NFL Draft 2012: Roger Goodell Should Approve Public Release of Wonderlic Scores

The last known draft-related edict from NFL commissioner Roger Goodell was delivered in interoffice memorandum form. Pope Roger I is looking to crack down on the leakage of information involving prospects in the upcoming draft. 

The Wonderlic score of former LSU cornerback Maurice Claiborne was leaked last week; he reportedly scored four points out of a possible 50 on the standardized test that the NFL issues to all attendees of its annual combine. This week, details on the personal life of former Florida defensive back Janoris Jenkins came to light, including a history of marijuana use and his siring of four children with three different women. 

It's worth noting that Goodell's memo was sent internally. That is, it was also leaked to the press by at least one of the 32 teams. The leaks indicate the difficulty of keeping prospect information under wraps.

One could argue that some of that, like embarrassing family situations, should be left alone, considered off-limits, whatever. Comparatively speaking, I personally would hate to think that I could have missed out on a job opportunity because of an adverse family situation. Those issues have nothing to do with one's ability to play football, and while they might sate a coach's need to know, they carry little weight otherwise. 

Other information, in my view, should be made public. Let's start with the Wonderlic results. Are America's future professional athletes embarrassed about all the non-studying they did while attending their respective institutions of higher learning? Perhaps they should be held accountable for that.

The Wonderlic score is a tangible, measurable output. That can and should be open for public scrutiny, as much as a player's 40 time or vertical-leap height, even if it does brand players like Claiborne as derelict. We would expect a prospect to lose draft status over being labeled as too slow, not agile enough or not strong enough on the bench press, based on what he does in Indianapolis. Why do we carve out an exception for "being too dumb?"

The secrecy of Wonderlic scores is inconsistent with the dissemination of other player data from the combine. But if that veil of secrecy were lifted, it would help foster Goodell's aim to put better citizen-athletes (my term) on NFL fields every Sunday. Publishing Wonderlic scores would devalue players measured to be less intelligent. That's not to say that they won't be drafted at all, but any team's aversion to an otherwise highly valued player could, in some sense, be justified by that. 

Releasing all the Wonderlic scores from the combine would also send a signal about how the NFL values intelligent players. Which begs the question: Do they? My relatively educated guess is that no coach wants players smarter than he is, and no team wants to draft a player who might spend two-a-days wondering why he didn't go to law school. 

In that sense, the Wonderlic means nothing. And yet the NFL continues to roll out that test every year. So it doesn't mean nothing. Or does it? Maybe not. Or maybe I'm just not intelligent enough to understand it. But I think I am. If only I had some standardized exam that could tell me for certain.