By the standards he so highly endorses, Darren Rovell is worse than average at his job. Rovell took fire last week for sharing prospects’ low Wonderlic scores, along with a graphic of the averages by profession, and then decided to take Wonderlic up on an offer to fly him in and have him take the test. Rovell finished with a 26, which by the handy graphic he shared last week, is below the average of 28 for a reporter.
Leonard Fournette & Dalvin Cook got 11's on their Wonderlic, per @BobMcGinn. Here's an occupational comparison chart pic.twitter.com/38jf3AX7RE
— Darren Rovell (@darrenrovell) April 20, 2017
Rovell Periscoped the whole process of him taking the test, and it had some great highlights, including him complaining about kids outside, him being trolled by commenters, and him putting his Emmy (yes, he won one in 2008 for contributions to NBC’s election coverage) on the desk. So you don’t have to suffer through the whole broadcast the way our Liam McGuire did, here’s a condensed version:
So, by those results, Rovell did worse than your average reporter, but marginally better than your average salesman. Hmm. Of course, it would be ludicrous to suggest that reporting proficiency can be determined by a baseline test like this, much of which doesn’t involve anything to do with reporting. Almost as ludicrous as suggesting that the ability to do mental math and other skills the Wonderlic checks has an impact on your ability to play professional football. But it must, because the big businesses of the NFL use it, and big businesses never make mistakes in Rovell’s world.
test gets publicly bashed as useless, begs the question as to why teams still use it. Gotta be a reason more than tradition.
— Darren Rovell (@darrenrovell) April 20, 2017
Teams still give it, teams still look at it, teams still keep track of it. They still make it part of the equation, I don't.
— Darren Rovell (@darrenrovell) April 20, 2017
who said I didn't think it matters? I'm unclear of relevance to teams. But they still give it and still track it and make it part of formula
— Darren Rovell (@darrenrovell) April 20, 2017
We have to wonder what value there was for Rovell and ESPN in doing this. Twitter engagement for Rovell, perhaps? And an excuse for him and other ESPN commentators to keep citing the Wonderlic? But it doesn’t necessarily make him look good, especially given his not-great score, and the whole thing felt more like an ad for Wonderlic than any useful journalism. And we still have no answer to if Rovell would actually report “purple monkey dishwasher” if an NFL team told him that. That might be a better test of reporting ability than the Wonderlic.
