12 minutes can mean more than the previous four years combined.

--Steve McNair, record-setting quarterback from Alcorn State, is the subject of a heated debate among officials of the Houston Oilers, who could make him the third pick overall.

Publicly, they say he is a “project” who could take several years to develop.

Privately, they are fretting over his best score of 15.

Kerry Collins of Penn State, the other top quarterback prospect, doubled McNair’s score with a 30.

“Although the test is not foolproof, it can affect a draft pick,” Oiler General Manager Floyd Reese said, speaking in general. “If a player has a low score, it can send up a warning flag.”

--Carter, expected to be the top overall pick by either Carolina or a running-back-poor team that would trade with the Panthers, may have been surprised by the test. But he wasn’t fooled.

Carter recorded a 20, considered a solid score for running backs.

Colorado’s Rashaan Salaam, moving up in recent weeks, helped himself with a 24; James Stewart of Tennessee is moving slightly downward after scoring 14.

--There is a reason scouts are saying nobody works harder or studies the game closer than USC tackle Tony Boselli, expected to be the highest offensive linemen drafted in this decade when he is taken second overall by Jacksonville.

His 26 score is considerably higher than the scores of 17 recorded by tackles Blake Brockermeyer of Texas and Barrett Brooks of Kansas State.

--Why might Kevin Carter, Florida defensive end, be taken as high as third overall by the Oilers?

Besides projecting as the next Bruce Smith, he also projects as the next football-star-turned-lawyer.

Carter’s 31 score was more than three times the original score recorded by another top defensive end candidate, Shawn King of Northeast Louisiana, who answered only nine correctly.

King was recently given the exam again by the Philadelphia Eagles and scored a 19, meaning he could be headed there with the 12th pick in the first round.

Not that Carter should brag. In the controlling world of the NFL, a player can also score too high.

Ask center Tim Ruddy of Notre Dame, rated as one of the top 15 prospects last season after ending his college career.

He scored 35 on the exam and wasn’t taken until late in the second round as the 65th overall pick by the Miami Dolphins.

“An NFL official called me last year about Ruddy and said, ‘What is he, some damn Einstein?’ ” recalled Ralph Cindrich, Ruddy’s agent. “Scoring high does not help a player, heck no. The NFL prefers . . . players they can control.”

George Young, New York Giant general manager and former elementary school teacher who helped sell the league on the Wonderlic in 1968, agreed that the league hates extremes.

“A guy with a high number, you also look into it. . . . Maybe he’s too smart,” Young said. “People with high IQs tend to ask questions, and aren’t as coachable as people with low IQs.”

Intelligence in the NFL sometimes presents another problem. Veteran football officials still shake their heads at the memory of John Frank, tight end for the San Francisco 49ers who retired at the peak of his career after the 1988 championship season to become a doctor.

“Sometimes smarter players don’t need football so much because they do other things,” Young said. “Teams are always thinking about something like that.”

This year’s highest scorer, linebacker John Holecek of Illinois, recorded a 43. Look for him to be drafted sometime after the ESPN cameras have been unplugged.

Did the score hurt him?

Perhaps. But he also is considered slow and not very athletic. The test is so difficult, and the allotted time is so short, that high scores are not usually a problem.

“I give the test to friends, educated people, and nobody has ever finished it, much less scored a 50,” said Bob Ackles, the Arizona Cardinals’ assistant general manager. “It is a lot harder than it sounds.”

The test starts easy. But, like some football games, it gets tougher with each minute.

“I sit down and the first question is something like, ‘Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, April . . . which word doesn’t fit,’ ” recalled quarterback Rob Johnson of USC, projected as a late first- or early second-round pick Saturday. “I’m thinking, ‘What is this?’ But then, it got tougher.”

Johnson managed a solid 26, but still trailed the highest scoring quarterback by nine.

“It was Stenstrom, wasn’t it?” he asked, referring to Stanford’s Steve Stenstrom, a probable late-round pick who scored 35.

Johnson laughed and joked, “I should have known. I sat next to him. I should have cheated.”

On one of the 12 Wonderlic tests, a player is rewarded for reaching the 50th question with a query involving dividends and investments and percentages. No calculators are allowed.

The only NFL player to register a perfect 50 has been Harvard’s Pat McInally, the former Cincinnati Bengal punter and wide receiver. He is still excited about it, and with good reason.

In a 1992 study, of 118,549 people who took the test nationwide, only four were perfect. The NFL is one of 31,800 businesses who use the exam, which was founded by the Wonderlic family in 1937.

