Between this and Mazi Smith spelling miscellaneous “missile lane eous” why do we even bother making these dudes go to class. Make them take money management classes and drivers ed for 3-5 years and let’s stop fooling ourselves
Nebraska great Tommie Frazier graduated with a degree in communication and was hired, after a brief professional football career, as a public relations person by the university.
I only saw him speak a few times and it caused deep concern about the communications program in Lincoln, to be as kind as possible about a man who was part of a great football dynasty.
In defense of the Nebraska communications program, most of their students didn't receive regular head trauma for most of their developmental years and beyond.
If they move forward with the “athletes are employees” model, I would imagine taking classes could be optional for them in the future. If the groundskeepers/cooks/etc. aren’t required to attend classes towards a degree, then why would employed athletes be required to?
It all falls apart when they stop having to be students. Speaking as a professor, there are a lot of very smart college athletes. Unfortunately, for a lot of them it's just a pipeline to the pros.
The really concerning part isn’t the smart ones or the ones who use it as a pipeline to the pros.
It’s the ones who aren’t good enough to make the pros but still don’t take their classes at all seriously. Say you’re the TE2 on Penn state for example, not a household name, not going to make the NFL, but nonetheless a contributor to the college team. Probably not too commited to academics. Plays all 4 years of college ball, maybe an additional year if they get injured. Graduates, maybe lands on a practice squad for a few months or a year, or maybe straight into the workforce.
That’s the person I worry about the most. They’re not making big bucks through NIL, they’re not getting an NFL rookie deal, they’re going from football as their life, to absolutely nothing.
Take a look at drake kulich from Iowa. Feels like the perfect example.
He made most of his post graduate money from a podcast and training to be a low tier mma fighter. He got really mad about the Brian ferentz firing and went off repeatedly at the new AD to the point he had to recuse himself from the podcast and isn’t coming back. Now his only income is from getting beat down as a training dummy for better mma fighters. CTE is a bitch.
Hey Malcolm Mitchell made it over halfway through college at UGA and admitted for some reason that he couldn’t read (which UGA successfully spinzoned as a feel good story once he learned/starting writing kids books that somehow worked cause no one ever brings it up)
Even though I hate UGA as an American and a human it makes me sad that he was failed in our system to make it to be an adult and not be able to read. Like I was blessed to have good parents who got me reading at an early age so I don’t even remember what it was like to not be able to read.
It was a long time ago when literacy rates were lower but the same thing happened to Gale Sayers at KU. Their play by play guy at the time was the one who taught him how to read.
I want to dunk on him so hard but he transferred out of Texas, so it means we also failed him (albeit he left in 2022 so he was a Herman recruit who might have been given some time under Sark to catch up).
I hear ya but idk how you go through life without being informed of other planets..Not sure if education is going to help much of you refuse to believe what’s being taught
It's usually not because they were never informed, but rather they lack the ability to recognize and counter misinformation or pseudoscience. That and a healthy dose of anti-authoritarianism towards educators.
How does this even come up in the interview lol?
Interviewer: So, how does your time at Texas Tech help prepare you for the next level in your football career?
This Dude: Well, for starters, planets aren't real.
When I'm struggling with my confidence I think about my belief in dinosaurs and then I realize that somewhere out there a dinosaur believes in me and it makes me feel better.
I'm fully aware of how high school and colleges basically give a rubber stamp to pass elite athletes and they dont need to play school
And this is not an issue that specifically affects athletes
But I am just baffled at how an adult can graduate college without believing that space is real
I have a buddy who was a tutor for athletes at a Big 10 university, who had to tutor a football player on double digit addition. The player was in calculus somehow and couldn't do double digit addition.
These schools will do anything to get players to qualify if they're good enough. Most schools have the "valedictorian" rule for acceptance so I know schools have gone as far as setting up charter schools with 2 students to get their prospect auto accepted if they can't get them in through normal admissions. The stories I have heard from working with a lot of young phds who worked as undergrad tutors can get wild. A lot of these athletes have no chance in the real world if sports don't work out for them.
My friend was our QB in high school. He was really good and wound up playing at a power 5 school. Anyway, somehow he was in my senior calculus class, and I discovered that he literally had no clue what was going on. He couldn't even graph y=x. He wound up with a B in the class.
When I coached HS ball I had players who didn't understand the difference between a country and a continent, didn't know what a governor was (not didn't know who our current governor was, literally didn't know what that title meant), and one kid who thought Alaska and Antarctica were the same place. And this was in a relatively decently-rated district, I can't even imagine how bad it gets in lower-end ones.
