The April 4 article in the Kentucky newspaper about Lamar Jackson, the Heisman Trophy winner from the University of Louisville, includes insights from Lyons, associate professor of management.
A recent report by the Louisville Courier-Journal about Heisman Trophy winner Lamar Jackson featured insights from Elon’s Brian Lyons, an associate professor of management in the Martha and Spencer Love School of Business.
Lyons has conducted research on the use of the Wonderlic test, a multiple-choice test that is supposed to measure the intelligence of professional football player prospects, by NFL teams to help determine top prospects heading into the NFL draft each spring.
The Courier-Journal article by Tim Sullivan follows a particularly low score on the Wonderlic test by Jackson, a standout player at the University of Louisville. Some have questioned the ability of the test to measure future performance, with some teams not even taking scores into consideration.
“To be honest, I don’t see why teams would be using this piece of information because it’s not correlated to anything,” Lyons told the newspaper. “… It should not be taken into consideration.”
Lyons has previously explored whether past performance by athletes during their college careers is a better predictor than physical ability tests administered each year during the NFL Combine that precedes the annual NFL draft. His insights on the use of the Wonderlic Test by NFL teams have previously appeared in publications such as FiveThirtyEight and his work has been featured by media outlets such as ESPN, The Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post and Sports Illustrated.