Frak. New at using it. Here's the first chunk (there would be about two more the same size in order to post all of it). I'll gladly post the rest if anyone is interested in the rest, but don't want to post huge amounts of text otherwise.
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Into the Endzone for a Touchdown: A Psychoanalytic Consideration of American Football
Alan Dundes
In college athletics it is abundantly clear that it is football which
counts highest among both enrolled students and alumni. It is al-
most as though the masculinity of male alumni is at stake in a given
game, especially when a hated rival school is the opponent. College
fund-raisers are well aware that a winning football season may prove
to be the key to a successful financial campaign to increase the
school's endowment capital. The Rose Bowl and other post-season
bowl games for colleges, plus the Super Bowl for professional foot-
ball teams have come to rank as national festival occasions in the
United States. All this makes it reasonable to assume that there is
something about football which strikes a most responsive chord in
the American psyche. No other American sport consistently draws
fans in the numbers which are attracted to football. One need only
compare the crowd-attendance statistics for college or professional
baseball games with the analogous figures for football to see the
enormous appeal of the latter. The question is: what is it about
American football that could possibly account for its extraordinary
popularity?
In the relatively meager scholarship devoted to football, one
finds the usual array of theoretical approaches. The ancestral form
of football, a game more like Rugby or soccer, was interpreted as
a solar ritual-with a disc-shaped rock or object supposedly repre-
senting the sun1-and also as a fertility ritual intended to ensure
agricultural abundance. It had been noted, for example, that in
some parts of England and France, the rival teams consisted of mar-
ried men playing against bachelors.2 In one custom, a newly-mar-
ried woman would throw over the church a ball for which married
men and bachelors fought. The distinction between the married
and the unmarried suggests that the game might be a kind of ritual
test or battle with marriage signifying socially sanctioned fertility.3
The historical evolution of American football from English
Rugby has been well documented,4 but the historical facts do not
in and of themselves account for any psychological rationale leading
to the unprecedented enthusiasm for the sport. It is insufficient to
state that football offers an appropriate outlet for the expression of
aggression. William Arens has rightly observed that it would be an
oversimplification "to single out violence as the sole or even primary
reason for the game's popularity."5 Many sports provide a similar
outlet (e.g., wrestling, ice hockey, roller derby), but few of these
come close to matching football as a spectacle for many Americans.
Similarly, pointing to such features as a love of competition, or the
admiration of coordinated teamwork, or the development of spe-
cialists (e.g., punters, punt returners, field goal kickers,
etc.) is not convincing since such features occur in most if not all sports.
Recently, studies of American football have suggested that the game
serves as a male initiation ritual.6 Arens, for example, remarks
that football is "a male preserve that manifests both the physical
and cultural values of masculinity,"7 a description which had pre-
viously been applied, aptly it would appear, to British Rugby.8
Arens points out that the equipment worn "accents the male phy-
sique" through the enlarged head and shoulders coupled with a
narrowed waist. With the lower torso "poured into skintight pants
accented only by a metal codpiece," Arens contends that the result
"is not an expression but an exaggeration of maleness." He com-
ments further: "Dressed in this manner, the players can engage in
hand holding, hugging, and bottom patting, which would be dis-
approved of in any other context, but which is accepted on the
gridiron without a second thought."9 Having said this much, Arens
fails to draw any inferences about possible ritual homosexual as-
pects of football. Instead, he goes on to note that American foot-
ball resembles male rituals in other cultures insofar as contact with
females is discouraged if not forbidden. The argument usually
given is one of "limited good."10 A man has only so much energy
and if he uses it in sexual activity, he will have that much less to
use in hunting, warfare, or in this case, football. I believe Arens and
others are correct in calling attention to the ritual and symbolic
dimensions of American football, but I think the psychological im-
plications of the underlying symbolism have not been adequately
explored.
Football is one of a large number of competitive games which in-
volves the scoring of points by gaining access to a defended area in
an opponent's territory. In basketball, one must throw a ball
through a hoop (and net) attached to the other team's backboard.
