
From Sid Hartman's "Patience, not firing, needed by Gophers"
September 30, 2010
Jottings
Former Vikings center Matt Birk, now with the Baltimore Ravens, was named The Sporting News' sixth-smartest athlete last week. An economics major at Harvard, the former Cretin-Derham Hall standout scored 34 out of a possible 36 on his ACT college entrance exam. Asked to name the smartest teammate he ever had, Birk told the magazine, "Robert Smith was pretty smart, and Pete Bercich with the Vikings. He and Robert used to have crazy discussions about physics, the fourth dimension. They might as well have been speaking another language."