The Rhetorical Onside Kick
The Rhetorical Onside Kick
American football confuses me. One of the most confusing things is the onside kick, which, if someone tells you they understand it and why it should be used, I’d assume they are trying to impress you by lying. What I understand about it is that it is a desperation move when you no longer have any chance of winning the game. You could perhaps create the chance to win the game should you perform the onside kick perfectly. If you do it, you are basically saying you have no way to win the game by conventional means. But you are simultaneously saying that you are a gambler, happy to try to turn your last possible play into a whole new set of opportunities to win.
Should you recover the onside kick, you get a new set of downs, each one capable of scoring the winning touchdown. Realistically, a good team could use those downs to drive the ball down the field and score, winning the game. It’s a very high risk and gutsy move – but at the same time a move you’d only use if you really had no other way to win.
The onside kick has been controversial in the NFL for years. They changed the rules on it many times, including requiring the kicking team to line up in a very particular way to perform an onside kick. The play is very dangerous, as players have to very quickly dive for the ball, hit one another directly, and some have to hold back and wait for the ball to travel a certain amount of yards before they go for it. It’s technical, but also fraught with a lot of aggressive bodies diving for the ball. One of the ways of thinking about it I read online is that under NFL rules, the onside kick is considered to be a fumble, and whichever team gets the ball after this fumble will be the team in possession. Since the kicking team will do it at the end of their downs they get their opportunity to score reset.
The thing about all these terrible technical NFL onside kick rules that I want to emphasize is that the play is perception – an onside kick looks like you are giving up the ball, but you screw it up, you fumble it, and then anyone can recover it. But because you are planning to do this, you have the advantage when it comes to recovering the ball. An onside kick is a move where you do something that appears to be a failure at a point where you cannot conventionally win in order to give yourself a chance to win the game.
A perceived mistake requires an audience, one that will correctly misunderstand your move as a mistake that requires correction. And that is at the heart of a play that I am introducing to the National Rhetoric League: The Rhetorical Onside kick.
Harrison Butker knows this and has probably practiced this a number of times, being a professional kicker for the Kansas City Chiefs. But he may be the first professional football player to attempt – and succeed at – a rhetorical onside kick.
Butker was the commencement speaker at Benedictine College and gave a speech that we can incorrectly describe as controversial. Overwhelmingly people are calling this speech disgusting, inappropriate, foul, outdated, sexist, and misogynist. I’ll leave the other terms for other writers – I want to focus on “inappropriate.”
Rhetoric is many things, but one thing it is often overlooked as being is the study of the decorous. What should I say in this situation? What did I say? Why is everyone turning red and looking at the floor? I thought that joke was funny! These and many other phrases sum up the rhetorical challenge of appropriateness.
But if a rhetor willfully violates appropriateness that’s where the onside kick comes into play. Particularly interesting is if the speaker replaces the assumed appropriateness of scene, modality, mood, whatever words you’d like to use here, with an understanding of appropriateness that is at a higher level than the mere moment we are commemorating. He’s punting – no wait, he messed up, no he’s recovered it and now has a chance to win!
Who better than an NFL kicker to offer up a great demonstration of what the rhetorical onside kick looks like in the form of traditional public address. A lot has been said about this commencement speech, much of it angry. The entire play relies on the idea that when people are given the chance to move minds with words – what kids today call a “platform,” they are going to say something they believe in order to change the minds of those they are speaking to. They are going to try to be persuasive and move the audience toward or away from some idea.
That’s the start is this assumption that the speaker is giving up the ball – they are going to kick it away. A good assumption for a commencement speech which is neither overtly political or policy-oriented. It’s a speech that is meant to celebrate by connecting a specific event such as graduation to larger, more universal values and ideals that we celebrate. That’s what they typically do anyway. In this case, Butker sets up this rhetorical onside kick perfectly. He looks to be tossing the ball to the graduates, but kicks it “inappropriately,” bringing up his idea of what happiness looks like for women: Traditional gender roles. Here’s the part of the speech that has perhaps been quoted or shared in the media a million times:
For the ladies present today, congratulations on an amazing accomplishment. You should be proud of all that you have achieved to this point in your young lives. I want to speak directly to you briefly, because I think it is you, the women, who have had the most diabolical lies told to you: how many of you are sitting here now about to cross the stage and are thinking about all the promotions and titles you are going to get in your career.
Some of you may go on to lead successful careers in the world, but I would venture to guess that the majority of you are most excited about your marriage and the children you will bring into this world. I can tell you that my beautiful wife Isabelle would be the first to say that her life truly started when she began living her vocation as a wife and as a mother.
I’m on this stage today and able to be the man I am because I have a wife who leans into her vocation. I’m beyond blessed with the many talents God has given me. But it cannot be overstated, that all of my success is made possible because a girl I met in band class back in middle school would convert to the faith, become my wife and embrace one of the most important titles of all: homemaker.
This section of the speech got the most attention and ire, sparking responses from everyone – the NFL, GLADD, and the Benedictine Order just to name a few very different organizations. They all stated they disagreed with his remarks and that they did not represent their values. I’m pretty sure Butker is aware of that. The chastising of Butker is along the lines of appropriateness – he said inappropriate things that are offensive, they don’t belong at a graduation (or anywhere in contemporary society), and are not appropriate for a football hero to be saying. Appropriateness is at the heart of understanding this speech. Butker knows – and mentions it many times – that he is saying things people feel are inappropriate or flat wrong. Well-meaning liberals are fuming at the acceptability of what Butker said in his commencement address as they hear coverage of it on NPR on their way to Whole Foods with their canvas bags. They cannot believe that someone who has a very successful mother would say such a thing! Particularly someone who is a football player on a team that well-meaning liberal Taylor Swift supports. They are picking apart what he said as if it were a logical argument in a vacuum. As Ralph Waldo Emerson informed us long ago, “Consistency is the hobgoblin of small minds.”
