Philadelphia Best

Hut! Hut! Hut! What? –
“I have no idea why we say hut,” said Philadelphia Eagles center Jason Kelce, who in a Pro Bowl career
of seven years has probably snapped the ball thousands of times to “hut” but still cannot explain it.
And in an increasingly complex game whose signal-calling has evolved into a cacophony of furtive code
words — “Black Dirt!,” “Big Belly!” “X Wiggle!” — hut, hut, hut endures as the signal to move.
In time, however, like so many things in football — where there is too much time to
think between game weekends — the unadorned hike became increasingly complicated.
A tireless innovator, Heisman, promoting the forward pass, divided the game into quarters and, in 1898, came
up with “hike” as a way for an entire team to know when the ball would be snapped into the backfield.
“I started when I was 12 years old and I’ve been hutting my way through football for 55 years — but I have no clue why,” Theismann said.
“Everyone on the line would be like, ‘Where, where?’”
A dig into the etymological roots of “hut” must begin at … “hike!”
That call was the brainchild of John Heisman, the pioneering coach for whom the trophy for the best college player of the year is named.
Or, barking “Eagle 18” can be a signal that the ball will be snapped on the next
sound coming from the quarterback’s mouth no matter what that sound is.

Comments