Smartest athletes

In My Humble Opinion
1

“Nobody in football should be called a genius. A genius is a guy like Norman Einstein.” --Joe Theismann (who later claimed to have gone to school with a really smart guy named Norman Einstein)

“I don’t see any Stanford guys running around here. Look at Terry Steinbach. He thinks hockey is a sport.” --Dave Henderson, on his 1988 Oakland A’s team

People like to joke about how dumb pro athletes are. But they aren’t all dumb jocks. Who can you think of in the major pro sports that are genuine brains?

NFL: Pat McInally (retired). Punted for the Cincinnati Bengals. Harvard 1975. Invented the “Starting Lineup” brand of sports collectible figures. I think he is also the only player to ever get a perfect score on the Wonderlic, the IQ test given at the NFL draft combine.

Baseball: Doug Glanville (Phillies). UPenn graduate. Did his senior thesis on traffic impact regarding a proposed site for a new Phillies ballpark. One of the most knowledgeable and quoteable guys in the game.

Ron Darling (retired). Yale graduate. A teammate (I forget who) once said, “I don’t even understand the questions to the things he knows the answers to.”

2

Old Rams fan checking in. Pat Haden was a Phi Beta Kappa member(?) and Rhodes Scholar. Read all about him here:

http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/turnersports/nfl/haden.html

3

Byron White, college and pro football star, was an early Rhodes Scholar and later served on something called the Supreme Court.

Bill Bradley was also a Rhodes Scholar and graduated from small school in New Jersey.

4

Frank Ryan, Ph.D in Mathematics, used to be quarterback for the Cleveland Browns (he had his Ph.D. while he was playing, BTW).

There was also Bobby Brown, M.D., who played third bse for the Yankees.

5

Curt Schilling is obviously a very bright man. Of course, the Schilling-Glanville “EverQuest” feud gives them both extra points. Poor Bingbong.

Anyway, the smartest pro athlete of all time is obviously Moe Berg, major league catcher (1923-1939) and polymath. Berg, it was said, spoke twelve languages and couldn’t hit in any of them. Both true, BTW; he really did speak twelve languages, and he couldn’t hit, although he was a terrific defensive player. As a college player he taught his teammates to understand some Latin so that he could shout signals to them without opponents understanding them. Berg would appear on radio shows where the audience would call in and try to stump him with trivia, and almost always answered correctly. Upon meeting Albert Einstein, Berg said “I’ll make you a deal; you teach me mathematics, and I’ll teach you baseball.” Replied Einstein, “You’d learn mathematics faster.”

Berg earned an undergraduate degree from Priceton before making the majors; if the offseason he got a law degree from Princeton and did linguistics work at the Sorbonne.

In 1934, Berg was named to an All-Star team that toured Japan. This may seem strange, since Berg was a crappy player; the turth was, however, that Berg was on a spying mission for the State Deartment! Berg was welcomed with open arms by the Japanese, who thought it wonderful that he spoke fluent Japanese. Then, after hours, Berg would sneak around taking photos and films of military installations.

In 1939, his career over, the OSS hired him to be a spy. Berg has already done some freelance work for the State Department while on baseball tours of Japan, scuttling about after hours and taking pictures of naval installations, using his fluent Japanese to get him out of trouble. His first wartime assignments took him to Europe to find out about Germany’s atom bomb project. In 1944 he was he was ordered to meet Werner Heisenberg personally and to kill Heisenberg if he determined the A-bomb project was near completion; he found it weren’t, though, and didn’t shoot Heisenberg. After the war he was awarded the Medal of Freedom, but turned it down for some reason.

When asked why a man of his intellect spent so many years in basebal, Berg just said, “I love baseball.”

6

I think a good deal of professional players are pretty smart now; many have college degrees and then some. I know Steve Young is a lawyer (he SEEMS dumb though.) And John Elway played baseball for Stanford before deciding to make a career of football.

Jim Bouton was considered a real brain at the time he was writing Ball Four simply because he knew how to string a sentence together. He went on to invent “Big League Chew” bubble gum, which is genius in my book.

(RickJay, thanks for the info on Moe Berg…I have a book about him – The Catcher was a Spy – but haven’t gotten around to reading it yet. Thanks for reminding me.)

7

I think Ed McCaffrey has a Masters from Stanford. Steve Largent is now a congressman. There was that NY senator who was a QB, Kemp?

Isn’t there a pro golfer who is a former Dr.?

8

Steve Largent may be a congressman, but (trust me on this one) that doesn’t mean he’s smart. He’s a congressman from my home state of Oklahoma, and I haven’t noticed that he’s all that smart. Any current OKDopers want to weigh in on this?