In ice hockey, one must hit the puck into the goal at the opponent's
end of the rink. In football, the object is to move the ball across
the opponent's goal into his endzone. It does not require a great
deal of Freudian sophistication to see a possible sexual component
in such acts as throwing a ball through a hoop, hitting a puck
across a "crease" into an enclosed area bounded by nets or cage,
and other structurally similar acts. But what is not so obvious is
the connection of such sexual symbolism with an all-male group
of participants.
Psychologists and psychoanalysts have not chosen to examine
American football to any great extent. Psychologist G. T. W.
Patrick writing in 1903 tried to explain the fascination of the
game: "Evidently there is some great force, psychological or so-
ciological at work here which science has not yet investigated"; but
he could offer little detail about what that great force might be."1
Similarly, psychoanalyst A. A. Brill's superficial consideration of
football in 1929 failed to illuminate the psychodynamics of the
game.12 Perhaps the best known Freudian analysis of football is
the parody written originally in 1955 in the Rocky Mountain Her-
ald by poet Thomas Hornsby Ferril, using the pseudonym Childe
Herald, but the essay is more amusing than analytic. Actually his
interpretation tends to be more inclined towards ritual than psy-
choanalytic theory. He suggests "football is a syndrome of religious
rites symbolizing the struggle to preserve the egg of life through
the rigors of impending winter. The rites begin at the autumn
equinox and culminate on the first day of the New Year with great
festivals identified with bowls of plenty; the festivals are associated
with flowers such as roses, fruits such as oranges, farm crops such as
cotton and even sun-worship and the appeasement of great reptiles
such as alligators."13 While he does say that, "Football obviously
arises out of the Oedipus complex," he provides little evidence
other than mentioning that college games are usually played for
one's Alma Mater, which he translates as "dear mother." Actually,
a more literal translation would be nourishing mother (and for
that matter, alumnus literally means nursling!).
A more conventional psychoanalytic perspective is offered by
Adrian Stokes in his survey of ball games with special reference to
cricket. Stokes predictably describes football [soccer] in Oedipal
terms. Each team defends the goal at their back. "In front is a new
land, the new woman, whom they strive to possess in the interest
of preserving the mother inviolate, in order, as it were, to progress
from infancy to adulthood: at the same time, the defensive role is
the father's; he opposes the forward youth of the opposition."14
Speaking of Rugby football, Stokes proposes the following descrip-
tion: "Ejected out of the mother's body, out of the scrum, after
frantic hooking and pushing, there emerges the rich loot of the
father's genital." According to Stokes, both teams fight to possess
the father's phallus, that is, the ball, in order to "steer it through
the archetypal vagina, the goal."15 Earlier, Stokes had suggested
the ball represented semen though he claimed that "more generally
the ball is itself the phallus."16 Folk speech offers some support for
the phallic connotation of a ball. One thinks of "balls" for testicles.
A man who has "balls" is a man of strength and determination. To
"ball" someone is a slang expression for sexual intercourse.17 On
the other hand, while one might agree with the general thesis that
there might be a sexual component to both soccer and American
football, it is difficult to cite concrete evidence supporting Stokes's
contention that the game involves a mother figure or a father surro-
gate. If psychoanalytic interpretations are valid, then it ought to be
possible to adduce specific details of idiom and ritual as documen-
tation for such interpretations. It is not enough for a psychoanalyst
to assert ex cathedra what a given event or object supposedly sym-
bolizes.