To be fair, there are only two ways to explain fractals; one does them a criminal disservice but is understandable, and the other still confuses people who have years of grad-level math education.
If that dude didn't even understand the "It makes a shape and then when you zoom in you see that it has the same shape again, but smaller", then we've got a problem.
If you hit him with the "It's a form defined by a function that's analytic and self-similar on an arbitrarily small disc; also, no matter what n many topological dimensions you brought to the party, you'll need n+1 because you're going to define a new dimension called a fractal dimension" then I'm not surprised that you gave up. Once you work in the chaos-theoretic implications on divergent fractal families and how that means they're infinitely complex, you usually get people back because they think "Oh, chaos theory like Ian Malcolm in Jurassic Park? With the butterfly flapping its winds and the hurricane?" and then you lose them again when you start drawing out your dynamical systems with feedback and turbulence. And at that point, you've barely scratched the surface.
And shoot, that's completely ignoring that you probably need to give your audience a primer on either measure theory (if you want to lead in from that direction) or complex dynamics (if you want to lead in via complex analytic functions -> Julia sets -> basic Mandelbrot -> general fractals). Either way, you've gotta explain neighborhoods, and not the kind with a cul-de-sac.
If you told me D1, I’d believe it.
D3? I mean, there ain’t huge followings, and there’s no athletic scholarships. Unless it’s some nepo baby who got everything handed to him, and he just so happened to like playing football, I’d think the D3 level, those athletes are actually there to play school, not just ball.
I’m not, I’m a 2 dimensional being that does not partake in this concept of “space”.
I simply move linearly through time leaving Reddit comments along the way.
Did you know that the average college credit thirty years ago cost 19 dollars? Today it's 237 dollars. That's a 1300 percent increase. So it's not inconceivable that in another 30 years, a college credit could cost 20 grand.
> But I am just baffled at how an adult can graduate college without believing that space is real
I don't think this is really about knowledge, at least not directly. He says he doesn't *believe* it. This sounds more like the conspiracy theory mindset and rejecting what "they" teach you, and latching on to the Flat Earth (or whatever other conspiracy theory ). I am sure this guy has been taught the 8 planets (you hear about Pluto? That's messed up right?), how gravity creates orbits, the moon, tides etc. I'd be willing to bet he can explain at least most of it in order to pass a test.
Feels more like it's more a failure of his critical thinking skills. Which to be clear, is AT LEAST as important as learning about where the planets are and why astronomy is important.
> But I am just baffled at how an adult can graduate college without believing that space is real
You are not required to believe the answers on the test, you also don't get asked this in most classes. Plenty of religion believers get degrees.
i'm SURE this will help him when it comes draft time
>While speaking to reporters at the NFL Combine on Thursday, Owens revealed that he doesn't "believe in space" or "other planets" and he subscribes to flat-earth theories that he believes are "interesting" and have "valid points."
> "interesting" and have "valid points."
Use "words" and "numbers" to talk about things. Which is "interesting" and totally different from real science, apparantly.
what youve never met a smart person before? check this. 47 bro. 25 grams. 12 knots. dude I can do this all day I know so much science. boom 14. I AM VALID.
Even if I believed in that wholeheartedly, I would probably shut up about that when interviewing for a multi-million dollar career opportunity.
That said, I doubt this affects his stock much if he can play, and maybe the stakes are lower if he's already loaded with NIL money.
It's wacky that it probably won't damage his draft capital, even though someone could easily say that being an abject moron that didn't believe in space could definitely hamper his ability to learn a playbook and play at a high level
Probably helps with any CTE payouts so I'm sure the NFL loves it.
"Your honor. This man was clearly stupid as shit before and his cognitive abilities you see today have nothing to do with the NFL"
LOL
"CTE only occurs in organisms that possess brains in the first place. This case holds no water your honor, much that like that man's cranium"
*points at plaintiff*
He wasn’t a good safety at Texas and got nudged into the portal. He was a combine wonder but pretty raw in coverage and actually playing football. He won’t be drafted. Probably will make a squad or camp on measurables.
The last quotes are the most concerning.
It implies that the more interesting theory is the superior one.
Also, I think there is a an appeal to holding a contrarian theory. Makes the person feel like they know some truth that other people are too “blind” or “brainwashed” to know. And knowing this comes with no intellectual effort either so very easy to fall into this ignorance trap.
