Greg McElroy is smarter than you.

Well, maybe not, considering this paper’s audience, but the Rhodes finalist and Alabama quarterback notched a near-perfect score in the Wonderlic, the timed test given to NFL prospects to try and gauge intelligence and problem-solving ability. The participant has 12 minutes to solve 50 questions. Only once has a player scored a (verified) 50—Harvard’s Pat McInally in the 1970s. McElroy’s 48, leaked this weekend, would place him right at the top of active NFL players. (Try it yourself. I did. McElroy beat me.)

Rarely do we hear stories like this. The occasional brainiac scores 40-plus, but often, the tales are of incomprehensibly low totals. Vince Young, who would go on to be the No. 3 pick in the 2006 draft, tallied six points on his first attempt at the Wonderlic. Jeff George, a top overall selection, scored 10 points, just beating out Sebastian Janikowski, who managed to get nine points.

In a football sense, this can mean very little. One can demonstrate intelligence on the field even if he can’t figure out logic problems. Dan Marino, who owns just about every passing record imaginable, scored a whopping 16 points on the Wonderlic. Needless to say, studies have shown that this test is not predictive of gridiron success.

But there is a larger, educational, non-football point to be made. Fanhouse’s Clay Travis makes it: “All Wonderlic scores should be public. And if you’ve been eligible at a school four years and test sub-literate, your school should lose ‘ship.”

There’s a lot to look at in that tweet, so let’s unpack it.

First, Wonderlic scores are kept private and released only when a writer finds a good source or the player broadcasts his result. Second, a score below 10 indicates “literacy problems.” It makes sense: without climbing on too high of a pedestal, many of the questions are so basic to understand (and solve) that unless there is a legitimate issue reading the problem, it’s hard to imagine that anyone with, ostensibly, a college education would be able to get them wrong.

Putting aside people with legitimate and serious learning disabilities for a moment, let’s look at what Travis is saying. Theoretically, the “student” comes before “athlete,” and if a university’s goal is to educate, then it must follow through—even with people who wouldn’t be there if not for their skills with a pigskin. We could use up every inch of this broadsheet (and many, many more) detailing the academic travesties that come with big-time college football, from admitting students who barely qualify to rampant cheating and plagiarism to athletes being suspended, routinely, for being unable to meet minimum scholastic requirements. Too often, “student” does not come before “athlete.” Coaches will pay lip service to the idea but rarely practice what they preach, mainly because there is no person or mechanism there to stop them.

Which leads us to the final clause of the tweet: penalties—in this case, in the form of a lost scholarship—for not properly educating your athletes.

I love it.

Schools don’t need to make every football player a rocket scientist. But players should at least be at basic literacy levels. It is the lowest of low bars. And if they can’t surpass it—again, excluding actual disabilities and not just stupidity—then there is something fundamentally wrong with the way their institution has gone about educating them. The institutions should be punished accordingly.

To make it work, the Wonderlic would have to be given to all graduating players, not just the ones who are trying to make it in the NFL. An NCAA-mandated exit exam, if you will. The Wonderlic itself is not perfect, but it does test the crucial part of the collegiate experience: analytical skills. University education is less about learning straight facts—hello, high school—and more about developing problem-solving techniques and the ability to think critically. The Wonderlic’s value is in its examination of those proficiencies, even as many of its questions appeal to the lowest common denominator.

Let’s be clear. This isn’t about public shaming and embarrassment (of players). It’s about ensuring that universities fulfill the most rudimentary goals of education. If they cannot do that, they ought to be called on it and lose a scholarship for every player they, as an institution, failed.

I’d like to see the school that protests. If you can’t prove that your athletes can read, you don’t deserve to field a checkers team, much less a full squad of football players.

Wyndam Makowsky won’t release his Wonderlic score, but sources are reporting it’s an even, prime number. Discuss your score at makowsky “at” stanford.edu.