I believe that a useful way to begin an attempt to understand the
psychoanalytic significance of American football is through an ex-
amination of football folk speech. For it is precisely in the idioms
and metaphors that a clear pattern of personal interaction is re-
vealed. In this regard, it might be helpful first to briefly consider
the slang employed in the verbal dueling of the American male. In
effect, I am suggesting that American football is analogous to male
verbal dueling. Football entails ritual and dramatic action while
verbal dueling is more concerned with words. But structurally
speaking, they are similar or at least functionally equivalent. In verbal dueling, it is common to speak about putting one's opponent
"down." This could mean simply to topple an opponent figura-
tively, but it could also imply forcing one's adversary to assume a
supine position, that is, the "female" position in typical Western
sexual intercourse. It should also be noted that an equally hu-
miliating experience for a male would be to serve as a passive re-
ceptacle for a male aggressor's phallic thrust. Numerous idioms at-
test to the widespread popularity of this pattern of imagery to de-
scribe a loser. One speaks of having been screwed by one's boss or
of having been given the shaft. Submitting to anal intercourse is
also implied in perhaps the most common single American folk
gesture, the so-called digitus impudicus, better known in folk
parlance as the "finger." Giving someone the finger is often ac-
companied by such unambiguous explanatory phrases as "Fuck
you!," "Screw you!," "Up yours!," or "Up your ass!."
Now what has all this to do with football? I believe that the same
symbolic pattern is at work in both verbal dueling and much ritual
play. Instead of scoring a putdown, one scores a touchdown. Cer-
tainly the terminology used in football is suggestive. One gains
yardage, but it is not territory which is kept in the sense of being
permanently acquired by the invading team. The territory invaded
remains nominally under the proprietorship of the opponent. A
sports announcer or fan might say, for example, "This is the deepest
penetration into (opponent's team name) territory so far" [my
emphasis]. Only if one gets into the endzone (or kicks a fieldgoal
through the uprights of the goalposts) does one earn points.
The use of the term "end" is not accidental. Evidently there is a
kind of structural isomorphism between the line (as opposed to
the backfield) and the layout of the field of play. Each line has two
ends (left end and right end) with a "center" in the middle. Simi-
larly, each playing field has two ends (endzones) with a midfield
line (the fifty yard-line). Ferril remarked on the parallel between
the oval shape of the football and the oval shape of most football
stadiums,18 but I submit it might be just as plausible to see the
football shape as an elongated version of the earlier round soccer
or Rugby ball, a shape which tends to produce two accentuated
ends of the ball. Surely the distinctive difference between the shape
of a football and the shape of the balls used in most other ballgames.
PSYCHOANALYSIS OF AMERICAN FOOTBALL
(e.g., baseball, basketball, soccer) is that it is not perfectly spheri-
cal. The notion that a football has two "ends" is found in the
standard idiom used to describe a kick or punt in which the ball
turns over and over from front to back during flight (as opposed
to moving in a more direct, linear, spiraling pattern) as an "end
over end" kick.
The object of the game, simply stated, is to get into the oppo-
nent's endzone while preventing the opponent from getting into
one's own endzone. Structurally speaking, this is precisely what is
involved in male verbal dueling. One wishes to put one's opponent
down; to "screw" him while avoiding being screwed by him. We
can now better understand the appropriateness of the "bottom
patting" so often observed among football players. A good offen-
sive or defensive play deserves a pat on the rear end. The recipient
has held up his end and has thereby helped protect the collective
"end" of the entire team. One pats one's teammates' ends, but one
seeks to violate the endzone of one's opponents!
The trust one has for one's own teammates is perhaps signalled
by the common postural stance of football players. The so-called
three point stance involves bending over in a distinct stooped posi-
tion with one's rear end exposed. It is an unusual position (in terms
of normal life activities) and it does make one especially vulnerable
to attack from behind, that is, vulnerable to a homosexual attack.
In some ways, the posture might be likened to what is termed
"presenting" among nonhuman primates. Presenting refers to a
subordinate animal's turning its rump towards a higher ranking or
dominant one. The center thus presents to the quarterback-just as linemen do to the backs in general. George Plimpton has de- scribed how the quarterback's "hand, the top of it, rests up against the center's backside as he bends over the ball-medically, against
the perineum, the pelvic floor."19 We know that some dominant
nonhuman primates will sometimes reach out to touch a presenting
subordinate in similar fashion. In football, however, it is safe to
present to one's teammates. Since one can trust one's teammates,
one knows that one will be patted, not raped. The traditional
jok- ing admonitions of the locker room warning against "bending over
in the shower" or "picking up the soap" (which would presumably
offer an inviting target for homosexual attack) do not apply since one is among friends. "Grabass" among friends is understood as
being harmless joking behavior.
