I question the wisdom of this new contraption called the "forward pass."

The Wonderlic Personnel Test is a 12-minute, 50-question exam that is supposed to measure a person’s ability to learn and solve problems. It has become most well known for its association with the NFL, as college football players looking to enter the league are administered the test. It’s not exactly a perfect determinant of a player’s ability, as Dan Marino famously scored very poorly and became one of the greatest QBs in NFL history. (It should be noted that the average score of an offensive tackle is equal to that of a journalist.)

This seems like a new-fangled type of athletic measurement that would never have flown during the sport’s earlier days, but that’s not true. I came across a 1931 Popular Science article that examines how the University of Illinois used a battery of physical and psychological tests to try to find a quarterback who would be as great as the legendary Red Grange. An excerpt from the beginning of “Illinois Seeks New Red Grange by Electric Tests”:

“At the University of Illinois, experts in a pioneer psychological laboratory are seeking a new ‘Red’ Grange by means of flashing colored lights, whirling electronically connected disks, and reels of super-speed films.

The successor to the ‘Galloping Ghost’ of Illinois football teams of a few seasons ago will be picked from gridiron candidates who run the gauntlet of strange electrical testing machines that rate their muscular coordination, nerve control and mental alertness. Even before the athletes don their cleated shoes and leather helmets for the first scrimmage, the coaches thus know the rating of each in the qualities that make for stellar performance in the heat of pigskin battles.

Electrified gameboards, covered with rows of tiny lights like those on Christmas trees, duplicate in running flashes various football players. The candidate records what he would do at each crisis in the play while judges note the time he takes to decide and the correctness of his decision.”