Woody Hayes liked to be addressed on the Ohio State campus as “Professor Hayes,” a title he earned by teaching English classes to his freshman class of recruits. He may have inadvertently claimed a chair in the behavioral psych department, too, if the findings of one psychological study at George Mason University are applied to Hayes’ practice of awarding Buckeye helmet stickers to his players for good team play.
Woody Hayes, Behavioral Psychology Pioneer
The experiment is one of those deceptively simple scenarios behavioral psychologists love to cook up for penniless undergrads to work their way through for very little money. In short: male subjects were awarded a trophy communally for good performance in a group game contrary to their own individual interests, and as it turns out really liked bringing that trophy back in to show off to others in subsequent rounds of that game.
(The trophy was a coffee cup. We said these were college students, and therefore easily impressed by free goods.)
The football takeaway? Helmet stickers are no different, and may exploit the same tendency of men to want to show off their accomplishments to their peers even when that behavior is not self-interested in the narrowest definition of the term. As the article suggests:
Helmet stickers may well be the modern-day manifestation of males’ innate desire to mark their status, explaining why the tradition is so valued in team sports like football.
Whatever the actual reason, It beats peeing on things, which is another way male animals show status. (John Randle strenuously disagrees, albeit only in the figurative sense since he was the only player we've ever seen who celebrated sacks by mimicking a dog peeing on a spot.) (So far.) (Please don't, footballers of the world.)
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