The importance of the "ends" is signalled by the fact that they
alone among linemen are eligible to receive a forward pass. In that
sense, ends are equivalent to the "backs." In symbolic terms, I am
arguing that the end is a kind of backside and that the endzone is
a kind of erogenous zone. The relatively recently coined terms
"tight end" and "split end" further demonstate the special em-
phasis upon this "position" on the team. The terms refer to whether
the end stays close to his neighboring tackle, e.g., to block, or
whether he moves well away from the normally adjacent tackle,
e.g., to go out for a pass. However, both tight end and split end
(cf. also wide receiver) could easily be understood as possessing an
erotic nuance.
I must stress that the evidence for the present interpretation of
American football does not depend upon just a single word. Rather,
there are many terms which appear to be relevant. The semantics
of the word "down" are of interest. A down is a unit of play insofar
as a team has four downs in which to either advance ten yards or
score. A touchdown, which earns six points, refers to the act of an
offensive player's possessing the ball in the opponent's endzone.
(Note it is not sufficient for the player to be in the endzone; it is the
ball which must be in the zone.) In a running play, the ball often
physically touches the endzone and could therefore be said to
"touch down" in that area. However, if an offensive player catches
a pass in the endzone, the ball does not actually touch the
ground.
The recent practice of "spiking" the ball, in which the successful
offensive player hurls the ball at the ground as hard as he can,
might be construed as an attempt to have the football physically
touch down in the endzone. In any case, the use of the word
"touch" in connection with scoring in football does conform to a
general sexually symbolic use of that term. The sexual nuances of
"touch" can even be found in the Bible. For example, in 1 Corin-
thians 7:1-2, we find "It is good for a man not to touch a woman.
Nevertheless to avoid fornication, let every man have his own wife"
(cf. Genesis 20:6, Proverbs 6:29). Touching can be construed as an
aggressive act. Thus to be touched by an opponent means that one
has been the victim of aggression. The game of "touch football"
(as opposed to "tackle" football) supports the notion that a mere act of touching is sufficient to fulfill the structural (and psychologi-
cal) requirements of the basic rules. No team wants to give up a
touchdown to an opponent. Often a team on defense may put up a
determined goal-line stand to avoid being penetrated by the oppo-
nent's offense. The special spatial nature of the endzone is perhaps
indicated by the fact that it is not measured in the one hundred
yard distance between the goal lines. Yet it is measured. It is only
ten yards deep; a pass caught by an offensive player whose feet are
beyond the end line of the endzone would be ruled incomplete.
Additional football folk speech could be cited. The object of the
game is to "score," a term which in standard slang means to engage in sexual intercourse with a member of the opposite sex. One
"scores" by going "all the way." The latter phrase refers specifically
to making a touchdown.20 In sexual slang, it alludes to indulging
in intercourse as opposed to petting or necking. The offensive team
may try to mount a "drive" in order to "penetrate" the other team's
territory. A ball carrier might go "up the middle" or he might "go
through a hole" (made by his linemen in the opposing defensive
line). A particularly skillful runner might be able to make his own
hole. The defense is equally determined to "close the hole." Line-
men may encourage one another "to stick it to 'em," meaning to
place their helmeted heads (with phallic-symbolic overtones) against
the chests of their opposite numbers to drive them back or
put them out of the play.
A player who scores a touchdown may elect to "spike" the ball by
hurling it down towards the ground full force. This spiking move-
ment confirms to all assembled that the enemy's endzone has been
penetrated. The team scored upon is thus shamed and humiliated
in front of an audience. In this regard, football is similar to verbal
dueling inasmuch as dueling invariably takes place before one or
more third parties. The term "spike" may also be germane. As a
noun, it could refer to a sharp-pointed long slender part or projec-
tion. As a verb, it could mean either to mark or cut with a spike
(the football would presumably be the phallic spike) or to thwart
or to sabotage an enemy. In any event, the ritual act of spiking
serves to prolongate and accentuate the all too short moment of
triumph, the successful entry into the enemy's endzone.