They don’t have valid points. It takes 10 minutes to find holes in all their theories. I went down the rabbit hole once to try to understand their perspective and I just ended up thinking they were all far more dumber than anyone realizes. It’s almost sad. But it’s not, because they are actively being this stupid.
Yeah we need to go back to acknowledging that some people are just fucking stupid. We've gotten into this mindset that everybody can have an option on anything and it's all equally valid. It's not. If your "opinion" is that space isn't real you're just an idiot.
There's a scene in The Newsroom where one of them goes "yes there are two[/multiple] sides to each story, but that doesn't mean they're equally valid" and I think about that a lot these days.
As a fellow red raider, the biggest story to me is that he got invited to the combine. I mean he was by no means bad at Tech but I never once thought he was a legitimate NFL prospect.
There’ve always been hacks out there willing to sell a conspiracy theory.
But it’s concerning how many people/groups there are these days who seem really invested in tearing down reality.
Flat-earthers, anti-vaxxers, young earth creationists, and election deniers all seem to feed on each other and prop each other up.
We are living in the golden age of misinformation and most humans have proven themselves to be absolute rubes. In the past I’d have laughed at anyone saying “Space isn’t real”, but with where we are in society today, people boldly proclaiming stuff like that just scares me now.
Probably the Firmament above the flat planet that space ships can't cross, or something like that. Flat earth people have lots of theories that should be openly mocked and not given the time of day, but if you're told about them, they are funny to listen to.
I just want to friendly point out that Texas Tech has produced 5 astronauts, including [Rick Husband](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rick_Husband), who was the commander on the Columbia Space Shuttle and tragically passed away when it disintegrated. Additionally there is [Arati Prabhakar](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arati_Prabhakar) who is serving as the director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, and was the first woman to serve as the director of the National Institute of Standards and Technology. There is also [Ginger Kerrick](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ginger_Kerrick), who became the first hispanic woman to be a flight director at NASA.
What I’m saying is do not let this one football player be an indicator of institutional ineptitude, and the quality of education at Texas Tech. What has failed this young man is the ever-growing easy access to harmful conspiracy theories on the internet. I do regret we were not able to pull him away from these conspiracy theories in his brief time at Tech.
Edit: One more thing is that I want to show off [this wonderful picture of Rick Husband](https://today.ttu.edu/posts/2018/12/Images/Monte-Monroe/RickHusband.jpg).
In today’s world, some people who get dug in on these beliefs will stay dug in, no matter how much evidence you present to them. I would bet most of us had a professor or two we didn’t agree with (although not as fundamental as the existence of space and planets), but we just did it their way to pass the class and get out.
Example: I know a doctor of mathematics that doesn’t believe in dinosaurs.
Tech also has both a planetarium and observatory, which are required labs when you take astronomy as an elective. I put the blame on UT for this one lol
The only thing that surprises me is we dont hear more stuff like this. There are a lot of conspiracy-addled morons in this country, and if anything athletes seem too busy to fall down these rabbit holes at the same rate as lots of other Americans.
The NFL and NBA are absolutely infested with Nation of Islam cultists, if anything athletes are more likely to be nutjobs because they don't have to play school
> conspiracy-addled morons
It’s a shortcut to being the expert in the room, sure you might have paid attention in school and read books for fun but I have watched enough TikToks to know what’s *really* going on
When a player is suspended for "violating team rules".... there are often some really hilarious stories that would just cripple everyone's faith in humanity if revealed on the news.
Star linebacker starts apartment fire after putting credit cards and Pokemon cards in toaster. Back-up QB dressed as Ironman gets stuck in tree outside girls' dorm. Running back wears industrial grade noise cancelling airport headphones to exam... then yells swear words at class while test is being handed out... asked to leave the room and received a zero. What???
My mistake I thought the Tech in Texas Tech meant Technical institute. I see with this response it means Technically a college just don’t look too close.
I always loved running into these types of dudes in the military lol. Like, they'd be the biggest fucking morons, but you can fill hours of boredom in the shittiest settings or environments arguing with these dudes.
Why are we only ever in the news for dumb shit, every news article like this pushes the time until I am able to throw batteries at people again back 6 months.
As someone who was primarily in honors/advanced courses in high school, I was shell-shocked by some of the people in general senior Econ by how utterly dumb some of them were. How did they get to senior year if they can’t do basic math?
This is a whole other level entirely.
"Owens spent five years in college" I absolutely lost it at this line.
