Tag Archives: Football

Pregame Prayer (Evan Hecimovich)

General info:

  • Type of Lore: Verbal/Customary/Material
  • Language: English
  • Country of Origin: United States
  • Informant: N.G.
  • Date collected:11/4/2021

Informant Data: N.G. is a 5th year Senior at North Central College in Naperville, Illinois. He has lived in Naperville his entire life. While playing for Naperville North High School, he would play one game a year at his current team’s stadium.

Context:

Cultural: North Central is a very successful division 3 football program with a national championship on their record from 2019. It is a private Christian university. The teams head coach takes the schools religious background very seriously.

Social: William Shatzer was a member of the North Central College class of 1942 where he was an All-American football player. He had an opportunity to go the NFL, but with the entrance of the USA into World War 2, he volunteered for the Navy Air Corp. in 1944 he was shot down over the Pacific and never seen again.

Item: Before each game, the team heads out the statue of William Shatzer that stands outside the entrance to the locker room. Here the coach speaks about the sacrifice Shatzer made and they take a moment of silence to reflect. After this the team is led in a prayer by the head coach.

Transcript: “Before every game we head out to this statue of someone who played here in the 40’s and was a fantastic player with a chance to go the league. Instead, he joined the Military and went MIA. Here our coach talks about selflessness, and we have a chance to reflect. He then leads us in our pregame prayer.”

Informant comments: “I think its really about being selfless. Here you have this guy that had a great opportunity for his future but gave it up to fight for something bigger than himself.”

Shower Games (Evan Hecimovich)

General info:

  • Type of Lore: Customary, Games
  • Language: English
  • Country of Origin: United States
  • Informant: A.L.
  • Date collected:10/29/2021

Informant Data: A.L. graduated from Valparaiso University in 2019 after playing four years of football. He is originally from Lisle, Illinois where he grew up with his two parents and sister. A.L. has always been a large individual for his age and began football in the 4th grade. A.L. and his friends growing up would often play tackle football without pads in the park, which is where he first discovered his passion for the game.

Context:

  • Cultural: Valparaiso is a division 1 FCS football program. They typically do not win most of their games. Valparaiso is in the non-scholarship Pioneer League and most of the players are playing for the love of the game. It is a private Catholic University in Indiana.
  • Social: With Valparaiso traditionally not a winning program, the occasions in which they win games are very special. Players get especially excited over wins. The team enjoys celebrating these wins together in the locker room.

Item: Following a victory, players head into the locker room as they usually do and after some initial celebrations, begin to get in the showers. In the showers, several upperclassmen will cut to the front of the line with only their helmets on. The people in the shower will spray their soap in the middle of the shower and turn their showerheads so they are spraying the middle of the shower. The upperclassmen will then slide through the middle of the showers into the far wall.

Transcript: “After we win and talk with our coaches, we head to the locker room to celebrate. Everyone begins to take their stuff off following the game. The seniors put on their helmets and head to the shower. The people in the showers already spray their soap in the middle of the showers to make it slippery. So, then the seniors slide down the middle of the showers sort of like a slip n slide into the wall at the end.”

Informant Comments: As wins are not come by that often, the celebration with your teammates afterwards makes it that much more special.

Club Dub (Evan Hecimovich)

General info:

  • Type of Lore: Customary, Dances
  • Language: English
  • Country of Origin: United States
  • Informant: M.A.
  • Date collected:11/8/2021

Informant Data: M.A. is a member of the class of 2021 at Amherst College where he plays football. He returned for the 2021 season after the Covid-19 Pandemic cancelled his senior season. He is originally from Cheshire Connecticut where his father is a high school football coach. Being the son of a football coach, the sport has always been a huge part of his life and upbringing.

