Michael Miller

Psychology 115W

Joe Lappin

9-24-02

Got Football on the Brain

Another bullet of sweat rolls down his already drenched face. The heat inside his helmet rises still as the game progresses. The pain of his jammed wrist is felt distantly, but he pushes it from his thoughts. He turns to his teammates and relays the play that the coach wants run. Each player goes to his position, and they clear all thoughts from their heads. The opposing team lines up, and the entire defense, his teammates, have but a few mere seconds to recognize the offense’s formation and its possible plays. The ball is snapped, every muscle contracts into action, and the play is over within a few short seconds. The athletes reset their thoughts and mentally prepare to do it all over again.

Football is a unique; it is the only sport where eleven people with eleven different brains have to come together to function as a single unit. Machines work in much the same way. A machine is designed with hundreds of different parts in such a way that all the parts function together to achieve a goal. A football team is designed in the exact same way except that each of these parts has a brain. The greatest problem that faces a team is discovering how to set aside the individuality of each player to create a single unit with a unified purpose. This study will analyze how a football player uses his innate language ability to communicate on the field, and it will outline how these athletes are able to dissolve the “self” in such a way as to create a “piece of the machine.”

Language is a key to the game that many people overlook when observing. Pinker states, “Language is not a cultural artifact that we learn the way we learn to tell time or how the federal government works. Instead, it is a distinct piece of the biological makeup of our brains[i].” The idea that language is innate rather than taught is something that is evidenced by any football team. A personal example: every week my coach and three other players, including myself, were given Monday night to decide what the hand signals were going to be for calling in the plays the following game. Each Tuesday, all three of us would somehow come back with the same hand signals for over ¾ of the calls. Without collaboration, we three would create the same symbols because of humans’ natural language instinct to express ideas in the simplest way possible.

Language in football extends beyond the coach’s signals to his players. Once sent in signals must be relayed by the captains to the rest of the players, and oft times the calls must be altered only moments before a play begins. Pinker states that, “Language…is universal among human societies…Though languages are mutually unintelligible, beneath this superficial variation lies the single computational design of Universal Grammar…[ii]” Football players who announce actions for their teammates to carry out must also be able to do so in a very limited time frame. There has never been a guide to grammar during the fourth quarter of a football game, but all team and team leaders seem to follow the same set of rules for any situation. In football, the player addressed must first be named for the player to quickly realize a change that he is going to have to make. Secondly, the shortest possible way of communicating a shift or audible must be made so that a) the player has time to react to the call and set up and b) the player addressed has no thought time in the process. Instinct is key in football, and the language instinct is just one way in which players must use their instinct to improve their game.

From using the innate ability of the brain, language to function better in the game we know move to suppressing the natural tendencies of the brain to express itself. Everyone has that little voice inside their head that tells them what to do. To simplify, Damasio says, “Consciousness is, in effect, the key to a life examined, for better and for worse, our beginner’s permit into knowing…[iii]” This “self” or consciousness is the part of the brain that reasons and does the “thinking” that so naturally comes to us. This part of the brain is vital to a football player during training. A player must be taught what to do in certain situations, but he must understand why it is that he does this. His consciousness or self allows him to reason what actions he should take in a given circumstance. The week prior to a game is focused entirely on the player’s “self” and its ability to solve the puzzles set before him. The mark of a great player is one who can think and deduce what he should do before he is told. The “self” is able to determine, using both emotion recorded from the coach, and from logic taken from experience exactly what should be done when faced with a new offensive or defensive set.

A football player now knows the signals for the game, and he understands the how and why of his position, but the hardest part is still to come. When a football player steps onto the field, the “self” as we know it melts away. There is no thinking individual; there is now only the piece of machinery that was mentioned earlier. A football player relies totally on instinct in a game because thought takes time, and time is a luxury with which he is not blessed. Wolfe coined several terms for the “self” including “the mind, the soul, the self, free will…[iv]”A football player must remove all of these from his being, because in football there are no choices, and much as a trained dog is practiced in attack at a key word, a football player must be able to act at a single footstep from the opposing team.

Arguments arise that there is no way to just “dissolve” the self whenever it is felt necessary, but then sleep is a good example. There are no thought processes or actions such as decision making going on while someone sleeps. It is therefore logical that if the self can simply disappear with sleep, than it is also able to shut off in other given situations. A football player is trained to know that there is no “I” in “Team,” and that individual problems cannot be allowed to affect the play of the team. Pain is something that must be cast from the mind when it arises. Pain can only be felt after the game. The part of the brain that says, “Wait!! This is not going to be good for the body,” is shut down entirely so that for 2 hours a human being can put himself through anything to see a scoreboard with a victorious number on his side.

Football, the “jock” sport, may actually have its reasons for being known for its less then intelligent athletes. Throughout their lives, football players actually practice shutting down their thinking and deductive skills to replace them with the instincts that are instilled in all of us. Many find these instincts barbaric, but what served on the battlefield also serves those that battle on the gridiron today. Soldiers destroy their sense of self in battle, and emergency medical personnel must suspend their self in a situation where thought is a costly time-consuming process.

There is something that helps the mind prepare for its shut down of the “soul.” Sullivan raises a good point with his statement, “…testosterone was originally favored in human evolution to enable successful hunting and combat. It kicks in, like adrenaline, in anticipation of combat, mental or physical, and helps you prevail.[v]” This theory explains why there is a psychological change to accompany the raised level of testosterone that pumps through the blood streams of athletes before they compete. Football, being one of the most similar sports to what a war without guns mike look like, creates an almost carnal, barbaric readiness as if each player is ready to step upon a real battlefield and fight for his cause. A testosterone boost works as a catalyzing agent for the systematic shutdown of the part of the brain rendered for decision making.

If a player has trained very well, and he knows his actions in every circumstance, his instincts will be fantastic. Since speed and quickness are key in football, even that split second for recognition of a play or a formation is essential to defending or executing a play correctly. If thinking exists on the part of a football player, it is to be done off the field either before or after a game. The brain is used as a receptacle of knowledge which a player draws on without thought; therefore, everything done by the player is programmed in and takes no time to process.

Football is truly a great sport that does involve every aspect of the brain from language to learning to instinct. Those who can’t employ all three are lacking severely in what is an important part of the game. The brain must be able to adapt from week to week, taking on new information while not mixing it with teams past. The self fades from existence once a week on Friday nights, and language between players must be short but immediately understood. Players must train hard and learn well during training what is to be expected of them the following Friday. Football may indeed be nothing but a “jock” sport, but it requires a strong-minded individual to be able to play the game with all the prowess and cunning of the king of the jungle.