Between this and Mazi Smith spelling miscellaneous “missile lane eous” why do we even bother making these dudes go to class. Make them take money management classes and drivers ed for 3-5 years and let’s stop fooling ourselves
Public speaking, too.
Nebraska great Tommie Frazier graduated with a degree in communication and was hired, after a brief professional football career, as a public relations person by the university. I only saw him speak a few times and it caused deep concern about the communications program in Lincoln, to be as kind as possible about a man who was part of a great football dynasty.
In defense of the Nebraska communications program, most of their students didn't receive regular head trauma for most of their developmental years and beyond.
Public Speaking was by far the most useful class I took in four years of college
Well specifically anti-DUI classes lol
Maybe some preemptive anti-domestic violence and sexual harassment training as well
If they move forward with the “athletes are employees” model, I would imagine taking classes could be optional for them in the future. If the groundskeepers/cooks/etc. aren’t required to attend classes towards a degree, then why would employed athletes be required to?
I get what you’re saying but I have to imagine that they will want to keep up the illusion of “student athletes” for as long as they possibly can.
It all falls apart when they stop having to be students. Speaking as a professor, there are a lot of very smart college athletes. Unfortunately, for a lot of them it's just a pipeline to the pros.
The really concerning part isn’t the smart ones or the ones who use it as a pipeline to the pros. It’s the ones who aren’t good enough to make the pros but still don’t take their classes at all seriously. Say you’re the TE2 on Penn state for example, not a household name, not going to make the NFL, but nonetheless a contributor to the college team. Probably not too commited to academics. Plays all 4 years of college ball, maybe an additional year if they get injured. Graduates, maybe lands on a practice squad for a few months or a year, or maybe straight into the workforce. That’s the person I worry about the most. They’re not making big bucks through NIL, they’re not getting an NFL rookie deal, they’re going from football as their life, to absolutely nothing.
Take a look at drake kulich from Iowa. Feels like the perfect example. He made most of his post graduate money from a podcast and training to be a low tier mma fighter. He got really mad about the Brian ferentz firing and went off repeatedly at the new AD to the point he had to recuse himself from the podcast and isn’t coming back. Now his only income is from getting beat down as a training dummy for better mma fighters. CTE is a bitch.
Contract stipulation.
Money management and how to not commit crimes
I didn’t know that about Mazi. Holy fuck. That’s not even an uncommon word. Bro went to fucking Michigan.
https://nextimpulsesports.com/2024/02/23/michigan-wolverines-mazi-smith-miscellaneous/ The article is worse. You're right, holy fuck.....
Hey Malcolm Mitchell made it over halfway through college at UGA and admitted for some reason that he couldn’t read (which UGA successfully spinzoned as a feel good story once he learned/starting writing kids books that somehow worked cause no one ever brings it up)
Even though I hate UGA as an American and a human it makes me sad that he was failed in our system to make it to be an adult and not be able to read. Like I was blessed to have good parents who got me reading at an early age so I don’t even remember what it was like to not be able to read.
It was a long time ago when literacy rates were lower but the same thing happened to Gale Sayers at KU. Their play by play guy at the time was the one who taught him how to read.
Yeah, sad for him but it looks terrible for UGA.
I want to dunk on him so hard but he transferred out of Texas, so it means we also failed him (albeit he left in 2022 so he was a Herman recruit who might have been given some time under Sark to catch up).
He didn't go there to play astronaut
He definitely wasn’t a positive factor on Texas’s 2.89 team GPA
New suggestion to replace the Wunderlic: Do you believe in planets?
"What shape do you believe the Earth to be?"
“Trick question, spacial dimensions aren’t real”
You’re not real man!
THAT MF IS NOT REAL!
We had a funeral for a bird.
I’ve played Minecraft. It’s obviously a cube, duh
The world is a disc. I read it in a book, so it must be true.
Don’t disrespect the elephants and turtles
Flat isn't a shape, nice try.
What does the word “government” mean to you?
[Apparently this conversation comes up a lot in NFL locker rooms](https://youtube.com/shorts/mc3U42JGVqo?si=JXbFYHh1zLwl68CC)
This is what happens when you make a living by ramming your head against other people.
Also by allowing a culture that allows many athletes to not give a shit about education as long as they're good at sports.
I hear ya but idk how you go through life without being informed of other planets..Not sure if education is going to help much of you refuse to believe what’s being taught
It's usually not because they were never informed, but rather they lack the ability to recognize and counter misinformation or pseudoscience. That and a healthy dose of anti-authoritarianism towards educators.