Context:

  • Cultural: Being a division 3 school, there are no scholarships for athletics. The athletes on these teams are playing primarily for fun and their love of the sport. M.A. plays for this reason and believes many of his teammates share his passion. Amherst is a competitive school in their collegiate division.
  • Social: A handful of individuals on the team are from Illinois and therefore fans of the Chicago Bears. In 2018 the Chicago bears started a tradition where they would hire a DJ, have colorful lights set up, and have a dance party amongst the team following wins both home and on the road. Videos of these celebrations were often posted to the internet and spread widely.

Item: Following a victory, Amherst celebrates with their own version of “Club Dub”. Someone on the team, typically a senior or captain, takes control of the speakers and plays music in the locker room. Another individual (or a few) will flip the lights in the locker room on and off rapidly to create a sort of strobe light. Others will take their phones out and flip the flashlights on and off to add to the light show. In this environment the teammates dance and celebrate their win together.

Transcript: “We do a sort of celebration after each of our wins. We call it Club Dub and it’s based on the Club Dub that the Chicago Bears are known to do. It started in 2018 when the Bears started doing it and someone on the team brought it up and thought it would be a fun way for our program to celebrate victories. We obviously don’t have the same funding as an NFL team so we just have one of the old guys take aux and create the light effect by flashing the lights on and off in a strobe and using phone lights. “

Informant’s comments: It is a fun way to celebrate a win and let loose with teammates after a hard week of preparation and game.

Freshman Conditioning (Evan Hecimovich)

General info:

  • Type of Lore: Customary, Initiation Rite
  • Language: English
  • Country of Origin: United States
  • Informant: E.W.
  • Date collected: 11/2/2021

Informant Data: E.W. is a 2/021 graduate of Butler University where he played football from 2017-2019. He played running back and was transitioning to cornerback before Covid-19 cancelled the season

Context:

  • Cultural: Butler is a private university in Indiana. While the Basketball team is well known for its national success, The football plays in the FCS non-scholarship Pioneer Football League.
  • Social: The item serves as a rite of initiation that every upperclassman had gone through at one point. It enables bonding through shared experiences and humor. It is done with harmless intentions and everyone has a good laugh about it afterwards.

Item: The upperclassmen would tell the Freshman they were going to run sprints early in the morning. As a rite of passage, the Freshman had to go to the locker room and put on all their pads and gear. Everyone would line up to begin the sprints, and as they began, the upperclassmen would fall behind and leave the field. The Freshman would continue running downfield for up to 100 yards before realizing it was all a joke.

Transcript:” So during camp each year we convince the freshman we are going to do extra conditioning led by the upperclassmen. This is during camp when the days are very long already. We get them early in the morning and tell them they have to go into the locker room and put on their pads for it as a sort of initiation thing. Once they come out, we line up for sprints and start. At the start of the sprint we all just go kind of slow and then stop and let the freshman continue to sprint as we all just leave the field and go back to our rooms. Some of them go the whole field before noticing we’re gone. “

Group 6 Introductory Post

For our group’s project, we decided to focus on football locker room traditions across the country. With the majority of the group members being football players themselves, this topic was particularly important to us. We made sure to focus on locker room traditions for both current and former football players. We made sure that we found folklore that was performed by two or more members of a team in a locker room because a defining characteristic of folklore is that it is shared among a group of “folk”. Our group had six total members and collected thirty pieces of folklore from thirty different sources. We interviewed both current and past football players from across the country. The interviewees spanned from 18 to 37 years old from a variety of schools across the country. Our interviews focused on specific locker room traditions at each school along with the potential meaning behind the tradition.

The folklore that we collected spanned a wide range of customary, material, and verbal folklore with a majority of items collected being fight songs and post-win traditions. Overall, there were a few interesting findings that our group took away from the collection process. The first takeaway is that despite the wide range of ages interviewed, traditions did not seem to change very much. Most of the traditions that were collected had been in practice for as long as anyone on and within the team remembers. Additionally, we found that most of these traditions were learned upon each interviewee’s arrival to their university and it was primarily the job of upperclassmen to continue to pass the tradition. Football is the ultimate team sport in which many times over one hundred individuals come together to achieve one common goal. Each player’s job is unique in and of itself but it’s the culmination of all the players that allows for a team to be successful. Therefore, some of the common overarching themes that we took away from the collected traditions were to invoke school pride, foster comradery, and take ownership of the locker room. In addition, football is both a mentally and physically taxing sport so some more themes that we found included providing motivation to compete and initiating an individual into the team.

