Last week, incoming NFL rookies took the Wonderlic test at the Scouting Combine in Indianapolis. This week, the scores already are being published.
It’s a stunning failure by the league to even make a half-hearted attempt to secure the scores, with someone leaking them to Bob McGinn of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, who has published several of them. While some or all of the scores get released every year, it’s rare that they get disclosed this quickly.
Several of the General Managers who spoke to PFT Live at the Scouting Combine were asked whether a refusal to take the test based on the league’s chronic failure to keep the scores confidential would be a red flag. 49ers G.M. Trent Baalke opted instead to lament the fact that the scores are always leaked.
As previously argued, the players should refuse to take the test, but they won’t. Job applicants will agree to plenty of potential indignities in the name of getting hired. So maybe the time has come for the league to stop administering it.
Really, what good does it do? The best reason for continuing to do it is the fact that the NFL has done it for years. Teams call it just another piece of a broader puzzle, but is it a piece that really fits -- especially since it crosses the line from physical ability into a more inherently sensitive realm of intellectual capacity?
Teams won’t like it, because so many scouts and coaches are creatures of habit. Still, if all teams lose the benefit of the same test, none can claim an unfair advantage.
Besides, the Scouting Combine is maintained by the league and not by the teams. If the league tells the Scouting Combine to not administer the test, the test won’t be administered. And then there will be no scores to leak.