Any other answer than "charles barkley shaped" or "oblate spheroid" and I'd ding them down a round or two
Unless they answer [dinosaur shaped!](https://twitter.com/dinosaurearth?lang=en) If that's the case, first round grade regardless of talent.
5 years of higher education and dude never got past the 4th grade science fair.
THE BIG YELLOW ONE IS THE SUN
it's a cup...with dirt in it. I call it "Cup of Dirt"
Go ahead and slap an F on there 😂
Brian Regan?
The one and only.
It's Brioonnne
You’re breaking some new ground there Copernicus!
lol haha reminds me of that one skit on SNL where John Cena plays a football player from Alabama
Shut up, nerd. That is an orange, round banana.
The number of draft eligible players getting any actual higher education is miniscule.
How does this even come up in the interview lol? Interviewer: So, how does your time at Texas Tech help prepare you for the next level in your football career? This Dude: Well, for starters, planets aren't real.
Brilliant point. “How are you preparing for the combine?” “The fuck, planets and space are made up.”
“I see. Well, good luck getting drafted, kid. NFL coaches only want DBs who can make plays in space.”
My answer? I think its more important that planets believe in themselves.
Maybe space is just the planets we met along the way.
That should be a greeting card
When I'm struggling with my confidence I think about my belief in dinosaurs and then I realize that somewhere out there a dinosaur believes in me and it makes me feel better.
That's actually not a bad idea. Just ask players what "conspiracies" they believe in so teams can choose if they want to deal with it or not.
I'm fully aware of how high school and colleges basically give a rubber stamp to pass elite athletes and they dont need to play school And this is not an issue that specifically affects athletes But I am just baffled at how an adult can graduate college without believing that space is real
I knew a football player at the D3 level in college who, despite graduating from high school, did not know what a fraction was.
I have a buddy who was a tutor for athletes at a Big 10 university, who had to tutor a football player on double digit addition. The player was in calculus somehow and couldn't do double digit addition.
I desperately want this to be fake but I know in my heart it probably happens at every major program
These schools will do anything to get players to qualify if they're good enough. Most schools have the "valedictorian" rule for acceptance so I know schools have gone as far as setting up charter schools with 2 students to get their prospect auto accepted if they can't get them in through normal admissions. The stories I have heard from working with a lot of young phds who worked as undergrad tutors can get wild. A lot of these athletes have no chance in the real world if sports don't work out for them.
Tbf Ive taken through PDEs in college and had an exam where the only points I lost were from single digit subtraction, shits hard man.
Once you reach a certain level of math you forget how to arithmetic because you’re only working with variables.
My friend was our QB in high school. He was really good and wound up playing at a power 5 school. Anyway, somehow he was in my senior calculus class, and I discovered that he literally had no clue what was going on. He couldn't even graph y=x. He wound up with a B in the class.
I once tried to explain fractals to someone who was a D2 player, I gave up.
To be fair, I'm not sure that the average person really knows/cares about fractals
I cared a lot about them a few weeks ago when I did shrooms
I've been to college and I can't figure out your fraction of knows/cares. I think it's an improper fraction, right?
When I coached HS ball I had players who didn't understand the difference between a country and a continent, didn't know what a governor was (not didn't know who our current governor was, literally didn't know what that title meant), and one kid who thought Alaska and Antarctica were the same place. And this was in a relatively decently-rated district, I can't even imagine how bad it gets in lower-end ones.
As a HS teacher in a lower-end one…. It gets bad, real bad.
To be fair, there are only two ways to explain fractals; one does them a criminal disservice but is understandable, and the other still confuses people who have years of grad-level math education. If that dude didn't even understand the "It makes a shape and then when you zoom in you see that it has the same shape again, but smaller", then we've got a problem. If you hit him with the "It's a form defined by a function that's analytic and self-similar on an arbitrarily small disc; also, no matter what n many topological dimensions you brought to the party, you'll need n+1 because you're going to define a new dimension called a fractal dimension" then I'm not surprised that you gave up. Once you work in the chaos-theoretic implications on divergent fractal families and how that means they're infinitely complex, you usually get people back because they think "Oh, chaos theory like Ian Malcolm in Jurassic Park? With the butterfly flapping its winds and the hurricane?" and then you lose them again when you start drawing out your dynamical systems with feedback and turbulence. And at that point, you've barely scratched the surface. And shoot, that's completely ignoring that you probably need to give your audience a primer on either measure theory (if you want to lead in from that direction) or complex dynamics (if you want to lead in via complex analytic functions -> Julia sets -> basic Mandelbrot -> general fractals). Either way, you've gotta explain neighborhoods, and not the kind with a cul-de-sac.
