Exploring the Text

1. Consider the words and the image separately. What is the relationship between them? Does the image support the words or vice versa?

   Question

   WvD/qlpt4lzzWb4zUwGWBQhKPjtDvqj8sRamu7J1DAyqPwYZ7lQ7Wr5WbEA=

   Chapter 9 - The Twelfth Player in Every Football Game - Exploring the Text: Consider the words and the image separately. What is the relationship between them? Does the image support the words or vice versa?
2. What point does the cartoon make about the relationship between football and violence? Do you agree with the cartoon’s thesis? Explain your response.

   Question

   WvD/qlpt4lzzWb4zUwGWBQhKPjtDvqj8sRamu7J1DAyqPwYZ7lQ7Wr5WbEA=

   Chapter 9 - The Twelfth Player in Every Football Game - Exploring the Text: What point does the cartoon make about the relationship between football and violence? Do you agree with the cartoon’s thesis? Explain your response.
3. According to Ben McGrath, it was Yale football coach Walter Camp, the so-called Father of American Football, whose “preference for order over chaos led to the primary differentiating element between the new sport (football) and its parent, English rugby: a line of scrimmage, with discrete plays, or downs, instead of scrums,” and who, in the 1890s, tried to present football as an upper-class training ground, not as a “middle class spectator sport.” What do you suppose Walter Camp would think of the NFL now? Do you think this cartoon has resonance today? Explain your answer.

   Question

   WvD/qlpt4lzzWb4zUwGWBQhKPjtDvqj8sRamu7J1DAyqPwYZ7lQ7Wr5WbEA=

   Chapter 9 - The Twelfth Player in Every Football Game - Exploring the Text: According to Ben McGrath, it was Yale football coach Walter Camp, the so-called Father of American Football, whose “preference for order over chaos led to the primary differentiating element between the new sport (football) and its parent, English rugby: a line of scrimmage, with discrete plays, or downs, instead of scrums,” and who, in the 1890s, tried to present football as an upper-class training ground, not as a “middle class spectator sport.” What do you suppose Walter Camp would think of the NFL now? Do you think this cartoon has resonance today? Explain your answer.
4. Read Malcolm Gladwell’s essay “Offensive Play” in this chapter (p. 643). In what ways does this cartoon illustrate his thesis?

   Question

   WvD/qlpt4lzzWb4zUwGWBQhKPjtDvqj8sRamu7J1DAyqPwYZ7lQ7Wr5WbEA=

   Chapter 9 - The Twelfth Player in Every Football Game - Exploring the Text: Read Malcolm Gladwell’s essay “Offensive Play” in this chapter (p. 643). In what ways does this cartoon illustrate his thesis?
5. A cartoon can be analyzed through the rhetorical triangle. Consider the cartoon’s subject, the artist, and the audience separately; then analyze the relationships among those three elements. Also consider the context: the time and place of the work’s creation, and how and where it is viewed. What do you think are differences and similarities between today’s audience and the audience when the cartoon was originally published in 1897?

   Question

   WvD/qlpt4lzzWb4zUwGWBQhKPjtDvqj8sRamu7J1DAyqPwYZ7lQ7Wr5WbEA=

   Chapter 9 - The Twelfth Player in Every Football Game - Exploring the Text: A cartoon can be analyzed through the rhetorical triangle. Consider the cartoon’s subject, the artist, and the audience separately; then analyze the relationships among those three elements. Also consider the context: the time and place of the work’s creation, and how and where it is viewed. What do you think are differences and similarities between today’s audience and the audience when the cartoon was originally published in 1897?
6. There is a tradition in football of the “12th Player,” which supposedly began in 1921 when E. King Gill, a player on the Texas A&M football squad who had left the team to play basketball, came down from the stands and suited up for a game in which many of his former teammates had been injured. His willingness to do what he could for his team led to the idea that the fans within a stadium become the “12th Player” on an eleven-player team; their support—and sometimes distracting noise—can be very influential. In this cartoon the twelfth player is Death. How does it contrast with the present-day tradition of the twelfth player? Might this cartoon have resonance today, despite the current meaning of the “12th Player”?

   Question

   WvD/qlpt4lzzWb4zUwGWBQhKPjtDvqj8sRamu7J1DAyqPwYZ7lQ7Wr5WbEA=

   Chapter 9 - The Twelfth Player in Every Football Game - Exploring the Text: There is a tradition in football of the “12th Player,” which supposedly began in 1921 when E. King Gill, a player on the Texas A&M football squad who had left the team to play basketball, came down from the stands and suited up for a game in which many of his former teammates had been injured. His willingness to do what he could for his team led to the idea that the fans within a stadium become the “12th Player” on an eleven-player team; their support—and sometimes distracting noise—can be very influential. In this cartoon the twelfth player is Death. How does it contrast with the present-day tradition of the twelfth player? Might this cartoon have resonance today, despite the current meaning of the “12th Player”?