The sexual connotations of football folk speech apply equally to
players on defense. One goal of the defensive line is to penetrate
the offensive line to get to the quarterback. Getting to the offensive
quarterback and bringing him down to the ground is termed "sack-
ing" the quarterback. The verb "sack" connotes plunder, ravage,
and perhaps even rape. David Kopay, one of the few homosexuals
participating in professional football willing to admit his preference
for members of the same sex, specifically commented on the nature
of typical exhortations made by coaches and others:
"The whole language of football is involved in sexual allusions.
We were told to go out and "fuck those guys"; to take that ball
and "stick it up their asses" or "down their throats." The coaches would yell, "knock their dicks off," or more often than that, "knock
their jocks off." They'd say, "Go out there and give it all you've got,
a hundred and ten per cent, shoot your wad." You controlled their
line and "knocked" 'em into submission. Over the years I've seen
many a coach get emotionally aroused while he was diagramming
a particular play into an imaginary hole on the blackboard.
His face red, his voice rising, he would show the ball carrier how he
wanted him to "stick it in the hole."21"
The term rape is not inappropriate and in fact it has been used to
describe what happens when an experienced player humiliates a
younger player, e.g., "That poor kid, he was raped, keelhauled, he
was just destroyed. . . ."22 Kopay's reference to "jock" as phallus is
of interest since jock is a term (short for jockstrap, the article of
underapparel worn to protect the male genitals) typically used to
refer generally to athletes. Calling an athlete a "jock" or a "strap"
thus tends to reduce him to a phallus. A "jocker" is used in hobo
slang and in prison slang to refer to an aggressive male homosex-
ual.23 (The meaning of jock may well be related to the term
"jockey" insofar as the latter refers to the act of mounting and rid-
ing a horse.)
Some of the football folk speech is less obvious and the interpre-
tation admittedly a bit more speculative. For example, a lineman may be urged to "pop" an opposing player, meaning to tackle or
block him well. Executing a perfect tackle or block may entail
placing one's helmet as close as possible to the middle of the op-
ponent's chest. The specific use of the verb "pop" strongly suggests
defloration as in the idiom "to pop the cherry" referring to the
notion of rupturing the maidenhead in the process of having inter-
course with a virgin.24 In Afro-American folk speech, "pop" can
refer to sexual penetration.25
To "pop" an opponent thus implies reducing him to female-victim status. Much of the sexual slang makes it very clear that the winners are men while the losers are women or passive homosexuals. David Kopay articulates this when he says, "From grade school on, the curse words on the football field are about behaving like a girl. If you don't run fast enough to block or tackle hard enough you're a pussy, a cunt, a sissy."26
By implication, if a player succeeds, he is male. Thus in the beginning
of the football game, we have two sets or teams of males. By the
end of the game, one of the teams is "on top," namely the one
which has "scored" most by getting into the other team's "end-
zone." The losing team, if the scoring differential is great, may be
said to have been "creamed."
It is tempting to make something of the fact that originally the
inner portion of the football was an inflated animal bladder. Thus
touching the enemy's endzone with a bladder would be appropriate
ritual behavior in the context of a male homosexual attack. How-
ever, it could be argued that the bladder was used simply because
it was a convenient inflatable object available to serve as a ball.
If the team on offense is perceived in phallic terms, then it is the
quarterback who could be said to be nominally in charge of di-
recting the attack. In this context, it may be noteworthy that a
quarterback intending to pass often tries to stay inside of the
"pocket," a deployment of offensive players behind the line of
scrimmage designed to provide an area of maximum protection.27
A pants pocket, of course, could be construed as an area where
males can covertly touch or manipulate their genitals without be-
ing observed. "Pocket pool," for example, is a slang idiom for fondling the genitals,28 an idiom which incidentally may suggest something about the symbolic nature of billiards. The quarterback, if given adequate protection by his "pocket," may be able to "thread the needle," that is, throw the ball accurately, past the hands of the defensive players, into the hands of his receiver. The metaphor of threading the needle is an apt one since getting the thread through the eye of the needle is only preparatory for the
act of "sewing." (Note also that "to make a pass" at someone is a
conventional idiom for an act of flirtation.) Once the ball is in his
possession, the receiver is transformed from a passive to an active
role as he tries to move the ball as far forward as possible.