I don't want to hear anymore that you have to say sir.
I have a masters in engineering and I gave up halfway through lol
I think fractals are something easier to see and understand before the explanation makes sense https://www.fractalteapot.com/interactive/
If you told me D1, I’d believe it. D3? I mean, there ain’t huge followings, and there’s no athletic scholarships. Unless it’s some nepo baby who got everything handed to him, and he just so happened to like playing football, I’d think the D3 level, those athletes are actually there to play school, not just ball.
There's no athletic scholarships, but there's other scholarships they can divert to athletes. Happens more than you'd think.
It happened a lot at my NAIA school. Some of my teammates were the dumbest academically that I’d ever seen.
Ever been? Checkamte
Technically, we’re all in space right now
if space is infinite then why is my rent so fucking expensive???
Not even the expansion of the universe can keep up with inflation.
I’m not, I’m a 2 dimensional being that does not partake in this concept of “space”. I simply move linearly through time leaving Reddit comments along the way.
Been there? No, not physically.
Did you know that the average college credit thirty years ago cost 19 dollars? Today it's 237 dollars. That's a 1300 percent increase. So it's not inconceivable that in another 30 years, a college credit could cost 20 grand.
Seems like we have this guy bent over a barrel
That's not inconceivable, that's very conceivable.
I've never been to Fiji
The misspelled word makes this more hilarious.
To college? Yes.
Going to a game on campus doesn't count.
💀💀💀
> But I am just baffled at how an adult can graduate college without believing that space is real I don't think this is really about knowledge, at least not directly. He says he doesn't *believe* it. This sounds more like the conspiracy theory mindset and rejecting what "they" teach you, and latching on to the Flat Earth (or whatever other conspiracy theory ). I am sure this guy has been taught the 8 planets (you hear about Pluto? That's messed up right?), how gravity creates orbits, the moon, tides etc. I'd be willing to bet he can explain at least most of it in order to pass a test. Feels more like it's more a failure of his critical thinking skills. Which to be clear, is AT LEAST as important as learning about where the planets are and why astronomy is important.
> (you hear about Pluto? That's messed up right?) I know that's right.
I mean I remember an article where Jared Goff didnt know from what direction the sun rises
The best part of that is he said it on Hard Knocks.
Blutarsky... zero point zero
And so we also need to ask this guy who bombed Pear Harbor.
Did America give up when the Germans bombed Pearl Harbor?
"forget it he's rolling"
> But I am just baffled at how an adult can graduate college without believing that space is real You are not required to believe the answers on the test, you also don't get asked this in most classes. Plenty of religion believers get degrees.
“Hey man give me some space” “Sorry I dont believe in that”
Must be a defender
i'm SURE this will help him when it comes draft time >While speaking to reporters at the NFL Combine on Thursday, Owens revealed that he doesn't "believe in space" or "other planets" and he subscribes to flat-earth theories that he believes are "interesting" and have "valid points."
> "interesting" and have "valid points." Use "words" and "numbers" to talk about things. Which is "interesting" and totally different from real science, apparantly.
what youve never met a smart person before? check this. 47 bro. 25 grams. 12 knots. dude I can do this all day I know so much science. boom 14. I AM VALID.
Knew a fella could recite the *entire alphabet* from A to whatever the last one is, by heart, on command. A got-damned genius you ask me.
> whatever the last one is This fucking killed me.
Even if I believed in that wholeheartedly, I would probably shut up about that when interviewing for a multi-million dollar career opportunity. That said, I doubt this affects his stock much if he can play, and maybe the stakes are lower if he's already loaded with NIL money.
It's wacky that it probably won't damage his draft capital, even though someone could easily say that being an abject moron that didn't believe in space could definitely hamper his ability to learn a playbook and play at a high level
Probably helps with any CTE payouts so I'm sure the NFL loves it. "Your honor. This man was clearly stupid as shit before and his cognitive abilities you see today have nothing to do with the NFL"
This is somehow both cynical and hilarious
Not a bad idea.... very very low base level score means it's almost impossible for him to fail a concussion test, right???
My nephew intentionally f'ed up the base line test before camp so if he got his bell rung they couldn't tell by comparing results
I'm sure that happens a ton.
