Brain power

New ranking of America's smartest cities puts Dallas in the middle of the class

The Dallas metro is smack-dab in the middle of America's smartest cities.

Photo by Utamaru Kido/Getty Images

Dallas sits in the middle of the class when it comes to the smartest metro areas in the U.S., according to a new study.

In the study, published by personal finance website WalletHub, the Dallas-Fort Worth area ranks 71st among the most-educated metros. While it sits in the middle of nationwide list, Dallas is one of the higher-ranked Texas metros, trailing Austin-Round Rock (No. 9) and outperforming Houston (No. 90) and San Antonio-New Braunfels (No. 106) on the 150-metro list. At the very bottom of the list are McAllen (No. 148) and Brownsville (No. 149).

DFW's ranking remains unchanged from WalletHub’s 2018 study.

To determine where the most-educated Americans live, WalletHub compared the 150 largest metros across 11 metrics. That data includes the share of adults 25 and older with at least a bachelor’s degree, the quality of public schools, and the gender gap in education.

Here’s how DFW fared across some of the data categories (lower ranking is better):

No. 44 — Black-versus-white education gap
No. 47 — Share of adults with at least a bachelor’s degree
No. 58 — Quality of public schools
No. 67 — Share of adults with an associate’s degree or college experience
No. 67 — Average quality of universities
No. 68 — Share of adults with a graduate or professional degree
No. 77 — Students enrolled in top 951 universities per capita
No. 83 — Women-versus-men education gap
No. 131 — Share of residents with a high school diploma

The most educated metro in this year's ranking is Ann Arbor, Michigan. Visalia-Porterville, California, though, sits at the bottom of the list as the nation's least educated metro.

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Cowboys news

Mike McCarthy reportedly out as head coach of the Dallas Cowboys

Photo by Sam Hodde/Getty Images

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Mike McCarthy is not returning as coach of the Dallas Cowboys, who are going on three decades since their last Super Bowl title, a person with knowledge of the decision told The Associated Press on Monday, January 13.

The person spoke to the AP on condition of anonymity because a decision hasn’t been announced. They said Cowboys owner Jerry Jones and McCarthy agreed to part ways.

The coach’s contract expired following a 7-10 season. Dallas was 12-5 each of the three years before that, but still hasn’t been past the divisional round of the NFC playoffs since its last Super Bowl at the end of the 1995 season.

McCarthy’s contract expired January 8 and the Cowboys have an exclusive negotiation window through Tuesday, but the parties have decided to split ahead of the deadline.

At least one other NFL team asked during that time about talking to the 61-year-old coach who won a Super Bowl with Green Bay.

Next season will be the 30th for the Cowboys since winning the last of their five Super Bowl titles during the 1995 season. They haven’t even been past the divisional round of the NFC playoffs since then.

Before taking the Dallas job after a full season out of coaching, McCarthy was with the Packers for 13 seasons and had a 125-77-2 record from 2006-18. He was 10-8 in the playoffs and led Green Bay to a Super Bowl title won at AT&T Stadium, the home of the Cowboys, 14 years ago.

There were also three other NFC championship games for McCarthy in Green Bay, and that is what Jones envisioned — and more — when he hired the coach in 2020 after Jason Garrett never got that far in his 10 years.

Jerry Jones at the Cardinals game Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones is on the hunt for a winning head coach. Photo courtesy of Dallas Cowboys

McCarthy finished with a 50-38 record in Dallas, including a 1-3 mark in the playoffs. That included last season, when the Cowboys were NFC East champions and had won 16 consecutive home games before trailing by 32 points in the fourth quarter of a 48-32 wild-card loss to the seventh-seeded Packers.

Dallas played the final nine games this season without franchise quarterback Dak Prescott because of a torn hamstring. Top receiver CeeDee Lamb, seven-time Pro Bowl guard Zack Martin, cornerback Trevon Diggs and rushing defending DeMarcus Lawrence also finished the season on injured reserve.

Garrett had the franchise’s second-longest coaching tenure. Hall of Fame coach Tom Landry was the coach for the Cowboys’ first 29 seasons, the same number of seasons they have now gone since winning a Super Bowl. Jones fired two-time Super Bowl winner Landry when he bought the Cowboys before the 1989 season.

Only 12 NFL coaches have more career regular-season wins than McCarthy’s 174, which is still far behind Don Shula’s record 328. The only active coaches with more wins than McCarthy are Andy Reid (302 wins over 29 seasons) and Mike Tomlin (183 wins in 18 seasons).

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