Pencils cost $0.20 each. How much will three pencils cost? If your answer was not $0.60, you can take solace in the fact that former Texas quarterback and Rose Bowl superstar Vince Young wouldn't have answered correctly either. Two weeks ago at the NFL Combine, where the best college football athletes showcase their skills for pro scouts, players took the annual Wonderlic Personnel Test-a test the Wonderlic company describes as a "short-form measure of cognitive ability designed for simple administration and interpretation." The test, created in 1937, is designed for job candidates applying for positions in every field, and has been administered to NFL prospects for three decades. The test consists of 50 questions of mildly increasing difficulty with an allotted time-frame of 12 minutes. Each question is worth one point. Though some confusion over Young's score has persisted, initial reports agreed on a total of six, which would challenge some of the all-time most dreadful Wonderlic performances for NFL prospects in the last 30 years.

In the wake of the score reports, Young and his entourage have employed the basic "non-denial­-denial" approach: Young says he feels "disrespected" by the media but doesn't claim that he scored better than six. For argument's sake, if Young's cognitive capacity truly is unimaginably horrible, should NFL scouts balk in drawing up their draft boards? Is it worth jettisoning Young for USC's Matt Leinart or even Vanderbilt's Jay Cutler?

In what situations might intelligence and the ability to think quickly and clearly come in handy for an NFL quarterback? Several scenarios are conceivable. On a very basic level, choosing which receiver to target or when to run might call for cognitive competence, and clock management and audible-calling are certainly skills with a basic intelligence prerequisite.

But the correlation between fifth-grade-level word problems and quarterback performance under pressure is less than convincing. There are different types of intelligence. To equate Wonderlic skills with football smarts is to ignore nuance. Memorization, for instance, is a useful faculty when the offensive coordinator asks you to recall 100 plays on cue, and the dumbest person on earth might boast a photographic memory. What are scouts actually evaluating in assessing Wonderlic scores? They probably want to judge whether a prospect can recognize a defensive scheme and tweak the offensive alignment accordingly. Translate this mental process into: (a) notice problematic defensive setup, (b) change offense as necessary. The Wonderlic purveyors would have you believe that this progression is the same as (a) pencils cost $0.20 each, (b) three pencils cost $0.60. But acknowledging and exploiting defenses require football instincts and pattern memorization more than mastery of third-grade multiplication tables. In short, the Wonderlic people are stupid for suggesting that Young's stupidity would make him a bad NFL quarterback. But you do have to be amazed that athletes so disturbingly deficient mentally occupy valuable spaces in colleges and universities across the country. Then again, Young dazzled in the Rose Bowl like perhaps no one ever has.

"Do or do not; there is no try"

To see a real Tiger Woods-Phil Mickelson showdown on Sunday at a major or some other significant PGA Tour event would be a treat, since no one has stepped up in the Tiger era to embrace the role of a legitimate number-two challenger, and also because the differences between Tiger and Phil only add drama to the possibility of a head-to-head confrontation. Commentators and pundits toss around the word "professional" to describe loads of athletes who in truth fall short of the word's standard as I define it. Without a hint of exaggeration, Tiger is the consummate professional. From Thursday to Sunday he growls after every missed putt and pounds his driver into the tee after each wayward drive. He focuses and escapes from trouble better than anyone else on Tour. He has the ferocity and the gall to rip Stephen Ames to shreds in the opening round of the Accenture Match Play Championship to the tune of a viciously resounding 9-and-8 victory. He is a sharp, unflinching student of the game who thrives on precision and rarely allows emotion to distract him. Tiger enters a zone and closes on Sunday as Michael Jordan did in fourth quarters. Phil, on the other hand, stumbles around from Thursday to Saturday, when his bountiful talent can negate his bumbling loosey-goosiness and keep him within striking distance on the leaderboard. But on Sunday he falls apart. This week he turned a weekend share of the lead into a 12th-place finish with a final round of 73. Tiger won the tournament by a shot.

I bring this up not to beat a dead horse, but rather to respond to author Malcolm Gladwell's comments as author and last week's guest in Bill Simmons' ESPN.com "Page 2" column. Gladwell offered what he must think is a brilliantly sophisticated explanation for Phil's inferiority to Tiger. Mickelson, Gladwell says, intentionally exerts less than 100 percent so he can always retain the excuse that Tiger tries harder. In other words, Phil likes to be able to protect the possibility that, had he really tried, he could have beaten Tiger.

There are several problems with Gladwell's reasoning. First of all, Phil does try. He relies on not one but two swing coaches, one for his full swing (Rick Smith) and one for his short game (Dave Pelz). In his pre-round routine Phil sinks 10 three-foot putts arranged in a circle around the hole and repeats the drill 10 times without missing a single one of the 100 putts. So the "I'm not trying" theory is discredited. Further, even if Phil, either consciously or subconsciously, used such a tactic, we wouldn't buy it. A loser is a loser whether or not he tries his hardest. If anything, wasted talent is even more pathetic than inferior talent used to its full potential. The only person Phil would be fooling is himself. In truth, though, Gladwell's complicated psychoanalysis is useless. Simply put, Tiger is way better than Phil, whether Phil tries his best or not.