Every few years a different nerd discovers the same thing about NFL quarterbacks: that they're much, much more blue eyed than the general population. And yet somehow this information never spreads to the public; it's like the men in black show up and arrest the noticers.
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In 1974 Morgan Worthy wrote a book called “Eye Color: A Key to Human and Animal Behavior” that was prominent enough to have been reviewed in Newsweek. It’s a wide ranging book, but it arose from his original observation that quarterbacks in his day were also very light eyed.
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Before I go into details, you really need to see this for yourself. “Blue” is a broad category; NFL quarterbacks have extremely blue eyes in a way that makes this association really easy to detect. Here to start off is the consensus greatest QB ever, Tom Brady.pic.twitter.com/mqSM4xt6Yl
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Brady grew up watching Joe Montana, the old consensus greatest, as a child in Northern California. Despite being 100% Italian, Montana’s eyes are albino blue:pic.twitter.com/FW8S0MS506
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The greatest brown eyed QB ever is Peyton Manning, the best green eyed one Brett Favre. After these two you start to see a line of guys whose eye color could be spotted from a mile away. Here’s Drew Brees:pic.twitter.com/iVEmVbzK4n
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Dan Marino is in the running with Montana for title of bluest eyes ever:pic.twitter.com/TaXwd7MhrV
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After quarterbacks, I took a look at white golfers that had won the Masters. Of the 24 I could positively identify 70% were blue eyed. My hunch was based on the extremely fair Jack Nicklaus; using Gretzky as inspiration I looked at Hart Trophy winners: 57% were blue eyed.
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If there was ever a time that this information would have become public knowledge it would have after Nicklaus’ Masters victory in 1986, when the four most accomplished white athletes in America were these guys:pic.twitter.com/kiG98lKVZm
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But here comes the really disturbing part: before I found hard numbers elsewhere I decided to use Presidents as a neutral sample to compare against the QBs. But it turns out Presidents are also overwhelmingly blue eyed https://www.chicagotribune.com/news/ct-xpm-1988-10-03-8802040884-story.html#:~:text=George%20Washington%2C%20blue%2Dgray%20eyes,%3B%20William%20Henry%20Harrison%2C%20brown ….
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In 1988 Bob Greene estimated that 26/39 Presidents had been blue eyed. Since then every Prez except Obama has had fair eyes; in fact every white guy from Trump to Reagan has been blue eyed. This suggests that the blue eyed advantage is not so much athletic as mental.
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This is a big subject, so I’ll cut it off now and tweet more later about the underlying mechanism: how some people think eye color is an indicator of behavioral inhibition and the ability to make fast decisions under pressure.
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End of conversation
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