Eric Heiden, who won all five gold medals in speed skating at the Lake Placid Olympics, is also an MD. He was also a very accomplished road cyclist.
Anecdote: When she was a medical student in clinical rotations during her M3 or M4 year, she walked into a patient’s room with some other students, and a clipboard over her chest. The patient, an elderly woman who was in the hospital to die, asked her, “Are you that ice skater?” and when she hesitantly replied “Yes”, the woman’s face totally lit up and she said, “I always loved watching you on TV, and wondered what ever happened to you. I know you will be an excellent doctor, too.” She thanked the woman for her kindness, and then they went on with the examination.
A month or two later, she got a letter from the woman’s family to let her know how much meeting her had brightened her final days. 
Pakistan former cricket captain and current opposition leader Imran Khan, had an MA from Oxford.
Current Pakistan captain Misbah-ul-Haq has an MBA.
Spanish soccer player, Juan Mata, a World Cup, Euro and Champions League winner has two graduate degrees.
Nice story - thanks!
Hey, I supported him in the 2000 Washington Democratic State Caucus (not that it helped). Also, you forgot to mention his time in the U.S. Senate. I’m still somewhat suprised he wasn’t considered running-mate material by the Democrats in 2004 and 2008.
Anyway, I suggest Jim Brosnan. He wrote “The Long Season” which was a non-ghost written account of his life as a pitcher for the St. Louis Cardinals and Cincinnati Reds during the 1959 season.
No formal qualifications involved, but for a couple examples, both Jim Bouton (Ball Four author) and Bill “Spaceman” Lee have demonstrated that they’re unafraid, even eager, to ask questions and challenge assumptions (though willing to accept what evidence actually shows) and engage with big ideas. Which is I think one of the definitions of intellectual.
Stu “The Grim Reaper” Grimson amassed over 2,000 penalty minutes in his 13 year NHL career. Later got his law degree from the University of Memphis and worked as counsel for the NHL Players Association for a while.
…if you’re a Rhodes Scholar, you’re pretty darn intelligent regardless of where you went, what you studied, or what extracurriculars you did.
Not saying Rolle’s not smart, but that he shouldn’t be surprised FSU was pushing him to focus more on football and less on academics. FSU is not known for producing great student athletes in the football program.
Bill Lee called the New York Yankees "Nazis" and made homophobic remarks about how they could only hurt you by swinging their purses. Maybe on MSNBC that passes for intellectualism but not in the real world. Bouton was so egotistical he thought people actually watched the evening news sports in the 1970s to hear how he pitched in his local beer league. Scores? What scores?
Yeah, MSNBC is known for its homophobic hosts, like Rachel Maddow.
Approaching from the other end: Alan Turing was a very good marathoner and took 5th at the trials for Britain’s 1948 Olympic team.
Yeah, to be perfectly honest, I am much more interested in this question than the OP. The godding up of sports in the last generation and a half has changed the calculus, and I really want to know which pro athletes there have been who can be considered intellectuals after pro sports became big business.
Not that I’m defending his overall status as an intellectual, but he called the mid-70s Yankees “a bunch of hookers swinging their purses,” a reference to George Steinbrenner buying up players in that pre-salary cap era like a john shelling out for high end call girls.
Plenty of people hated Steinbrenner for it, but few put it so bluntly. Arguably misogynistic, but not homophobic.
To defend Bill Lee against charges of homophobia, I recall being at a game at Yankee Stadium in 1978, during a game against the Red Sox. There was a big banner hanging over the left field wall saying “JIM RICE IS GAY!”
I don’t know exactly what he said, but before the game started, Lee walked right up to the left field stands, said something to the fan holding the banner, and a few moments later, the fan took the banner down before security made him do it.
I’d sort of LIKE to think he made some hilariously scathing sarcastic remark.
Okay, IF we have to stick to more recent memory, I agree that things get harder. There’s so much money in sports these days that a guy who hopes to make it to MLB, the NFL, the NBA or ____ (fill in your favorite sports league) HAS to devote himself almost exclusively to one sport early on (I’m pretty sure there are far fewer young multisport athletes than there once were), and to concentrate his efforts there.
Back when sports paid less, those rare guys who were both brainy AND athletic knew they had to be prepared for “real” life after and “real” jobs retirement from sports. That’s less of an issue now. Even if, say, Steve Nash is smart enough to go to law school, the simple truth is that he’s financially set for life. Why WOULD he try to get an advanced degree now?
My guess is, there are still plenty of highly intelligent athletes, but most of them have to decide fairly early on, “Which career is more important to me,” and spend most of their time and effort working on that one thing.
Alan Page studied law in the off-season. Today, a defensive linemen doesn’t have the same kind of “time off” Page had. Indeed, toward the end of his Page’s career, Bud Grant was chastising him for not spending the off-season bulking up! (Grant wasn’t wrong, either- the once great Vikings D-line was woefully undersized by the late Seventies). Today, a highly paid sports star is expected to work out and train constantly, even in the off-season. It was never easy to study law or medicine in the off-season, but it’s even harder now.
Obviously Alan Turing would be in the finals of this competition, but I guess it comes down to what the OP wants as an athlete.
Would finishing 5th in the trials for the British Olympic team in 1948 really mean much given the disruption from a certain event? If it does IMHO he goes straight to the top.