Stranger than fiction: United footballers beat PhD students in intelligence tests

Forget the stereotype of the modern British footballer. The one that goes he can barely articulate in his own language, is susceptible to profanities, and keeps his brains in his feet. David Beckham may come out with the humorous one-liner littered with monosyllabic 'you knows'. ('I definitely want Brooklyn to be christened but I don't know into what religion yet,' he once said). And yet David Beckham has made billions of pounds from cleverly exploiting his image rights around the globe, while Chelsea midfielder Frank Lampard recently announced he had secured a literary contract to write children’s fiction. It can't always be down to shrewd management.  

Now research undertaken at the University of Montreal shatters the stereotype. Jocelyn Faubert has worked with Manchester United squads over the last three years. She found that they interpreted visual scenes quickly and made better decisions about them than amateur athletes and non-athletes. She found they had a greater ability to, in her words, 'hyper focus', a facility which enhanced their learning abilities. The research compared 51 Premier League footballers, 21 Canadian ice hockey players, and France's top 14 club rugby players with 173 elite athletes and remarkably, a group of 33 PhD students from the University of Montreal.

Jocelyn concluded that the footballer's brain adapts to information much more quickly, and insight is matched by increased speed of thought. The research backs up a Swedish study which correlated high scoring footballers with high scores in cognitive tests (see this story).

So let's rejoice in the roll-call of bright footballers. Here are some for starters. The late Brazilian world cup winner Socrates was a doctor of medicine and philosophy, while the former Ipswich, Watford, QPR and MK Dons defender Steve Palmer has a degree from Cambridge.  He is believed to be the only footballer of the modern era to study at Cambridge. Other bright sparks include Steve Heighway (Economics), Slaven Bilic (Law), Shaka Hislop (Mechanical Engineering), Iain Dowie (Masters in Engineering), Steve Coppell (Economics), Arsène Wenger (Economics), Gudni Bergsson (Law) and Oliver Bierhoff (Economics). One of the players of the 2013 Premiership season, Chelsea's Juan Mata, is studying for two degrees at the same time!

And The Open University? Our most recent graduate was Richard Hinds. The Sheffield Wednesday footballer achieved a first class honours degree in Law from the OU. Glen Johnson, the current English right back, will soon complete an OU Mathematics degree. Former Manchester United footballer, and the club's assistant academy director Tony Whelan was awarded a Bachelors degree in Humanities from the OU, and has since gone on to complete a Masters degree. Former footballer and Scotland manager Craig Brown has a BA Open. So let's put an end to those stereotypes. 
Dick Skellington 15 March 2013 

The views expressed in this post, as in all posts on Society Matters, are the views of the author, not The Open University.

Cartoon by Gary Edwards