As a group, we really enjoyed the collection process and hope you both enjoy and learn something from our collection. See the attached file for the presentation we have in class on 11/10/21.

Jersey Toss (Zack Bair)

  1. General Info
    1. Locker room tradition
    2. Informant: Vittorio Tartara 
    3. Place of Origin: Red Bank, New Jersey
    4. Customary Lore
  2. Informant Data
    1. Vittorio is a 21-year-old senior student at Monmouth University in New Jersey. Prior to attending Monmouth as a student, Vittorio played football at Red Bank Catholic High School from 2014 until 2018. Vittorio is originally from Monroe Township, New Jersey. 
  3. Contextual Data
    1. Following Red Bank Catholic football games, the players throw all of their jerseys into a big pile in the middle of the locker room, which are later collected to be sent out to be cleaned. 
  4. Item
    1. Following every Red Bank Catholic High School football game, a large pile of dirty jerseys is made in the center of the locker room in order for the jerseys to be collected and cleaned later. After victories, the coach would come into the locker room and talk to the players. After the coach’s speech is finished and the staff leaves the locker room, older players on the team would convene and choose any player that had a particularly good game, regardless of age. Once decided, a group of players will grab the selected player and throw them into the pile of dirty jerseys and even more jerseys are thrown on top of the player. 
Red Bank Catholic (Red Bank, NJ) Athletics
  1. Informant comments
    1. “I’m not sure how it started but it was something we also looked forward to doing after every win. Obviously it sucks to be thrown into a pile of disgusting, used jerseys, it was also seen as an honor cause it meant the other players on the team acknowledged how well the selected player had done in the win.”
  2. Collector’s Name: Zack Bair

Locker Room Cleanup (Zack Bair)

  1. General Information
    1. Informant: Conor Smith
    2. Place of Origin: New Haven, Connecticut
    3. Tradition, Customary Lore
  2. Informant Data
    1. Conor is currently a 21-year-old senior on the Yale University football team. Conor is originally from Red Bank, New Jersey and attended Red Bank Catholic High School where he played football. 
  3. Contextual Data 
    1. The Yale University football team based this tradition off of a similar tradition done by the New Zealand All Blacks, the most dominant international rugby team in history. Also, the Yale football team only elects a single captain per year, making it one of the highest honors bestowed upon any player on the team. 
  4. Item
    1. In the Yale Football team, there is a locker room tradition that after every practice or game, two players stay behind to help clean the locker room. The first player that stays behind every time is the captain of the team. The second player is one who is chosen by the coaches as someone who had a particularly good game or practice, or exhibited tremendous effort. 
Yale Welcomes 24 New Bulldogs to the Gridiron - Yale University
  1. Informants Comments
    1. “It is seen as the highest honor to be able to clean for the team which is why the captain also does it every day. It’s an honor in the sense that it is selfless and puts the team before yourself.”
  2. Collector’s Name: Zack Bair

“Ten Thousand Men of Harvard” (Zack Bair)

  1. General Info
    1. Verbal Lore
    2. Place of Origin: Cambridge, Massachusetts
    3. Informant: Nasir Darnell
  2. Informant Data
    1. Nasir is currently a 22-year-old graduate senior on the Harvard University football team. Nasir is originally from Matawan, New Jersey and attended Red Bank Catholic High School.
  3. Contextual Data
    1. The song “Ten Thousand Men of Harvard” originated at Harvard in the year 1918. Composed by Charrles Putnam. The song is generally sung by the Harvard Glee Club at its annual joint concert with the Yale Glee Club prior to the famous Harvard-Yale rivalry game.  
  4. Item
    1. Just as the Harvard Glee Club sings “ten Thousand Men of Harvard” before games, the Harvard football team also sings the famous song following wins. The lyrics go:

Ten Thousand Men of Harvard want victory today

For they know that ov’r old Eli

Fair Harvard holds sway.

