Q: When I hear football sportscasters state that Team 1 has “matriculated” the football down the field, I (perhaps smugly) question whether the sportscasters have ever matriculated themselves.
A: Standard dictionaries define “matriculate” as to enroll or be enrolled at a college or university, but at least one of the dictionaries, Merriam-Webster, has the American football sense on its radar.
M-W discusses the new usage in its “Words We’re Watching” feature, which concerns “words we are increasingly seeing in use but that have not yet met our criteria for entry.”
“So how did we get from enrolling in higher education to football?” the dictionary asks. “We have, it seems, one man to thank: Hank Stram.”
Stram, coach of the Kansas City Chiefs, apparently coined the usage on Jan. 11, 1970, at Super Bowl IV in New Orleans, where the Chiefs beat the Minnesota Vikings 23 to 7.
In this video from the game, Stram uses several colorful expressions, including “Let’s keep matriculating the ball down the field, boys.”
“We of course do not know Hank Stram’s thoughts about the word matriculate,” M-W says. “It’s possible he believed his use was a simple and logical extension of the established one. It’s also possible he just liked how matriculate sounded and plunked it into a context he thought sounded good.”
Whatever his thinking, this colloquial use of “matriculate” is now common in football and means to advance the ball down the field, often methodically.
Here’s a recent example from a report of a game between the Chiefs and the Jacksonville Jaguars: “The Chiefs then matriculated the ball down the field with a 12-play, 86-yard drive” (CBS Sports, Oct. 7, 2025).
As for the history, English borrowed “matriculate” in the 16th century from the post-classical Latin verb matriculare (to enroll) and noun matricula (an index or catalogue), according to the Oxford English Dictionary, an etymological reference.
When “matriculate” first appeared in English in the 16th century, the OED says, it meant to “enter (a name) in the register of a university, college, etc.”
The earliest English citation is from a Jan. 19, 1557, report on a visit by representatives of Queen Mary I to the University of Cambridge to restore Roman orthodoxy after Protestant reforms under King Edward VI:
“It. vi scholers of Jesus Coll. matriculated” (“Item: six scholars of Jesus College matriculated”). A Collection of Letters, Statutes, and Other Documents From the Archives of the College of Corpus Christi, Cambridge (1838), edited by John Lamb.
(During the visit of the Queen’s representatives, many students and fellows were reexamined and registered again.)
In the 17th century, the verb took on the sense of “to be enrolled as a member of a university, college, etc.”
The first OED citation is from a sonnet by the English soldier-poet Richard Lovelace about the English poet John Hall:
“So that fair Cam [Cambridge] saw thee matriculate / At once a Tyro and a Graduate” (from “To the Genius of Mr. John Hall,” in Lucasta: Posthume Poems, 1659). The Posthume Poems were published two years after Lovelace’s death and three years after Hall’s.
This later OED example, from W. Somerset Maugham’s novel Of Human Bondage (1915), refers to Philip Carey’s brief experience at the University of Heidelberg: “He had matriculated at the university and attended one or two courses of lectures.”
We’ll end by returning to Hank Stram, the coach who’s credited with coining the football sense of “matriculate.” He expanded upon the usage in 2003 when he was inducted into the Football Hall of Fame:
“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.”
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