Even if the extent of your football knowledge is the name of the team your family and friends root for, you’ve seen the huddle. The action ends, the players wander back toward one another, and suddenly they’re standing shoulder to shoulder in a little circle. There’s some serious discussion, a few nods, and then they break apart and race to their positions. It happens over and over, in every football game. So why do players huddle? The football huddle is widely credited to Gallaudet College, a school for deaf students in Washington, D.C. Gallaudet’s football team was made up of deaf players who communicated using sign language, creating a unique challenge on the field. Because their opponents were often schools for the hearing-impaired, Gallaudet quarterback Paul Hubbard worried that they were watching his hands to read his team’s intentions, and his solution was to form a circle so opponents couldn’t read his signs. That circle became the first football huddle.
