1 Brandon Glover Mrs.

Fuentes English 1101 11/8/13

Footballs secret language

Football is thought by many to be the most difficult and time-consuming sport because in order to play and play well, it requires ones total commitment . Green Hope is a high school in Cary, North Carolina with a football team with a colorful history. Their football team is the community that is observed and interviewed for this ethnography. Over the years those who play the sport have created their own language to describe the plays, strategies and other behaviors that surround it. Players who want to stay ahead of their competition are constantly trying to get faster, stronger, and bigger. The Green Hope High School football is a team on the rise. They are a dedicated and focused team, constantly striving to improve themselves. Head coach Kwame Dixon said his players are only allowed to take a total of 5 to 6 weeks off a year. During the summer, the whole team travels together to a grueling week-long training camp in Fayetteville to focus on nothing but football. No cell phones or computers are allowed on this trip.

While at camp the team will practice up to 3 times per day, with the first practice bright and early at five in the morning. All this time spent together turns the players into a family. Throughout the week the players will get pissed off at

2 Brandon Glover Mrs. Fuentes English 1101 11/8/13 each other as evidenced by the hard hits, illegal holding and verbal animosity during practice, but then comes the Thursday walk through. Walk throughs are a light practice where the special teams, defense, and offense will practice plays and formations without wearing pads. During these walk throughs the players come together and become serious and focused because the big game is just a little over 24 hours away. This is the time when they are fine tuning themselves to make sure everything is just right for Friday night. This is when players start to turn back into family mode. Its like the eve before a battle says Chad Stewart, a senior linebacker for Green Hope. Everyone knows that it takes everyone on the team to win a game, I have the person next to mines back just like I know they have mine. You will hear words and expressions like High hat, flats, zone, coverage, lake, river, sack, interception, on the hop, get on your heese, fumble, fair catch, and PAT at the Green Hope High school football practice and Friday night games. Along with the lexi there were the inside jokes and the nicknames that were used to address players as if they were printed on their birth certificates. Some of the words are universal to the sport and have been used for decades. Some of these words can be heard on tv channels like ESPN and Fox news during a college or NFL Football game.(espn.com)

3 Brandon Glover Mrs. Fuentes English 1101 11/8/13 After spending time around the high school football team, the players all learn that on the hop means to do something with speed, while get on your heese means that you have to start running or sprinting for whatever your doing whether its during conditioning or walking off the field to go grab a vary needed drink of water. Chad explained. Chris shared that, W here we get water is from a few big 50 gallon barrels in some type of metal basket with four wheels. We call each one a buffaloe and when theyre all connected its the buffalo heard. There are words in this community that are nicknames to things not even really related to the sport itself. Just like a family, the nicknames and lexi for each other and what they do are not the limitation to the different amount of lexi.

At the beginning of every Green Hope Football practice, the players are expected to get into 10 straight lines even before all the coaches are out on the practice field. While they are in those ten lines they do their aerobic warm up and stretching. Following that, they jog out and separate onto every 5 yard line to start their stationary stretches. The captain of the team then yelled out Green! and the rest of the team yelled back Hope!, then the whole team all together yelled Falcons!. All four of the captains began creating a beat from hitting their thigh pads. Following the captains lead, the rest of the team joined in to make the whole field roar with the beating of their thigh pads and team unity.

4 Brandon Glover Mrs. Fuentes English 1101 11/8/13 Unity is a huge key to every team sport and forms the foundating of a winning team. This is illustrated through the movie Remember the Titans, which is based off of a true story of a high school football team in Virginia. In the beginning they were a newly racially integrated school and the team was separated by their hatred of one anothers differences. The team eventually came together and made it all the way to the state championship game. They walked into the stadium at the beginning of the championship game in lines chanting to a beat made by banging their thigh pads. All football teams have different and unique ways which they create and communicate their unity. These same traditions were exhibited by a number of different cultures including the Indians and Samoans. The Samoans Siva Tau was a traditional war dance that they would perform before entering into battle. (Livingheritage.org). The Native American Indians also had a numerous amount of war dances. A few of the Native American war dances were the Wolf Dance, Fancy Bustle, and the LakotaSiouxomaha dance. (legendsofamerica.com).

Defense up! yelled the coach when it was time for the defense to go out on the field. Once the defensive players got out onto the field they all turned around and looked back towards the defensive coordinator, Coach Dixon, for the call. When they got the word, they proceeded to set up in the right defensive positions without Coach Dixon even saying a word. The defensive play call was

5 Brandon Glover Mrs. Fuentes English 1101 11/8/13 given to the players through a set of 3 hand signals. The first hand signal was to tell the defensive backs (safeties and cornerbacks) and the linebackers what coverage was to be played. The second hand signal in the set was to tell the defensive lineman what to do. The last hand signal of the set was the blitz call. A blitz is when a linebacker or defensive back goes to sack the quarterback after the snap of the play instead of dropping back into coverage. There are a lot of coverages, lineman stunts, and blitzes, so there are a lot of hand signals all the defensive players have to learn. Said Chad Stewart. Just like Green Hope High School, Fuquay Varina High school, one of Green Hopes rival schools, had a completely different and unique set of hand signals for the coaches to get play calls in. The offense for Green Hope had their own set of communication themselves. Their way of getting play calls in to the offensive players was through huge laminated posters with pictures on them. There were 4 different pictures on each poster, which correlated to the formation of the offense and the type of play they were about to run. Every offensive player also had a wrist-band which had all the plays and play numbers written down on them. They had these so if any of them were confused as to what their job was, they could just look at the wristband for the play color and number. Discourse communities require mastery of certain special terminology or jargon. Green Hope Football is one of these groups as successful involvement

6 Brandon Glover Mrs. Fuentes English 1101 11/8/13 on this team requires the knowledge of an incredible amount of lexi. The secret lanquage of football is very specialized and complex. The language is specialized to position, behavior and identity. The secret language of football is so diverse and specialized it will never be fully known or completely documented.

7 Brandon Glover Mrs. Fuentes English 1101 11/8/13 MLA citation Living Heritage, . N.p.. Web. 8 Nov 2013.<http://www.livingheritage.org.nz/School Stories/History-of-the-Manu-Samoa/The-Siva-Tau>. Weiser, Kathy. "Native American Dances - History and Information - Page 3." Native American Dances - History and Information - Page 3. Legends of America, n.d. Web. 08 Nov. 2013.

Weinfuss, Josh. "Defense to Recovers to Slow Jags to Crawl." Web log post. Espn.go.com. ESPN, 17 Nov. 2013. Web. 17 Nov. 2013.