Many teams augment the Wonderlic by giving their own personality tests. Like the one in which a scout asked McInally whether 11 p.m. was before or after midnight.

“It depends on which day you are talking about,” McInally answered.

The scout scolded him for being a smart-aleck. McInally finally realized the team was simply trying to determine whether the punter could understand a curfew.

While a low score can drop a player one or two rounds--or out of the draft entirely if it proves he is illiterate--teams still will do anything to make room for great athletes.

“If it’s obvious the guy has a reading problem, we’ll take him in a back room and read the test to him, see how he does then,” said Mike Allman, Seattle Seahawk player personnel director. “Because in football, you don’t teach a playbook by making a guy read it. You verbalize the plays to him, then go on the practice field and show it him.

“My question is, does he know how to learn? Actual reading in our game is not that big of a deal.”

Teams also attempt to compensate for low scores of a great athlete by interviewing his coaches and teachers. This may be what has happened with Michael Westbrook, the Colorado receiver who could still be among the top five picks despite a score of 13.

Colorado Coach Rick Neuheisel said Westbrook has no comprehension problem.

And really, some NFL old-timers ask, how important is an intelligence test in a game where the object is to beat somebody’s brains out?

“I remember the story of the defensive lineman with the 90 IQ playing the offensive linemen with the 115 IQ,” the Giants’ Young recalled. “The defensive guy said, ‘Don’t worry, after I hit you a few times, you’ll be just as dumb as I am.’ ”

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

Testing Prospects

This is from the Wonderlic Personnel Test, Form IV. This is a 50-question test that must be completed within 12 minutes. Here are some sample questions:

* Look at the row of numbers below. What number should come next?

8 4 2 1 1/2 1/4?

* Assume the first 2 statements are true. Is the final one (1) true, (2) false, (3) not certain?

The boy plays baseball. All baseball players wear hats. The boy wears a hat.

* A train travels 20 feet in 1/5 second. At this same speed, how many feet will it travel in three seconds?

* The hours of daylight and darkness in SEPTEMBER are nearest equal to the hours of daylight and darkness in

(1) June (2) March (3) May (4) November

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

How They Rate

A sampling of the top-rated college prospects at each position, with their Wonderlic test , as reported to NFL team officials after the national scouting combine in February. The average test score was 21:

QUARTERBACK

Steve McNair, Alcorn State 15 Kerry Collins, Penn State 30 Chad May, Kansas State 23 John Walsh, Brigham Young 24 Rob Johnson, USC 26 Kordell Stewart, Colorado 15

RUNNING BACKS

Ki-Jana Carter, Penn State 20 Rashaan Salaam, Colorado 24 Tyrone Wheatley, Michigan 16 James Stewart, Tennessee 14 Napoleon Kaufman, Washington 17 Rodney Thomas, Texas A&M; 19

WIDE RECEIVERS

Michael Westbrook, Colorado 13 Joey Galloway, Ohio State 27 J.J. Stokes, UCLA 19

TIGHT ENDS

Kyle Brady, Penn State 29 Mark Bruener, Washington 29

OFFENSIVE TACKLES

Tony Boselli, USC 26 Korey Stringer, Ohio State 26 Blake Brockermeyer, Texas 17 Billy Milner, Houston 20

GUARDS

Reuben Brown, Pittsburgh 18 Matt O’Dwyer, Northwestern 29 Zack Wiegert, Nebraska 27

CENTERS

Cory Raymer, Wisconsin 21 Barret Robbins, TCU 21 Dave Wohlabaugh, Syracuse 24

DEFENSIVE ENDS

Kevin Carter, Florida 31 Mike Mamula, Boston College 27 Shawn King, Northeast Louisiana 19

DEFENSIVE TACKLES

Warren Sapp, Miami 20 Ellis Johnson, Florida 27 Luther Elliss, Utah 21

LINEBACKERS

Mark Fields, Washington State 19 Craig Powell, Ohio State 21 Derrick Brooks, Florida State 22

CORNERBACKS

Bobby Taylor, Notre Dame 20 Ty Law, Michigan 13 Jimmy Hitchcock, North Carolina 11

SAFETIES

Orlanda Thomas, SW Louisiana 21 Devin Bush, Florida State 23

KICKERS

Steve McLaughlin, Arizona 27 John Becksvoort, Tennessee 35

PUNTERS

Todd Sauerbrun, West Virginia 14 Jeff Beckley, Boston College 18