Butker’s speech rests on you thinking that he’s kicking the ball to you. It works because you think that he’s trying to make a logical, reasonable argument for your assent. He’s giving a commencement speech, so he should be inspiring to the graduates. You think he’s trying to be persuasive and tell you what you should choose to do. This means he has to be consistent and give reasons for what he’s saying. But this isn’t what he’s doing at all. He wants it to appear this way. This quote, overlooked in every analysis I’ve read, shows exactly what he thinks he is doing, and it’s not trying to make a case for you to change your mind:
As a man who gets a lot of praise and has been given a platform to speak to audiences like this one today, I pray that I always use my voice for God and not for myself. Everything I am saying to you is not from a place of wisdom but rather a place of experience. I am hopeful that these words will be seen as those from a man, not much older than you, who feels it is imperative that this class, this generation and this time in our society must stop pretending that the things we see around us are normal.
He is not persuading; he’s speaking from experience. He’s not wise, he’s simply existed. In fact, this isn’t even his opinion – it’s God’s truth. He is stating the absolute nature of existence. All of this indicates a rhetorical form that appears to be persuasion but is not meant for you, it’s meant to be apparent persuasion, but it’s really statement of fact for the rhetor. He’s just bringing account of what he has experienced and what he knows is true. There’s no attempt anywhere in the speech to adjust what he’s saying to persuade the audience. He’s stating things – sometimes strange things like the necessity of Latin Mass attendance to live a good life – as if they are simply true regardless of how you feel about them. Even the most controversial part, talking about his wife’s happiness with her role, is a statement about when women are happiest - it’s not a claim, argument, or something to agree with. It’s his experience; it’s God’s voice.
It’s not good argumentation because it’s not good argument. It’s not persuasion. This is the rhetorical onside kick, a speech designed to trigger to raise attention and interest on the speaker and the speaker’s personality as a consumable. Butker’s technique here in the speech is no different than speeches we see that are in a similar modality such as Marjorie Taylor Green, Matt Gaetz, Lauren Bobert, Donald Trump – the list goes on. They are stating their experience and leaving it at that. They aren’t trying, in the tradition of rhetoric, to bring anyone over to their side. They just want the ball and will trick you into thinking they are kicking it to you with a terrible punt just so they can get it and run with it again. They want more chances to speak, more chances to score, and we keep giving them those chances because we are so angry their speech has no evidence, is wrong, is unreasonable, is logically inconsistent. They are aware of all of this. They are speaking the truth which does not require any of these flimsy trappings.
We no longer live in a time where people attempt to persuade by reaching others where they are. We no longer attempt to persuade. Instead, public speaking opportunities are seen as moments to feign persuasion by stating your beliefs in ways that you are keenly aware do not appear attractive and do not help others see how you think. Instead, the appearance that you are offering something to them for their consideration is a way you can recover more time, attention, and space to articulate your beliefs again and again. And the more angry statements made and the more criticism you generate, the more you have opportunities to advance your position. Nobody changes their mind hearing this kind of rhetoric. It galvanizes them to repeat the things they already know to be true, whether they are in line with the speaker or not.
The Friday after this commencement speech he was invited to speak at another school event, this time a gala in Nashville sponsored by a Catholic home-school institution named Regina Caeli Academy. At this event he said:
Over the past few days, my beliefs, or what people think I believe, have been the focus of countless discussions around the globe. At the outset, many people expressed a shocking level of hate. But as the days went on, even those who disagreed with my viewpoints shared their support for my freedom of religion.
As demonstrated here Butker has no disappointment in how few people changed their minds or shared his view. What he is pleased about is that people have recognized that he can say what he thinks – not the heart of the controversy. Disagreement is expected as a result of public address, not agreement. I cannot underline the significance of this change for public address in the United States enough. Traditionally, rhetoric is evaluated by how well the rhetor attempts to account for the audience in order to move them somehow. This can be to change action, but often it’s to change ways of feeling and thought. Butker shows no interest in this, presenting his own viewpoint his own way without justification or reasons why anyone should agree with him, save that perhaps he's speaking with “God’s voice,” a great example of Perelman and Olbrects-Tyteca’s claim about the ease by which one could be speaking to a paragon audience and think they are speaking to the universal audience (the difference being speaking to the converted versus speaking to those who can be converted).
Realize the well-placed drop of bitterness in an otherwise serene rhetorical situation as exactly what Butker did. Whether he believes it or not is not relevant – the reaction he’s getting now has us all saying his name. We know who he is now, whether we are football fans or not, particularly those of us who only have the game on because it’s autumn. He’s a brand now; he recovered the onside kick.
Butker doesn’t need Taylor Swift to gain status, he can do it himself. Make the rhetorical fumble; recover it after 10 yards. You had no chance to score, now you have it all. This is the rhetorical onside kick. It only needs to attract response, not persuade anyone. Once you do it, appear to fumble, recover, and drive you are set. You’ve won the game. The super bowl is a totally different question. The way things are going for rhetoric in our contemporary moment seems to indicate that ire and anger are desirable results from rhetoric, which is to simply state the truth without any attempt to make it acceptable, sensible, or desirable to your audience on their own terms.