Northwestern University Athletics
Photo by: Stephen J. Carrera
The Skip Report: The Definition of 'Swag'
9/9/2015 6:15:00 PM | Football
By Skip Myslenski
NUsports.com Special Contributor
Swag, in the Oxford English Dictionary, is "a curtain or piece of fabric fastened so as to hang in a drooping curve." In a medical dictionary, it is an acronym for "specialist workforce advisory group." In England it means to lurch or sway, and if you swag in Australia, you tramp about carrying your pack of personal belongings.
But none of that defines the swag evinced by the 'Cats defense, and especially by their defensive backfield. They instead have the kind of swag that allows its members to refer to themselves collectively as The Sky Team, and to consider the area they patrol a No-Fly Zone. "We just rule the sky, you know what I'm saying," says one of them, the safety Godwin Igwebuike, while both defining his group's label and reflecting this meaning of swag. "Anything that goes up in the air, we expect it to either come down in our hands or hit the ground. We're the rulers of the sky. So you might as well not throw it."
"It's basically your style, how you go about doing what you have to do," another of them, corner Matthew Harris, says of that word. "It's kind of having a chip on your shoulder, respectfully though. We respect our opponents. But at the same time we're going in with the mentality that we don't want anybody to score. It's playing for each other. Like we said before, swag starts with The Sky Team, then trickles down to the linebackers, and then trickles to the D line. So as a team we feed off each other."
"We believe it's just a certain way that you carry yourself, having a certain confidence in your abilities, a certain confidence in your preparation," says another of them, the safety Traveon Henry. "Once you develop that confidence, it just imbues you and people can see when you have that swag. You look confident in what you're doing. You're comfortable. You feel you can apply yourself to whatever you're doing. You have that confidence."
"It's something you can't describe. You either have it or you don't," concludes a soul mate of their group, the middle linebacker Anthony Walker. "For me, it started when I was younger. My dad loved Deion Sanders. He loved the way he played, his swag, the way he talked, and then went out and backed up his talk. I played DB as a young child, so I wanted to be just like Deion Sanders. And his favorite saying was, 'If you look good, you play good.' I like to look good. I like to play good. That's my definition of swag."
Right here, before this goes any further, let us pause for a digression since that word, swag, can suggest an arrogance that comes accompanied by chest-thumping that produces the portrait of player-as-megalomaniac. We are not talking about that at all here and, to understand, let us go back to 1978 and down to St. Louis, where the Cardinals still play and a legend named Bud Wilkinson has just taken over as their coach. He had earlier done that at Oklahoma, where his Sooners had won three national titles and once run off a 47-game winning streak, and here he is discussing the dysfunctions he must correct so his NFL team can enjoy similar success. He is speaking, specifically, of his players' selfish attitudes, and so we suggest he must get them all to put their egos in their back pockets.
No, he immediately says, and then he explains. Ego, he explains, is what allows a player to believe in himself, to believe he is special, to believe he can succeed where so many others have failed. So it is a good thing. The key, he then concludes, is getting all those egos headed in the same direction, pointed at the same goal.
"Confidence is a big issue in anything you do," 'Cat defensive coordinator Mike Hankwitz would echo this week. "You have to believe you can do something and a year ago, we played some damn good defense. We had two bad games, and a bad half against Cal, and a bad quarter against Nebraska. There were times we played dominant defense like we did (last Saturday against Stanford). We need to be more consistent. I think they realize how close we were and they've set out to become more consistent, and they're taking pride in it, and we think we have an excellent senior class that's providing great leadership."
So, since these 'Cats are demonstrably headed in the same direction, pointed at the same goal, their swag is no bad thing. It is, in fact, very much the opposite.
Back in 1986, just minutes before the start of the inaugural three-point shooting contest at an NBA All Star Game, the Celtics' Larry Bird walked into a room and gazed down at the seven players he would compete against in that event. Then he said, "So, which one of you guys is going to come in second?"
Now that's some swag. (And, yes. Bird did win.)
