Is the High School Jock a complete myth or what?

[Jragon]

My school sports were actually two schools (we shared a building and some non-academic extracurricular and most fine arts), I can’t speak for the side on the non-advanced school, but as the majority of the sports teams were made up of kids from my school (which was much smaller) I can speak for a good deal of it. Now, my school was test-in advanced so the athletic kids (or average kid at the school in general) were already sort of baseline higher-up intellectually than your average high school student[sup][citation needed][/sup]. I’d say the jocks were… slightly above average maybe, I wouldn’t even call them hypermasculine, I’m counting it though because they’re probably the closest thing we had.
[completely off topic from here]
The cheerleaders were weird though, on one hand of the couple I knew, one of them was a really good student GPA-wise, and she was smart (I worked with her a couple times), the other one, not-so-much. Our school’s social hierarchy would be utterly confusing to the TV-highschool student though, it went approximately from most to least popular -

Band Kids (includes danceline/color guard, but probably not twirlers who were kind of cliquish and mostly from the other school anyway). In fact, I’d say the closest thing we had to jocks that WEREN’T athletes were probably some of the trumpets and saxes, and personality wise were probably closer (but still smart).

Academic Decathalon/Science Olympiad/Student Grounds Committee (etc) Kids

Athletes

Those kids who don’t really do much

Cheerleaders
I’m sure Orchestra is in there somewhere, but they were kind of the nerds, not the TV nerds who everyone hates and outcasts, just the ones no one really notices (not to mention most of them also overlap with one of the above groups, often the second one).

Our cheerleaders were despised, they’ve gotten booed out of an assembly before (or so I heard, I skipped that pep rally), our danceline essentially filled in for them. The dumb kids were generally in the “didn’t really do much” group. There was one kid who I’m sure got okay grades, but I believe I described one of her English presentations to a friend as “like taking advice from your blender,” these are the kids who after speaking get a blank stare, listening to them is just… a strange empty experience. They must have had brains somewhere, they obviously grasped the material well enough to stay enrolled but their exposition when they had to elaborate on something was just… wanting.

[you may now return to the main part of your thread]

[Argent_Towers]

@astorian

But… it just so happens that teenage Woody Allen was NOT an intellectual. He was, in fact, something of a jock himself. Seriously, he lettered in three sports in high school. Even his naikcname is sports related. Friends called him Woody because he was always playing stickball.

I know that’s completely contrary to his image, but he’s often acknowledged that “People just think I’m an intellectual because I wear glasses.” He’s not especially smart, and admits it. He flunked out of CCNY, which is not exactly an Ivy League school.

The other thing that proves his lack of intelligence is his movies. They’re not particularly smart films, they’re just “charming.” I don’t think there’s anything smart about his films. John Cassavetes is a far more talented and much more unknown screenwriter/director from the same time period. Paul Mazursky, also.

[AboutAsWeirdAsYouCanGet]

so football isn’t the be all and end all of anyone’s existence.

Now that’s another qualifing criteria to be a Jock… they tend to be into sports as the be all and end all of their existance. Not just a typical guy sports thing…but more like a monomania bordering on pathological

[Wheelz]

@Markxxx

Interestingly enough most of the jocks in my class kept good grades, but the three I know of that made it to the professional leagues, two minor, one major leagues, were idiots.

So I’m not sure what that means.

Maybe this was because those that were smart enough to (a) do something besides sports for a living and/or (b) realize that their chances for professional success were vanishingly small, stopped pursuing sports as a career at some point.

Not to say that there are no smart pro athletes, but perhaps the process is self-selecting to some degree?

[Cyn]

Fast Times at Ridgemont High came out right after I graduated high school and I remember thinking it was nothing like my school. ** Revenge of the Nerds** came out soon after and it was nothing like my college. The captain of the football team when I was a freshman was stereotypically popular and handsome, but his grades were excellent and he was almost the nicest boy on the planet. His family was rich and everybody loved him and his sister, the head cheerleader. He was student body president and she was secretary. My junior year, the captain of the water polo team was class president, ran track, was the best looking boy ever, the sweetest boy in the world, good grades, popular and came from the richest family in this part of the state. My younger brother played Varsity football, wrestled, was no genius, was popular, handsome and very nice to everyone he ever met. People still come up to me and remark how nice we kids were to them in HS—other kids teased them but never us. I’ve asked my own kids about stereotypes in high school and they say the popular kids are popular because they are nice to everyone. I don’t doubt there are some real jerks in HS sports and the Jock isn’t a complete myth but I never met one.

[mazinger_z]

My high school was ultra competitive in sports, and we won a state trophy, twice during my 4 years, for having been in the most state finals that year (or whatever measurement of competition). We definitely had a jock clique, but by the time I was a senior, most of the cliques were starting to merge. Football players were, by and large, stupid – comically, so. Wrestlers weren’t much better. Track, CC, and probably gymnastics had the smartest ones. Bball players, like the baseball team was largely uneducated (not stupid, just didn’t have the training). Vball, water polo, and lacrosse was probably average. Oh, and Soccer (avg) and Tennis (smart) had the largest amount of drug abusers (second only to Football). Cheerleaders and Charrelles (girls who danced at halftime), except for a handful of girls my year, rivaled Football players in stupidity (though Football players still had the crown).

Each group had people who didn’t fit nicely in each category. Though, I remember stereotypes playing out amongst the seniors when I was a freshman (though, admittedly, I didn’t know many upperclassman, except the ones that hazed me). I was a three sport athlete for 4 years that hung out with the jocks and smart kids.

[RickJay]

In my high school the academic qualification for participation on sports team were modest but stringently enforced, in spite of which we always won championships. So legitimately bad students couldn’t be star athletes.

Still, I wouldn’t say there was a LOT of correlation between marks and academic success. The real losers, criminals and nogoodniks were neither good students nor good athletes; beyond that it was more or less a matter of random chance. Some top athletes were excellent students, some just met the eligibility requirements. Some top students made sports teams and some were clumsy oafs. The one year I got to go to the sports awards dinner the cross-section of students present was pretty much what you’d have gotten if you’d just picked at random from all the students with a C average or better. Heck, I was there getting an MVP award and I was a straight A student.

Two interesting points though:

1. The cheerleading squad, curiously enough, was comprised almost entirely of top students, and
2. The one guy I went to school with who ended up having a decent career in the NHL was an idiot.

[ITR_champion]

I recall that once, in the AP computer science class, the teacher everyone who played a sport to raise their hand. Most the of the class did. He then pointed out that the proportion of athletes in the school at large must be much lower.

Making it onto a competitive sports teams takes the same skills as getting good grades: hard work, self control, planning, and people skills.

[Diogenes_the_Cynic]

It didn’t take any of that for me to get good grades. I was just smart. I put virtually no effort into it all.