Football Jargon

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Ariana from Washington, D.C.

Hi, Ariana. How are you doing?

Hey.

Doing well. How are you?

Oh, we’re all great here.

What’s going on?

Well, I’ve been watching a lot of football recently, because we’re really right in the middle of football season.

-huh.

And there’s always things that the announcers say that sort of bother me.

And they sort of, it depends, you know, from season to season what they are.

But recently, I’ve been hearing a lot of the word multiple used in a weird way.

So, for example, they’ll say, they’ll call a team multiple, like the Patriots offense is very multiple, or that player is very multiple.

And that just seems weird to me.

It seems weird to me, too.

What do they mean by it?

I think what they mean is that they have, like, multiple, like, for example, they’d say that an offense is multiple, meaning that they have multiple attacks.

Or they have multiple, you know, threats.

Or that, like, you know, a quarterback who can pass and throw is multiple, because he can do multiple things.

So he’s a multiple threat.

That’s right.

Okay.

Interesting.

Yeah, multiple in that use goes back at least 50 years.

It used to be that you would just describe a multiple offense or a multiple defense, and it meant that a team had a variety of formations that they could use to win, you know, to get control or to score and that sort of thing.

But you’re suggesting that it’s gone just a little bit further than that, and now they describe the team itself as being multiple or a player even as being multiple?

That’s what I’ve heard.

It seems a little weird to me.

It’s okay. It is okay because multiple as an adjective can mean varied or having a lot of components or parts.

And that’s what’s being said here, right?

Yeah.

And it’s odd also because it’s jargon. It’s new to you. It’s inside language from this sport.

Football or any sport is basically a gigantic in-group, as they say in linguistics, of people with one like interest.

And they have all this cohesive language that they speak to each other that is strange and weird to outsiders.

And you found a piece of it.

Exactly.

Ariana, I mean, Grant has many, many talents.

I do?

Yeah, but I wouldn’t call…

Please list them.

It would take too long.

But I would never call you multiple.

No, no.

I might start now.

So it’s limited to sport.

I mean, it’s not even in soccer, right?

Interesting.

I don’t think so.

Not as far as I know.

Interesting.

Well, Ariana, you must be hearing a lot of language.

Is there anything else that jumps out at you?

The other thing that has come up a lot this season, and this season in particular, because, you know, I’ve been watching for a couple seasons, and, you know, I get the hang of some of the terms.

But this one has totally just cropped up, and the term is pick six.

So when I first heard it, I thought it was very clever, because what it refers to is an interception that’s returned for a touchdown.

An interception is a pick, and then when you return it for a touchdown, you score six points.

So pick six.

Makes perfect sense.

I thought it was kind of clever.

And then I heard it again, and again, and again.

And then every time that there was any opportunity to say something like that, it comes up.

Like every broadcast, you’d hear this at least, you know, many more times than you would actually have interceptions.

Just because they like saying it.

They like saying it.

And so, you know, when I first heard it, I was like, oh, that’s kind of clever.

And I, you know, asked my husband about it.

And he was like, oh, yeah, I think that’s been around for a little while.

You know, he says that he’s read about it when he was reading, you know, sports blogs a couple years ago.

But all of a sudden this year, it’s just kind of exploded.

It’s multiple.

Yeah, it is multiple.

I was just wondering where it came from.

I’m going to put on my white coat and my stethoscope and diagnose you with a couple of illnesses.

And they are perhaps the recency illusion and the frequency illusion.

Okay.

Oh, my God.

You better lie down.

I know.

It’s actually wine and chocolate and cake are the cures.

So that’s good.

But what happens is we hear something that strikes us as novel or interesting.

And then our brain is somehow heightened to this.

And it’s kind of in our forefront.

And it’s like it kind of dominates our language filter.

And everywhere we go, we notice every instance of it.

And it seems to be more recent or more frequent than it really is.

Pick six has been around at least 20 years, probably more than that.

Yeah, absolutely.

I’ve never heard it.

Yeah, it’s pretty standard stuff in the business because, frankly, it’s an exciting moment in a football game when there’s an interception and they score on the interception.

It’s amazing.

So it always gets talked about when it happens.

But the reason that you’re noticing it, A, you’re new to football, and B, you’ve got this new, shall we call it a fascination with football language.

And so I think that you’re just a little, you know, you’re just more attuned to it now.

It’s like when you have a baby, I don’t know if you have children, but when you do, your brain suddenly becomes babified and everything is about the baby.

Everything that you say, do, see, buy, hear, read, all of it is about the baby.

It’s kind of like that, only in a small dose.

Are you sure it’s not actually more frequent?

No, I’m not sure.

Okay.

But it doesn’t look like it.

I mean, I’d have to look at the stats, and sports are stats, Rich.

Somebody could tell us if there are more pick sixes than there used to be, and then that would mean probably there’s more language about it.

Well, I hope, I mean, I hope we helped you a little bit with this.

No, this is wonderful. Thank you so much.

The best remedy for all this language stuff, by the way, is just to not watch football.

Turn down the sound.

Well, that’ll happen soon enough.

You know, it’s football season.

I’ve got to immerse myself, and then it’ll be over.

All right.

Thanks for calling.

Thanks so much.

Bye-bye.

Bye.

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