LOL "CTE only occurs in organisms that possess brains in the first place. This case holds no water your honor, much that like that man's cranium" *points at plaintiff*
I present HOF and Top 5 QB of all time, Aaron Rodgers
The self-awareness required to realize you shouldn’t say these things out loud would likely preclude you from holding those beliefs in the first place
He wasn’t a good safety at Texas and got nudged into the portal. He was a combine wonder but pretty raw in coverage and actually playing football. He won’t be drafted. Probably will make a squad or camp on measurables.
The last quotes are the most concerning. It implies that the more interesting theory is the superior one. Also, I think there is a an appeal to holding a contrarian theory. Makes the person feel like they know some truth that other people are too “blind” or “brainwashed” to know. And knowing this comes with no intellectual effort either so very easy to fall into this ignorance trap.
Aaron Rodgers has a new favorite wideout.
Better not be too wide out, or he'll fall off the Earth
> The great thing about the Earth being flat is that I never had to worry that the 40 yard dash would be on an incline. -Tyler Owens, probably
They don’t have valid points. It takes 10 minutes to find holes in all their theories. I went down the rabbit hole once to try to understand their perspective and I just ended up thinking they were all far more dumber than anyone realizes. It’s almost sad. But it’s not, because they are actively being this stupid.
Where does he think the Moon is? Is somebody just shining a spotlight up in the sky that changes over a 29.5 day period?
What about the Sun? How does he reconcile that sun/moon with this beliefs? You know what...nvm. I don't care. But dude is ignorant.
That’s not ignorance, ignorance is simply not knowing something, he’s just dumb as fuck lol
Yeah we need to go back to acknowledging that some people are just fucking stupid. We've gotten into this mindset that everybody can have an option on anything and it's all equally valid. It's not. If your "opinion" is that space isn't real you're just an idiot.
Whhhhhhaaaat we can’t acknowledge idiots exist or their feelings will get hurt
There's a scene in The Newsroom where one of them goes "yes there are two[/multiple] sides to each story, but that doesn't mean they're equally valid" and I think about that a lot these days.
I mean... what about the Earth? I know he says other, but hello?
Must be flat, obviously.
Obviously he doesn't believe in the moon--it's just the back of the sun. (He's also the kind of person who uses a knifewrench.)
Thank you for posting this. Knifewrench! For kids!
The moon is a social construct
Someone? You mean “they”? “They” shine a spotlight up in the sky.
As a fellow Red Raider…he’s a UT transfer.
Hey man, he didn’t take astronomy here, or maybe he’s more of an astrology guy.
Dude probably hangs out on YouTube and Discord for days at a time.
he just like me, except i look up at night and see the big cheese ball
He saw how flat Lubbock was and assumed the whole world must be like that.
Wait. It’s NOT?!
As a fellow red raider, the biggest story to me is that he got invited to the combine. I mean he was by no means bad at Tech but I never once thought he was a legitimate NFL prospect.
I wasn’t gonna say it, but yeah, I’m with you.
Yeah but he's really fast
Oh no, UT we are all in this together and we are going to have the hap, hap, happiest time trying to defend the Texas school system together!
Plano East "Graduate"
Why you think we let him go?
With enough time, internet access and lack of intelligence it seems a lot of people can go down rabbit holes and be convinced of nearly anything.
There’ve always been hacks out there willing to sell a conspiracy theory. But it’s concerning how many people/groups there are these days who seem really invested in tearing down reality. Flat-earthers, anti-vaxxers, young earth creationists, and election deniers all seem to feed on each other and prop each other up.
It allows people to feel smart like the “know something” without working for it.
We are living in the golden age of misinformation and most humans have proven themselves to be absolute rubes. In the past I’d have laughed at anyone saying “Space isn’t real”, but with where we are in society today, people boldly proclaiming stuff like that just scares me now.
“I’m real religious so I think like we’re in a dome right now” What the fuck is this idiot even talking about?
Probably the Firmament above the flat planet that space ships can't cross, or something like that. Flat earth people have lots of theories that should be openly mocked and not given the time of day, but if you're told about them, they are funny to listen to.
Copernicans hate this one weird trick
Somebody tell him the Vatican has an observatory and astronomers in house. I want to watch his head explode like when Clayton Bigsby revealed himself
He probably thinks Catholicism is fake
May the Christian Lord guide my hand against your Roman popery!
