Why Do People Assume Distance Runners are Smarter than Other Athletes?

You do realize that your personal, anecdotal experience, and your constant explanations as to why the data should be distrusted, are both undermined by the actual data at the collegiate level, right?

In particular, I found your "you should only look at that top 25% of football players and compare them to the entire cross country team since the football team is about 4 times the size of the cross country team" argument particularly interesting/entertaining.

markschultz2018k wrote:

In fact at my high school no one in the years I attended ran XC just for the sake of being a XC runner. They all used it for conditioning for other sports, least of which was football of course. Most were soccer players.

Why would you do a fall sport as conditioning for another fall sport?

i have worked with a lot of C suite individuals over the years. Very few played football. Many were, and still are, runners.

None are still football players. 0....a few played baseball. nearly all golf to some degree.

Running isn't smarter but smarter people run. Smart people know how much more fun running is than boring team sports.

The theory of evolution caused the skinniest to be the smartest. The stronger don’t need brains in order to win a battle. It is absolutely proven by science.

Only distance runners assume that distance runners are smarter than other athletes.

Spending 10 minutes on Let's Run is typically sufficient to disprove this assumption.

I think you are very much undervaluing the sheer complexity of distance running. If you think it's that simple, then you must not know much.

Twig Mzungu wrote:

Right - running doesn't require more brainpower than other sports, but it tends to attract people with characteristics that also correlate with studiousness.

I actually thought this but repeated visits to this message board question my assumptions and experience.

Faulty Assumptions wrote:

The only people who assume that are distance runners...

and I certainly wouldn't assume it based on the postings on this board.

Runners are often the quite type. We may be just as foolish as the next guy but we just don't open our mouths to prove it.

other sports more fun wrote:

On average I'd bet track athletes have a less fulfilling social life to distract them. Not to hate or say it's the only reason, I just bet that's true.

Distance runners don't usually have a whole team gang raping a couple of women.

However I consider this a huge plus for the runners.

And another negative that shows how dumb, ignorant and stupid that football players are.

This is true /. wrote:

other sports more fun wrote:

On average I'd bet track athletes have a less fulfilling social life to distract them. Not to hate or say it's the only reason, I just bet that's true.

Distance runners don't usually have a whole team gang raping a couple of women.

However I consider this a huge plus for the runners.

And another negative that shows how dumb, ignorant and stupid that football players are.

Racist.

markschultz2018k wrote:

People who go out for football are often doing it as a means to pull themselves out of a bad situation one day, so you're going to attract those who are not so bright and a share of very bright ones. The not so bright ones know that they can at least get their feet in the door through brute force via football and get a chance at millions one day.

Someone going out for XC isn't of that mindset. They're doing it in most cases to train for another sport or general fitness. Desperate people don't run XC. If it were a possible ticket to being a millionaire and pulling yourself out of poverty, you'd have more less than bright people doing it.

Looks like you just answered your own question.

cultural differences wrote:

This is true /. wrote:

Distance runners don't usually have a whole team gang raping a couple of women.

However I consider this a huge plus for the runners.

And another negative that shows how dumb, ignorant and stupid that football players are.

Racist.

where is race mentioned? or are you assuming? whose the racist?

I used to think distance-runners were smarter, on the whole,... till I started reading the LetsRun MB.

Seriously.

sp2 wrote:

I used to think distance-runners were smarter, on the whole,... till I started reading the LetsRun MB.

Seriously.

Oh yeah? As a serious question here (about running or anything else) then tell me you don't think there are extremely smart people here.

sp2 wrote:

I used to think distance-runners were smarter, on the whole,... till I started reading the LetsRun MB.

Seriously.

Yeah, I have to question the intelligence of any group where five different people will say the exact same thing while acting like they've said something original.

Almost every person thinks [s]he's smarter, better whatever than other people.

Every group of people that I've been a part of online, like on forums, think that they, as a group, are smarter, better, more this&that, than other groups of people. I have been a part of the inner circle of lot of forums, ranging from running forums to electronic music forums to a classical piano forum, spirituality forums, forums on sexuality. All those groups thought they were better than "other [groups of] people".

winnr1 wrote:

Probably Because Real Runners Know Not To Capitalize Every Word In A Sentance

defiantly true