Why do some players name their high school when being announced in the starting lineup?

Have you ever been watching NFL games and Sundays and found yourself a little confused by the player introductions? For the most part players are simply going to state which college they played football at but this is not always the case.

Football players name their high schools when announced in the starting lineup because they are allowed to say what they want in their intro. Some players have gone as far to make up fake schools they attended. Some players simply just want to bring more attention to their hometown where they played high school football.

Football players tend to have quite a connection to their college football teams and tend to have a sense of loyalty. So when given an opportunity to shout out their former college on national television players are usually happy to do so.

Though for some players the college they attended may not be their fondest memories. If a player felt he wanted to represent his high school football program in his introduction then they are free to do that.

Oftentimes as players get older their introductions can become a little more interesting. Players doing the introduction for the first time will almost always state their name and their college as their introduction.

Once these players have done this several times they may start to get a little more creative.

School Nicknames

One of the most common changes NFL players make to their introductions is to refer to their school by a nickname instead of its traditional name.

The most common example of this would be Ohio State University and the University of Miami. For years many players that played at Ohio State University would start their player introductions with their name followed by stating “THE Ohio State University”.

Players from the University of Miami had their own nickname for the school which is “The U”. Instead of stating they went to Miami University these players will simply say The U when referencing their Alma Matter.

For many football fans, nicknames like this can be confusing but for fans of their collegiate team, it’s a shoutout to where they came from.

Funniest Player Introductions

Terrel Suggs

Though the vast majority of player introductions in football are going to be run of the mill every once and a while a player can catch the audience off guard.

A great example was Terrell Suggs intros in which he referred to his Alma Matter as “ball so hard university”. This school evidently does not exist and instead was just a way for Suggs to have fun while introducing himself to the game.

Suggs carried on this tradition of naming Ball So Hard University for years to the point where t-shirts were made. The name itself came from a Jay-Z song, Suggs later went on to say that Jay-Z was the dean of students at ball so hard univeristy.

Tony Gonzalez

Tony Gonzalez had a long and illustrious NFL career as a tight end. As he got into his later years he started to have a little more fun with his introductions for prime time football games.

One of his most famous intros was “I’m Tony Gonzalez?”. As he went to introduce himself he posed it more as a question and had a confused look on his face.

Since NFL intros are only a second or two long this left many fans wondering what they had just seen.

Gonzalez went on to become an actor after his NFL career which explains why he had become so creative with his intros.

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