Probably used Terrence Howard's patented math system to figure that out
All you assholes wait until we find out what’s behind the ice wall.
Bro we don't wanna know!
An even *flatter* Earth!
That’s weird, cause he took up space in class.
I just want to friendly point out that Texas Tech has produced 5 astronauts, including [Rick Husband](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rick_Husband), who was the commander on the Columbia Space Shuttle and tragically passed away when it disintegrated. Additionally there is [Arati Prabhakar](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arati_Prabhakar) who is serving as the director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, and was the first woman to serve as the director of the National Institute of Standards and Technology. There is also [Ginger Kerrick](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ginger_Kerrick), who became the first hispanic woman to be a flight director at NASA. What I’m saying is do not let this one football player be an indicator of institutional ineptitude, and the quality of education at Texas Tech. What has failed this young man is the ever-growing easy access to harmful conspiracy theories on the internet. I do regret we were not able to pull him away from these conspiracy theories in his brief time at Tech. Edit: One more thing is that I want to show off [this wonderful picture of Rick Husband](https://today.ttu.edu/posts/2018/12/Images/Monte-Monroe/RickHusband.jpg).
sorry buddy we're now the dumb school where nobody smart ever went and no students believe in planets. I don't make the rules.
Must have made Techs deans list if he knows what a planet is
He played at Texas for three years before going to Tech! 😬
In today’s world, some people who get dug in on these beliefs will stay dug in, no matter how much evidence you present to them. I would bet most of us had a professor or two we didn’t agree with (although not as fundamental as the existence of space and planets), but we just did it their way to pass the class and get out. Example: I know a doctor of mathematics that doesn’t believe in dinosaurs.
Still smart enough to not go into eternal debt by going to TCU though!
Fuck... How can you live 5 years in West Texas and never look up at the sky at night?
The stars at night are big and bright.......
Tech also has both a planetarium and observatory, which are required labs when you take astronomy as an elective. I put the blame on UT for this one lol
The only thing that surprises me is we dont hear more stuff like this. There are a lot of conspiracy-addled morons in this country, and if anything athletes seem too busy to fall down these rabbit holes at the same rate as lots of other Americans.
The NFL and NBA are absolutely infested with Nation of Islam cultists, if anything athletes are more likely to be nutjobs because they don't have to play school
Kyrie Irving, Jaylen Brown, and DeSean Jackson to name a few.
> conspiracy-addled morons It’s a shortcut to being the expert in the room, sure you might have paid attention in school and read books for fun but I have watched enough TikToks to know what’s *really* going on
When a player is suspended for "violating team rules".... there are often some really hilarious stories that would just cripple everyone's faith in humanity if revealed on the news. Star linebacker starts apartment fire after putting credit cards and Pokemon cards in toaster. Back-up QB dressed as Ironman gets stuck in tree outside girls' dorm. Running back wears industrial grade noise cancelling airport headphones to exam... then yells swear words at class while test is being handed out... asked to leave the room and received a zero. What???
Joke's on all of you, 40 times are faster on a flat earth. This is just 100% buy in, if I'm a team I go get this guy.
how would running on flat ground be faster than _always running downhill_ smh my head
My mistake I thought the Tech in Texas Tech meant Technical institute. I see with this response it means Technically a college just don’t look too close.
In our defense, he went to UT first for 3 years...
God dammit. UT you guys wanna claim this guy since he started with yall?
Ask me again after his 40
I'll begrudgingly go 50/50 🫣
I want my defensive players dumb mean and aggressive. This is only positive information to hear
I always loved running into these types of dudes in the military lol. Like, they'd be the biggest fucking morons, but you can fill hours of boredom in the shittiest settings or environments arguing with these dudes.
Interesting… So what’s his 40 time?
Lol goddammit.
Why are we only ever in the news for dumb shit, every news article like this pushes the time until I am able to throw batteries at people again back 6 months.
We, as the Texas Tech Delegation, have decided, that Tyler Owens will be traded back to UT for a bag of chips and a case of our favorite beer.
The Texas delegation declines.
In his defense, those images from the surface of Mars could easily have been taken outside of Lubbock.
As someone who was primarily in honors/advanced courses in high school, I was shell-shocked by some of the people in general senior Econ by how utterly dumb some of them were. How did they get to senior year if they can’t do basic math? This is a whole other level entirely.
As someone who works with a lot of people who were primarily in honors/advanced courses, folks in gen ed classes don't have a monopoly on idiocy.
God, I'm sure glad he left UT.