While it is possible to disagree with several of the interpretations
offered of individual items of folk speech cited thus far, it would
seem difficult to deny the overall sexual nature of much of football
(and other sports) slang. The word "sport" itself has this connota-
tion and has had it for centuries. Consider one of Gloucester's early
lines in King Lear when he refers to his bastard son Edmund by
saying "There was good sport at his making" (I,i,23) or in such
modern usages as "sporting house" for brothel29 or "sporting life"
referring to pimps and prostitutes.30 In the early 1950s, kissing was commonly referred to by adolescents as a "favorite indoor sport," presumably in contrast to outdoor sports such as football. It should also be noted that "game" can carry the same sexual connotation as sport.31
I have no doubt that a good many football players and fans will
be sceptical (to say the least) of the analysis proposed here. Even
academics with presumably less personal investment in football
will probably find the idea implausible if not downright repugnant
that American football could be a ritual combat between groups of
males attempting to assert their masculinity by penetrating the
endzones of their rivals. David Kopay, despite suggesting that for
a long time football provided a kind of replacement for sex in his
life and admitting that football is "a real outlet for repressed sexual
energy,"32 refuses to believe that "being able to hold hands in the
huddle and to pat each other on the ass if we felt like it" is neces-
sarily an overt show of homosexuality.33 Yet I think it is highly
likely that the ritual aspect of football, providing as it does a socially
sanctioned framework for male body contact-football, after all,
is a so-called "body contact" sport-is a form of homosexual be-
havior. The unequivocal sexual symbolism of the game, as plainly
evidenced in folk speech coupled with the fact that all of the par-
ticipants are male, make it difficult to draw any other conclusion.
Sexual acts carried out in thinly disguised symbolic form by, and
directed towards, males and males only, would seem to constitute
ritual homosexuality.
Evidence from other cultures indicates that male homosexual
ritual combats are fairly common. Answering the question of who
penetrates whom is a pretty standard means of testing masculinity
cross-culturally. Interestingly enough, the word masculine itself
seems to derive from Latin mas (male) and culus (anus). The impli-
cation might be that for a male to prove his masculinity with his
peers, he would need to control or guard his buttocks area while at
the same time threatening the posterior of another (weaker) male. A good many men's jokes in Mediterranean cultures in Italy and in Spain) center on the culo.
That a mass spectacle could be based upon a ritual masculinity
contest should not surprise anyone familiar with the bullfight.
Without intending to reduce the complexity of the bullfight to a
single factor, one could nonetheless observe that it is in part a battle
between males attempting to penetrate one another. The one who
is penetrated loses. If it is the bull, he may be further feminized or
emasculated by having various extremities cut off to reward the
successful matador. In this context, we can see American football
as a male activity (along with the Boy Scouts, fraternities and other
exclusively male social organizations in American culture) as be-
longing to the general range of male rituals around the world in
which masculinity is defined and affirmed. In American culture,
women are permitted to be present as spectators or even cheer-
leaders, but they are not participants. Women resenting men's
preoccupation with such male sports are commonly referred to as
football widows (analogous to golf widows). This too suggests that
the sport activity is in some sense a substitute for normal hetero-
sexual relations. The men are "dead" as far as relationships with females are concerned. In sport and in ritual, men play both male
and female parts. Whether it is the verbal dueling tradition of the
circum-Mediterranean34 in which young men threaten to put op-
ponents into a passive homosexual position, or the initiation rites
in aboriginal Australia and New Guinea (and elsewhere) in which
younger men are subjected to actual homosexual anal intercourse
by older members of the male group,35 the underlying psychological rationale appears to be similar. Professional football's financial
incentives may extend the playing years of individuals beyond late
adolescence, but in its essence American football is an adolescent
masculinity initiation ritual in which the winner gets into the
loser's endzone more times than the loser gets into his!
University of California
Berkeley, California
