The archetypal “dumb jock” plays football.1 He’s a big oaf who gets waved through the educational system because so much school pride rests on his gnarled shoulders.
The reality is a bit different. There is good evidence that, among male professional athletes, football players are the intellectuals. They seem to be the only ones who read.
Last Sunday, Philadelphia Eagles wide receiver A.J. Brown read a book on the sideline of the team’s playoff game. The book was Inner Excellence by Jim Murphy, published by the Academy of Excellence. Before the game, Inner Excellence was ranked something like #540,000 on the Amazon best-seller list (roughly 150,000 places ahead of The End of Burnout). The next day, it was #1. Is it any good? Who knows? The important thing is, this athlete read an actual book during a lull in the game action. He’s just like the best version of yourself.2
Then, yesterday, Buffalo Bills defensive end Von Miller reported that his teammate Terrel Bernard quoted the Greek philosopher Heraclitus to inspire the team ahead of their game against the Baltimore Ravens, who crushed the Bills when the teams played in September. Here’s Miller’s gloss on a famous fragment: “The man gets in the river once, and the next time he gets in the river, it’s not the same man and it’s not the same river. The past is the past.”3
I loved seeing this, and not only because I’m a Bills fan. It occurs to me that Terrel Bernard is a well-educated guy. Who knows when he encountered this saying of Heraclitus; maybe he just heard it on some podcast. But he very well could have encountered it in college. Bernard spent five years at Baylor University, graduating in four years with a kinesiology degree and then sticking around to start a master’s program. He was a first-team All-Academic selection in the Big 12 Conference three times, which means his GPA was pretty decent. He must have spent significant time studying.
In my experience, football players do study, and not just their playbooks. Perhaps reluctantly in some cases, but they do it. They have to, because their coaches make them. When I was in grad school at the University of Virginia, I tutored student-athletes as a part-time employee of the athletic department. The football team required younger players to attend a study hall, so I saw a lot of those guys. They were all pretty much fine-to-good students. Some were excellent. Several of these guys went on to successful professional careers.
Football players probably are better-read than most other pro athletes. Football is the rare men’s sport in which the highest level of pre-professional training occurs at an educational institution. And most football players on the pro track are in school for at least three years. The best basketball players only spend one or two semesters in college. To become a professional in just about any other men’s sport, you train in some elite academy that may or may not function as your high school. You might not go to school at all after age 12 or 14 or 16. A growing number of North American hockey stars play in the NCAA, but the surest path to the National Hockey League remains Canadian major junior hockey, which is not known for its intellectual atmosphere.4 And it shows. I have followed professional hockey for more than 40 years, and I have never heard a hockey player refer to a book he had read. A Will Ferrell movie, OK, but not a book.
What this means is, college works. If you give a student structure and support, and if they have a little motivation, they will learn. And they will draw upon that learning later in life, possibly in unexpected ways.
Two more things:
I want to pass along a new essay in Aeon, “The Power of Prayer,” by Eleanor Schille-Hudson, a cognitive scientist who took my academic writing for the public class a couple summers ago. It's on prayer as a form of problem-solving. Eleanor takes a scientific approach to understanding how religious people’s minds work when they’re praying, and how that differs from other mental processes. This essay is really thoughtful and well-crafted. I'm so proud of her!
In addition, my friend Christine Marie Eberle’s book, Finding God Along the Way: Wisdom from the Ignatian Camino for Life at Home, has just been published. (Christine was in my spiritual nonfiction class last year.) I endorsed the book. So did Sen. Tim Kaine. A.J. Brown has so far not endorsed it, but maybe he just hasn’t had a chance to read it?
Here’s what I said: “Christine Eberle is not only an experienced, funny, and wise spiritual guide. She's also a great storyteller. In the vivid episodes of this book, she takes readers through stunning Spanish landscapes, hostels, communal meals, and masses and invites us to reflect on our own pilgrimages, including the ones we undertake in our ordinary lives. The rhythm of this book—action, reflection, action, reflection—is the heart of pilgrimage and of Ignatian spirituality itself.”
If Christine’s book sounds intriguing, buy it!
Some percentage of this newsletter’s readers live in countries where “football” is what we in North America call “soccer.” We have the correct terminology.
Truth be told, Brown would probably have been on his phone if that were allowed.
Miller attributed the quote to “Herticules or something like that.”
The best thing written about hockey is Guy Lawson’s 1998 Harper’s essay, “Hockey Nights,” which is about second-tier junior players in Flin Flon, Manitoba.