How tall is Drew Olson? It depends.
By Andrew Finley
Dec. 1, 2005 9:00 p.m.
Drew Olson is officially listed at 6-foot-3, and with the season
he’s had, he could just as well be 7-foot-8.
Nevertheless, I always thought it strange that during my brief
chats with the UCLA quarterback, I never had to lift my chin to
make eye contact. You see, I’ve always considered myself to
be 6-foot-1, based on what the doctor’s office says. So every
time I approached Olson, I couldn’t figure out how someone
two inches taller than me actually looked about my height.
Earlier this season, I asked media relations director Marc
Dellins for permission to check a couple of Bruins’ heights
with a tape measure. Dellins gave me this look a father would give
a son who asked for the keys to the Ferrari on his 16th
birthday.
“No, you’re making a big deal out of something that
isn’t,” Dellins said, which I sort of took as a
compliment since I didn’t really know my columns were such a
big deal.
Dellins told me the athletic department just uses the numbers
given to them by the strength and conditioning staff at the
beginning of the season. The players are measured without cleats,
helmets, or stilts for that matter. Seeing the magic this group
seemingly did with some of the Bruins, I tried getting in touch
with the strength and conditioning staff to see whether it could
size me up and hopefully proclaim me a couple inches taller.
An unreturned phone call and rejected interview request later,
I’m still standing at 6-foot-1, wishing I played a big-time
sport so the media could talk up my inflated height and girls could
be impressed by it.
Olson has this luxury of course, and so on Tuesday, I asked him
about the subject, figuring he didn’t have anything better to
talk about during rivalry week.
“I’m not 6-foot-3,” he said matter-of-factly,
proceeding to tell me that the officially listed heights are always
bumped up a little.
This was something I’d always suspected, and it was
awfully nice of Olson to be so candid about it. I pressed further,
asking Olson whether the added inches are intended to impress
scouts or other watchful parties.
“Probably, but it really doesn’t matter,” he
said, looking very disinterested with my line of questions.
“I don’t even think about it.”
Sensing he wasn’t in the mood for an extended discussion
on the ethics of height deviation, I started asking about the big
game and what it would take to beat USC. But I still remained
curious about why teams feel compelled to boost their
athletes’ heights in media guides.
Needless to say, it’s not just UCLA that pulls these kinds
of shenanigans. The practice appears to be rampant across all major
colleges and at the professional level. And it’s seemingly
more common in basketball, where height actually indicates which
positions athletes will play or whether they’re even big
enough to play at all.
Taller players are thought to be more marketable and taller
teams are considered stronger, all else equal. The thing that
stumps me is that if every team adds an inch or two onto its
athletes, no one is better off than if the true heights were used.
It all comes across like a silly political experiment, with teams
testing to see how much deception they can get away with before
losing credibility.
I tried getting in touch with some NFL and NBA scouts regarding
this matter, but didn’t get any response. Maybe the stature
of this newspaper just isn’t tall enough.
E-mail Finley your favorite tall tale at
[email protected].
