ABSTRACT
This chapter presents an interdisciplinary approach to deconstruct the American national game of football to determine its characteristics, values, and meanings and the role it plays in the American culture. Versions of football had been played by American students on college campuses for decades, usually as a means for older students to pummel younger ones in an initiation rite. The language of football represents the close association with war and violence. Among the terminology of the sport, by no means complete are: bomb, blitz, in the trenches, coffin corner, gunner, sack, suicide squad, aerial attack, run and shoot, shotgun, sudden death, and field general. The manifestations of heroic militarism are evident throughout the football season, which starts in August and continues into February, in which high school, intercollegiate and professional games are televised almost daily, thus reinforcing such cultural values.
