Seven Maxims of Football
During the 1930s, Neyland began having his teams recite seven sentences that he felt summarized everything it took to win a game. These came to be known as "the Seven Maxims of Football," or "the Seven Game Maxims." To this day, Vol teams still recite them in the locker room before every game.
- The team that makes the fewest mistakes will win.
- Play for and make the breaks and when one comes your way - SCORE.
- If at first the game - or the breaks - go against you, don't let up... put on more steam.
- Protect our kickers, our QB, our lead and our ball game.
- Ball, oskie, cover, block, cut and slice, pursue and gang tackle... for this is the WINNING EDGE.
- Press the kicking game. Here is where the breaks are made.
- Carry the fight to our opponent and keep it there for 60 minutes.
Read more about this topic: Robert Neyland
Famous quotes containing the words maxims and/or football:
“upon these maxims meditate:
All women dote upon an idle man
Although their children need a rich estate;
No man has ever lived that had enough
Of children’s gratitude or woman’s love.”
—William Butler Yeats (1865–1939)
“People stress the violence. That’s the smallest part of it. Football is brutal only from a distance. In the middle of it there’s a calm, a tranquility. The players accept pain. There’s a sense of order even at the end of a running play with bodies stewn everywhere. When the systems interlock, there’s a satisfaction to the game that can’t be duplicated. There’s a harmony.”
—Don Delillo (b. 1926)