Over at Cognitive Daily, Dave Munger post about research into the effect of athletics on academics:
Achievement can be measured in many ways -- grades, homework, attendance, standardized test scores, and enrollment in college. In all of these areas except standardized test scores, even after controlling for economic status, race, and other background variables, athletic participation was significantly correlated to academic achievement. Even after controlling for academic success in 8th and 10th grade, athletic participation was still associated with positive academic outcomes in 13 out of 21 measures in 12th grade and 2 years out of high school. This suggests that athletic participation itself may be responsible for some academic achievement -- the later achievement isn't completely explained by earlier academic success.
But what if a student is overcommitted -- if he or she participates too heavily in sports, won't grades suffer? Not according to Marsh and Kleitman's data: only one measure, number of college applications submitted, was negatively associated with extremely high athletic participation.
Anecdotally, I can say that my experience agrees with this. When I was an undergraduate, I did significantly better during rugby season than before or after the season. (Continued below the fold.)
This might seem surprising (particularly to those who knew me in college), given the amount of drinking that was associated with playing rugby, but the explanation is simple: playing rugby imposed some more structure on my week. I knew that I had practice from 4-7 on Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday, beer practice (long story) at 6-ish on Friday, and games on Saturday. With those times blocked out, I had to get work done during the remaining open bits in my schedule. When the season ended, I suddenly had all this extra free time, and it became a convenient excuse for procrastination, which spilled over into the times that I had previously used to do work.
(The same was true, to a lesser extent, in high school, where like most college-bound students, I did lots of stuff outside of classes, including playing three sports. The "to a lesser extent" is because the work was generally less of a challenge, and disposed of more quickly.)
In a similar vein, the absolute worst semester I had as a student was freshman year, when I managed to schedule all my classes on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. On Tuesdays and Thursdays, I barely got out of bed, and certainly didn't get any work done. I never made that mistake again.
So, I can easily believe that there's a positive correlation between atheltics and academics, just because of the extra discipline enforced by committing to a sport. As to the question Dave raises of why, given this correlation, we still speak of "dumb jocks," I favor the definitional explanation put forth by the commenters-- "jocks" are a sub-set of athletes, and by definition are the ones who aren't interested in academic pursuits. Somebody who plays sports but still gets good grades isn't usually termed a "jock"-- they fall into some other category.
This also brings up an interesting point regarding the stereotyping of different sports. Back when I was in high school, the general image was that the smart kids played soccer, while the dumb kids played football. And yet, if you look closely at the games, football actually requires a good deal more active intellectual engagement-- you need to know lots of set plays, and have specific responsibilities in many different circumstances. Soccer, on the other hand, is more fluid and instinctive-- there are a handful of basic things you need to know how to do, and then you go play.
And yet, the stereotype of football players as dumber than soccer players is remarkably robust. It's sort of strange.
(For the record, I played soccer in high school. I never played organized football, because the football coach when I was in junior high, when I would've needed to start playing, was an ass. By the time I was in high school, he was replaced by a much more reasonable guy, who I probably wouldn't've minded playing for, but I was already a soccer player at that point.)
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I theorize it's cause the football players can be so darn big. Esp. linemen. (I sat next to one of OU's starting linemen in one of my classes -- he made you look delicate.) Alternate phrase frequently heard is big dumb jocks.
MKK
There is a possible weakness in their methodology that you can scent from the exception: "In all of these areas except standardized test scores,". Standardized achievement tests are designed to be 'apples to apples' comparisions. It is suspicious that they show a different result than the rest of their study.
They may have compared apples and oranges regarding 'academic achievement'. If I take higher mathematics, physics, and engineering courses while someone else takes art appreciation, algebra and trignometry and sports classes and we both get 'A's do we have comparable academic achievements?
The methodogy should compare the same courses against each other. IOW: Do football players do equally as well in third year chemistry as non-athletes do? And do they take the academically difficult courses in the same relative numbers as non-athletes?
Anecdotally, I can say for sure that in high school I remember clearly that a large percentage of the football team took A Capella Choir (they really composed most of the male membership of the choir) and shop classes, but only a few school athletes took Calculus.
And yet, the stereotype of football players as dumber than soccer players is remarkably robust. It's sort of strange.
Not strange at all: it's simple prejudice ("Size-ism"). People presume a lot based solely on appearances.
"And yet, if you look closely at the games, football actually requires a good deal more active intellectual engagement-- you need to know lots of set plays, and have specific responsibilities in many different circumstances. Soccer, on the other hand, is more fluid and instinctive-- there are a handful of basic things you need to know how to do, and then you go play."
Agreed. In fact, offensive linemen, often stereotyped under the "big dumb jock" label, are often the smartest on the field; they have a ton of variables to consider on each of the many plays they run, and they have to do rapid situational assessments from a three-point stance and then adjust them on the fly. And the few times they mess up during games are the only times they get noticed by casual fans.
This reminds me of a movie I saw a part once of while flipping channels; it involved a major college program and all the various good and bad things that happened to the players. One of the linebackers was terrible academically and seemed to be very stupid. Then they showed him in the film room; a slide was shown and the coach asked him "what do you call in this situation?" He responded with a rapid fire (this is a paraphrase): "4-3 striker weak, unless the fullback shifts to the W, then we go to 2-deep under strong, with the willie backer dogging; if the Z-back goes in motion left we switch to a 3-deep sam zone..." This guy wasn't dumb, just severely under-motivated in class.
Viva beer practice!!