Wordplay: How the NFL has Merriam-Webster rethinking a definition

May 28, 2024

About three years ago, the staff at Merriam-Webster started to notice a strange trend. As fall collided with winter, more and more people searched for the definition of “matriculate,” a relatively obscure word that meant to be enrolled at a college or university. Even more unusual, the searches increased not at the start or end of the school year but on Sundays in October and November.

In other words, football season.

The searches spiked two days before Christmas in 2018. That afternoon, the Saints played the Steelers on CBS. Jim Nantz and Tony Romo had the call. At the start of the second half, the Saints led the Steelers 17-14, and Romo analyzed both teams.

The Steelers, he said, shouldn’t blitz. They should rush four, sit back in coverage and make the Saints march. New Orleans, Romo continued, needed to keep running the ball, then take big shots in the passing game.

“You’re not going to just” — and here Romo paused in preparation for the next word out of his mouth — “matriculate down the field slowly when they’re rushing four.”

A few Twitter critics blasted Romo for his improper use of the word, but the safe bet is that most watchers understood that he meant “advance the ball methodically.” That’s because everyone from Drew Brees and Peyton Manning to a professional caddie and a high school coach in Stillwater, Okla., has used matriculate just like Romo.

It has become so common, especially in the context of football, that the team of definers at Merriam-Webster is considering adding a new definition to the dictionary. What’s more, matriculate offers a fascinating case study in how language evolves, the way a new word or definition can enter the bloodstream and spread. Because two things make matriculate rare, at least for the wordsmiths at Merriam-Webster.

First, they know the exact moment when the new definition entered the lexicon.

Second, they know the person responsible for it.

Ed Sabol called Hank Stram the night before Super Bowl IV. Sabol, the president of NFL Films, asked Stram, the head coach of the Kansas City Chiefs, if he could spare a few minutes in his hotel room. Stram said he was busy. Sabol persisted.

Sabol and his son, Steve, met Stram in his suite on the top floor of the Royal Sonesta on Bourbon Street. Stram had on a toupee, short shorts and a vest made out of scuba material designed to keep his stomach sucked in on the sideline. He had a whole room full of clothes. Ed Sabol knew Stram had a rather healthy ego, so he approached his request tactfully.

“Hank, I wanna do something that has never been done before,” he said.

Stram asked what he wanted to do.

“I want to put a concealed microphone the size of your thumb under your shirt and a transmitter the size of a package of cigarettes in your pocket. And you have to understand that we will record everything you say during the game.”

Stram said no. Sabol persisted again. But, according to multiple accounts shared by Steve Sabol over the years, Stram said he would only do it — for “some coin of the realm.”

Stram had a vocabulary all his own; Steve Sabol would later tell the Los Angeles Times that Stram had a “great flair for the English language,” that he just had a “way of stating the obvious with a sense of discovery.” But in his Bourbon Street hotel suite, neither Ed nor Steve Sabol knew what he meant. So Stram made it perfectly clear that in order to put a microphone on him, he would require money. Ed Sabol offered $250, according to Steve. That, Stram said, was not enough to pay his dry cleaning bill. The two sides settled on $750.

On the day of the game, Stram wore the microphone and transmitter, and Sabol handed over a wad of cash in the locker room.

Stram played up his part to perfection. He roasted the officials on the sideline. He predicted “65 toss power trap” would work, then puffed out his chest when it did. Steve Sabol was so enthralled with Stram that the camera he was operating jiggled because he kept laughing.

At one point, Stram paced the sideline and blurted out, “Keep matriculating the ball down the field, boys.”

He could never explain it. It just happened, some strange connection firing in his brain and spilling the words out of his mouth in a moment of pure spontaneity.

What happened next amazed and thrilled him in equal parts.

Ed and Steve Sabol put together the behind-the-scenes video of the Chiefs’ Super Bowl win and debuted it four months after the game. Immediately it was a smash hit.

Nothing like it had ever been captured on film before. But it wasn’t just that. It was Stram’s performance, a cocktail of humor, cockiness, jargon and charm. His players laughed hysterically the first time they saw it.

What’s interesting is that while the film spread, the use of “matriculate” in football did not, at least not in quotes or newspaper stories. There are hardly any examples of it used in that context in the three decades after the Super Bowl. Lee Trevino’s caddie, Herman Mitchell, said in 1986 that an aging Trevino could “still matriculate that ball right on down the fairway.” And Hawaii’s coach, Bob Wagner, used it in a quote in 1987. John Madden said it during the broadcast of a Packers-Cowboys game. But that’s about it.

Most likely it was passed down verbally on football fields and meeting rooms, away from the printed word. Stram, at least, heard it all the time. In 1996, the Washington Post wrote about Stram’s amazement that perfect strangers would walk up to him at the airport or in hotel lobbies and quote some of his phrases from that night.

“And young people,” Stram marveled. “They didn’t see the game, but they’ve seen that film.”

At his Hall of Fame induction in 2003, Stram winked at his legacy when he said, “As I matriculate my way down the field of life, I will never forget this moment and you wonderful people who helped make this day possible.”

But around 2009 or so, the word made a comeback in a big way. In that year alone, Steelers safety Ryan Clark, Texas A&M quarterback Jerrod Johnson and Miami linebacker Channing Crowder all used it (“You’ve got to make them matriculate down the field,” Crowder said. “Matriculate?” someone asked. “Google it,” he said).

In 2011, the Washington Post used it in a story, Deadspin used it in a post about rugby and Stillwater High coach Beau LaBore used it in a postgame interview.

In 2013 and 2014, Florida State quarterback Jameis Winston, Raiders general manager Reggie McKenzie, Fox color commentator Brady Quinn and Seahawks coach Pete Carroll all rolled it out.

There has been even more widespread use in recent years: Drew Brees and Lawrence Tynes, Deshaun Watson and Jim Schwartz, Vic Fangio and Chiefs safety Eric Murray. When Baker Mayfield made his debut off the bench as a rookie, Browns coach Hue Jackson said, “You saw the offense start to move and the ball start to matriculate down the field.” After neck surgery sapped Peyton Manning of his arm strength with the Broncos in 2013, he told Sports Illustrated, “To quote Hank Stram, I matriculate down the field.”

All that momentum caused the staff at Merriam-Webster to perk up. Emily Brewster, a senior editor at Merriam-Webster, said there are three intentionally vague criteria that a word or definition must meet in order to invite a definition change:

It has to have an established, clear meaning.

It needs to stick around for a long period of time.

It needs to be used in a variety of places.

Clearly, matriculate meets the first two. But it is the third point that has the new definition still under consideration. Even still, Brewster said matriculate is a “good candidate for entry in the next few years.”

If anything, Stram’s definition is more popular — and has more staying power — now than it did in the years after Stram first said it. Brewster, for one, is a fan.

“It’s really a brilliant coinage,” she said. “It really is, because it just has the right feel, Latin be damned.”

(Photo of Hank Stram: Focus on Sport / Getty Images)

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