So then we’ll conquer all old Eli’s men,

And when the game ends we’ll sing again:

Ten thousand men of Harvard gained vict’ry today.

  1. Informants comments 
    1. “‘ Ten Thousand Men of Harvard’ holds an important place with not just the football team singing it in the locker room after wins, but with the entirety of the Harvard community. I remember when the band performed the song in Harvard Yard my freshman year, that was my first exposure to it.” 
  2. Collector’s Name: Zack Bair

UPenn Jersey Switch (Zack Bair)

  1. General Info
    1. Place of Origin: Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
    2. Informant: Jaden Key
    3. Senior Tradition, Customary Lore
  2. Informant Data
    1. Jaden Key is a 20-year-old male attending the University of Pennsylvania. Jaden is currently a junior on the UPenn football team. Jaden is originally from Neptune, New Jersey, and attended Red Bank Catholic High School. 
  3. Contextual Data
    1. Senior football players typically have some sort of tradition to celebrate the final practice at their school. 
  4. Item
    1. On the final practice of the season for the UPenn football team, senior players will trade practice jerseys with other seniors just for the day. Many times, smaller players with the smallest jersey sizes will trade with the biggest players on the team, adding a comedic element to the tradition. 
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  1. Informant Comment
    1. “It’s a tradition that has been at UPenn way before I got here and most likely will continue after. I’m looking forward to participating in the jersey swap next year on my final practice when I am a senior next year.” 
  2. Collector’s Name: Zack Bair

Brush Every Time (Tanner Palocsik)

Title: Brush Every Time

General Information about Item:

  • Genre: Magic Superstition, Homeopathic
  • Language: English
  • Country of Origin: United States
  • Informant: D. E.
  • Date Collected: 11-3-21

Informant Data:

  • D.E. is a 20-year-old student athlete at Dartmouth College in the class of 2024. He is from Arizona and is on the Track and Field team where he participates in the javelin throw. He played many sports growing up and kept the same mindset for his performance through them all.

Contextual Data:

  • Cultural Context: D.E. grew up under a lot of influence from his coaches. He takes a lot of pride in their advice and tries to be like them. He played a lot of sports growing up and was always taught to respect what they taught him and always work his hardest.
  • Social Context: D.E. has been doing this since high school. He picked it up from a coach that told him many great players have done and do this superstition. It is meant to give him performance powers and he does the superstition right before putting on his last piece of equipment (hat or helmet) or right before he heads out to his competition surface.

Item:

  • The item here is a superstition that D. E. has performed since high school. He takes a brush to his hair before putting his hat on during his meet. Even if he doesn’t wear a hat, he still brushes his hair back.

Associated file (a video, audio, or image file):

Transcript:

  • “When I was 15, I was a freshman in high school and one of my coaches told me that an old superstition in the sport of football is, if you brush your hair back under your helmet, you’ll be faster than every guy on the field. I’m not sure where this came from or where he learned it, but he passed the info on to me. I don’t play football anymore, but I still perform in the Javelin throw for Dartmouth. So, before every meet, I still brush my hair back into my hat with the belief that it will give me a great performance. At this point it is more so just a habit of tradition and I don’t really believe that it makes me perform better.”

Informant’s Comments:

  • He doesn’t think that this really changes anything but practices it out of habit of the tradition. It’s a force of habit for him at this point and on a side note he also told me he plans to pass this down to his kids or a younger teammate someday.

Collector’s Comments:

  • This is a great superstition. I think that everyone has their own unique performance techniques that can help them, but they don’t always have some supernatural power. Maybe this is one of those. I think Derek may just do this out of respect for his old coach now.  

Collector’s Name:

Tanner Palocsik

Dartmouth College

Russia 013 Fall 2021

Professors Apresyan and Gronas