They like to kid each other, Traveon Henry and Anthony Walker do. They are both from south Florida, which is rife with swag, but the safety is from Lauderdale Lakes in Broward Country and the middle linebacker is from Miami Gardens in Dade Country. That is why Henry, smiling, will say, "Anthony's a very passionate and a 'swaggerful' guy. But I think he got his swag from Broward a little bit."
And why Walker, himself smiling, will counter, "No. No. Traveon always wanted to play football in Dade County."
But no matter the truth, they and the others all agree on the significance of swag. "It's a big part of the game," says Anthony, explaining why. "You've got to be confident out there playing, especially as a DB. Matthew Harris, Traveon Henry, I know those guys. They have a lot of swag because at DB, you can get beat and you have to come back and be ready to play the next play. Like I said, I played DB in high school, little league. My dad told me to always feel confident out there, to feel like you're that guy. I've kept that mindset even though I transferred to linebacker."
"The swag, it makes it more fun," Harris soon adds. "I think if you play without swag, it's like you're doubting yourself. It deals with trust, trusting yourself and trusting your team."
"I have to agree with Matthew on that," Henry picks up. "Having swag is something that comes with trusting your abilities. I think it would be real tough to play without a little bit of swag. If you see a guy with swag, you can tell he's ready to play, ready to show up. You can see it in guys. You can see it in their eyes."
"You also have to be resilient," Harris goes on. "Bad plays are going to happen, good plays are going to happen, but you have to turn it around and just think about the next play, think about what you have to do the next time. I guess that's where swag comes in. Bad or good, you still line up with the same mentality. You line up and say, 'I'm going to defeat the person who's on the other side of the ball.'"
"You've got to think you're the baddest, you know," Igwebuike says. "That's something we definitely focus on as a DB group. 'We're the best in the nation.' That's what we tell ourselves."
"That's our mindset (on defense across the board)," Walker finally says. "We want to be the best in the nation. We want to be the number one defense in the Big Ten, the number one defense in the nation. Stop the run. No-fly zone in the back seven. You have to play with that swag as an entire defense, and that makes the whole defense and the whole team play well.
"And defense wins championships."
NUsports.com Special Contributor
Swag, in the Oxford English Dictionary, is "a curtain or piece of fabric fastened so as to hang in a drooping curve." In a medical dictionary, it is an acronym for "specialist workforce advisory group." In England it means to lurch or sway, and if you swag in Australia, you tramp about carrying your pack of personal belongings.
But none of that defines the swag evinced by the 'Cats defense, and especially by their defensive backfield. They instead have the kind of swag that allows its members to refer to themselves collectively as The Sky Team, and to consider the area they patrol a No-Fly Zone. "We just rule the sky, you know what I'm saying," says one of them, the safety Godwin Igwebuike, while both defining his group's label and reflecting this meaning of swag. "Anything that goes up in the air, we expect it to either come down in our hands or hit the ground. We're the rulers of the sky. So you might as well not throw it."
"It's basically your style, how you go about doing what you have to do," another of them, corner Matthew Harris, says of that word. "It's kind of having a chip on your shoulder, respectfully though. We respect our opponents. But at the same time we're going in with the mentality that we don't want anybody to score. It's playing for each other. Like we said before, swag starts with The Sky Team, then trickles down to the linebackers, and then trickles to the D line. So as a team we feed off each other."
"We believe it's just a certain way that you carry yourself, having a certain confidence in your abilities, a certain confidence in your preparation," says another of them, the safety Traveon Henry. "Once you develop that confidence, it just imbues you and people can see when you have that swag. You look confident in what you're doing. You're comfortable. You feel you can apply yourself to whatever you're doing. You have that confidence."
"It's something you can't describe. You either have it or you don't," concludes a soul mate of their group, the middle linebacker Anthony Walker. "For me, it started when I was younger. My dad loved Deion Sanders. He loved the way he played, his swag, the way he talked, and then went out and backed up his talk. I played DB as a young child, so I wanted to be just like Deion Sanders. And his favorite saying was, 'If you look good, you play good.' I like to look good. I like to play good. That's my definition of swag."