I don’t know about his book-smarts, but in interviews, Reggie Miller always seems very intelligent and articulate to me. Certainly a far cry from the run-of-the-mill sports interview (you know, “We just went out there and did what we had to do…”).

9

Jack Kemp formerly of the Buffalo Bills is another sportster-turned-pol. I think that’s who you are thinking of.

I can’t believe I forgot Bill Bradley!

Oh and I think the golfer you have on your mind is Dr. Gil Morgan. Not sure what the “Dr.” is for, but he is somewhat infamous on the PGA Tour (he plays seniors now) for his big-time choke in the 1992 U.S. Open at Pebble Beach. IIRC, he set the record for lowest score in relation to par at any point in the tournament but finished nowhere near first place.

10

Former English cricketer CB Fry.

He captained England, and never lost a Test as captain. His other sporting accomplishments included holding the world long jump record for 21 years, and representing England at football. His career off the field was equally distinguished, a notable scholar at Oxford, a successful author and journalist, a parliamentary candidate, deputy for the Indian delegation in the first, third and fourth assemblies of the League of Nations,and notoriously offered the kingdom of Albania.

11

Joe Juneau a hockey player that played for the Caps and the Sabres (though I can’t remember where he’s playing now) has a degree in aeronautical engineering from RPI. He’s French-Canadien and English is not his first language, but he still managed to earn a degree in aeronautical engineering from one of the better institutions in the country (while playing hockey too).

Joe Nieuwendyk (I think that’s how it’s spelled) is a graduate of Cornell.

One of the TE’s for the 49ers went to Harvard.

A baseball player drafted out of Yale this year is some kind of biophysics major. His parents have been nominated (in the same field, I believe) for the Nobel Prize.

12

I believe Dr. Gil Morgan has an optometry degree.

13

Golfer Bobby Jones.

Graduated Georgia Tech with a mechanical engineering degree at age 18.

At 21 he went to Harvard and earned an English degree in 3 semesters.

At 24 attended Emory University Law School in Atlanta. After completing one year of study, he decided to take the bar exam. When he passed, Jones withdrew from law school to join his father’s firm as a practicing lawyer.

Wrote some of the greatest golf books ever.

Built Augusta National.

14

Come on, we all know that any school really interested in having a competitive sports department, Stanford included, makes academic exceptions for admissions. Then there’s the whole thing about whether the athletes are really graded on the same curve, or whether they majored in anything “core”, or if they were tutored within an inch of their lives to ensure eligibility, or whether they even graduated.

I think Elway did graduate, though.

As a minor highjack, Dexter Holland, the singer for the Offspring, has a doctorate in molecular biology. That has to be the most educated punk band ever. The drummer has an electronics degree (of some sort) and the bass player a finance degree.

15

OK, stick to postgrads, where the school has no big benefit in keeping them eligible…

a few were also doctors…

Doc Medich - Mets/Yanks/Pirates, who once revived a fan who had a heart attack in the stands [sub] guess he was a better doc than pitcher…[/sub]

Steve (?) Smith, Edmonton Oiler D-man was also an MD I believe.

Bobby Brown is a doctor - cardiologist I think. [sub] Once his roommate was reading a comic book while he read a med book, then said “Hey. Bobby, how did your book turn out?” Yes, Yogi Berra. [/sub]

Wasn’t golfer Cary Middlecoff an MD also?

I think a Bengal CB a while back was going to med school in the offseason - Casanova?

Didn’t Dr. Spock have Olympic gold in crew?

Ken Dryden (G, Canadiens) took a year off in his career to clerk for the Canadian Supreme Court.

Was it Berg that Casey said “He knows 8 languages, but can’t hit in any of them.” ? Of course, he had a pitcher with the Mets (McKenzie?) who complained he had the lowest salary of any member of Yale’s class of 1960, to which Casey said, “Yeah, but you have the highest ERA.”

16

You mean ex-Oiler Dr. Randy Gregg

17

I believe Julius Erving is a pretty sharp guy. He is the the Pres. of his own company, The Erving Group, Inc., and Exec. V.P. of the Orlando Magic. He is on the board of directors of several companies including, Williams Communications, Inc., Converse Inc., Saks Inc., and Darden Restaurants, which owns Red Lobster and Olive Gardens.

18

Every Hockey fan should read The Game by Ken Dryden. It’s an auto-biography about his latter years with the Montreal Canadiens, a history lesson about Hockey and a meditation on the meaning and philosophy of Sport. Dryden is a very articulate and thought provoking writer and I think it’s one of the best books ever written about any sport.

19

the Brazilian soccer star Socrates was a medical doctor and also smoked over 60 cigarettes a day.

20

Second that. Great book.