Re: blunderkind, wunderkind ...

A fairly accurate summary, but I'd like to
question one point and add another:

"Burnout - If
you're a good player in high school, you probably spent
at least some time memorizing stuff."

I'm not
sure about that. I, for one, have never memorized
facts specifically in order to play QB. 

In
addition, there's the entire "generalists v. specialists"
problem. A lot of the point-scoring in high-school
competitions is done by players who know a bit of everything
and not a great deal of anything, and (most
importnatly) know it quickly. They can do this because a) HS
questions tend to be based on more "general" knowledge than
college questions, especially the early clues (which
mostly require a specialist to answer); b) the presence
of "category killers" -- players who are only
effective in one field, but are murderously skilled in that
field -- is much more common in college, especially due
to the use of majors in study; and c) the amount of
knowledge required to compete in all (or at least most)
fields in high school might conceivably be gained by a
high school student, but it would not be feasible for
much of anyone to do the same at the college level,
and especially early in college. (Vik Vaz is a
notable exception.) Most effective college players, and
especially most effective underclassmen, have one or two
fields where they can compete with anyone, and usually
at least one or two fields where they're almost
completely helpless. 
In short, being a generalist in
high school is like being a basketball center in
college: you may be good against the competition you find
there, but there's a good chance you're not tall enough
for the NBA.

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