Right here, before this goes any further, let us pause for a digression since that word, swag, can suggest an arrogance that comes accompanied by chest-thumping that produces the portrait of player-as-megalomaniac. We are not talking about that at all here and, to understand, let us go back to 1978 and down to St. Louis, where the Cardinals still play and a legend named Bud Wilkinson has just taken over as their coach. He had earlier done that at Oklahoma, where his Sooners had won three national titles and once run off a 47-game winning streak, and here he is discussing the dysfunctions he must correct so his NFL team can enjoy similar success. He is speaking, specifically, of his players' selfish attitudes, and so we suggest he must get them all to put their egos in their back pockets.
No, he immediately says, and then he explains. Ego, he explains, is what allows a player to believe in himself, to believe he is special, to believe he can succeed where so many others have failed. So it is a good thing. The key, he then concludes, is getting all those egos headed in the same direction, pointed at the same goal.
"Confidence is a big issue in anything you do," 'Cat defensive coordinator Mike Hankwitz would echo this week. "You have to believe you can do something and a year ago, we played some damn good defense. We had two bad games, and a bad half against Cal, and a bad quarter against Nebraska. There were times we played dominant defense like we did (last Saturday against Stanford). We need to be more consistent. I think they realize how close we were and they've set out to become more consistent, and they're taking pride in it, and we think we have an excellent senior class that's providing great leadership."
So, since these 'Cats are demonstrably headed in the same direction, pointed at the same goal, their swag is no bad thing. It is, in fact, very much the opposite.
Back in 1986, just minutes before the start of the inaugural three-point shooting contest at an NBA All Star Game, the Celtics' Larry Bird walked into a room and gazed down at the seven players he would compete against in that event. Then he said, "So, which one of you guys is going to come in second?"
Now that's some swag. (And, yes. Bird did win.)
They like to kid each other, Traveon Henry and Anthony Walker do. They are both from south Florida, which is rife with swag, but the safety is from Lauderdale Lakes in Broward Country and the middle linebacker is from Miami Gardens in Dade Country. That is why Henry, smiling, will say, "Anthony's a very passionate and a 'swaggerful' guy. But I think he got his swag from Broward a little bit."
And why Walker, himself smiling, will counter, "No. No. Traveon always wanted to play football in Dade County."
But no matter the truth, they and the others all agree on the significance of swag. "It's a big part of the game," says Anthony, explaining why. "You've got to be confident out there playing, especially as a DB. Matthew Harris, Traveon Henry, I know those guys. They have a lot of swag because at DB, you can get beat and you have to come back and be ready to play the next play. Like I said, I played DB in high school, little league. My dad told me to always feel confident out there, to feel like you're that guy. I've kept that mindset even though I transferred to linebacker."
"The swag, it makes it more fun," Harris soon adds. "I think if you play without swag, it's like you're doubting yourself. It deals with trust, trusting yourself and trusting your team."
"I have to agree with Matthew on that," Henry picks up. "Having swag is something that comes with trusting your abilities. I think it would be real tough to play without a little bit of swag. If you see a guy with swag, you can tell he's ready to play, ready to show up. You can see it in guys. You can see it in their eyes."
"You also have to be resilient," Harris goes on. "Bad plays are going to happen, good plays are going to happen, but you have to turn it around and just think about the next play, think about what you have to do the next time. I guess that's where swag comes in. Bad or good, you still line up with the same mentality. You line up and say, 'I'm going to defeat the person who's on the other side of the ball.'"
"You've got to think you're the baddest, you know," Igwebuike says. "That's something we definitely focus on as a DB group. 'We're the best in the nation.' That's what we tell ourselves."
"That's our mindset (on defense across the board)," Walker finally says. "We want to be the best in the nation. We want to be the number one defense in the Big Ten, the number one defense in the nation. Stop the run. No-fly zone in the back seven. You have to play with that swag as an entire defense, and that makes the whole defense and the whole team play well.
"And defense wins championships."
Players Mentioned
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