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Notes -
How many motteizeans played sports?
My personal observation has been that particularly good athletes tend to be upper end of average, like 110 or so, but that athleticism is basically uncorrelated with intelligence beyond that, although golf and the like tends to be a bit smarter. The unusually smart crowd is usually not great at sports, although there are a few exceptions.
I was a Div 1 college athlete and got a perfect score on my SAT and took 14 AP exams.
Yeah, this is a balls out, face first brag. I've never actually said it like that in real life. Thank you, internet.
In my experience the top tier athletes are one of two camps; yes, group one is all around above average 110+ IQ types who also have very good emotional intelligence and social capability. Remember how the teen bully is the football star and also the homecoming king? He's probably also going to like, UT-Austin. I had a fraternity brother who was Div 1 in a different sport, head of the Panhellenic Council (so, literally the boss of all of the fraternity and sorority bosses and yes, it did function exactly like the mafia) ... ended up becoming an Air Force Officer and now does Consulting for basically the defense-focused version of McKinsey. If I had to wager some money on "knowing a future member of congress" ... there you go.
The other types, however, are the sports savants. These are the guys (and girls) who probably have built their entire life around whatever sport they're doing. Frequently this included some pretty extreme parental ... "supervision." The GOAT poster boy for this is Tom Brady. He's a football genius (and, yes, it was him not Belichik) but, outside of that, he's fucking weird and awful. To get to that level, and then to absolutely crush it at that level, means your brain maps so perfectly onto the sport that you're Ramanujan levels of brilliant in that domain. This can't be explained away with "Dad made me practice every day" or even "My ex Soviet sports machine dad made me practice every day" ... you have to be born with it.
But I use "savant" on purpose. Some of these guys are fucking useless outside of that sport and actually lead kind of fucked up lives. I can't say the sport without probably doxxing myself - but I grew up training with the Bobby Fisher / Tony Hawk / Tom Brady of my sport.
Yeah, he's fucking weird and lives at home still and can't drive or cook for himself. When the clock runs out or he blows out a knee, I am super, super worried what happens next. Sports aren't transferable skillets. If you're rainman and can math-your-ass-off, you can probably find work for a variety of places that will be happy to put you in your special room 8 hours a day so long as you can fill out the reports. You can earn a living, even if that living gets reinvested into Hungry Man TV dinners, porn, and cheetohs. Sports with a limited professional (I.e. money making) applicability? Not so much.
So who do you want to be? My old friend, Captain Chad Thundercock? Or VictoryBot9000? Above median breadth but, perhaps, never true greatness? Or brilliant, early greatness that will be remembered far past your life ... which will be 70% "over the hill nothingness."
(P.S. The answer is always Captain Chad Thundercock)
I'd argue there's a third category of some people who just have absurd physical gifts and don't need to be particularly switched on or with it. NBA Centers tend to have more diverse personalities/interests than other positions since they have to be 7-footers to even qualify so the effective pool of potential NBA Centers is small.
I'm a very large person and got to fringe professional academy levels in Rugby. There were only like 10 people in my region who were effectively credible competition for what ended up being 4 low-paid slots on the development pathway. Meanwhile a normal-sized human position was hundreds of people competing for like 5 spots.
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Awhile ago there was a thread here, or perhaps on /r/themotte, where a parent observed that their smart kids were a lot more prosocial and did a lot more sportsy things than they did when they were kids and other parents chimed in and observed this as well. Just all around sports, social activity, video games and also good grades and deep nerd shit in their cohorts.
(I pretty much suck at sports myself though)
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