It is easily the most audible word in any football game, a throaty grunt that may be the sport’s most distinguishing sound.
Hut!
It starts almost every play, and often one is not enough. And in an increasingly complex game whose signal-calling has evolved into a cacophony of furtive code words — “Black Dirt!,” “Big Belly!” “X Wiggle!” — hut, hut, hut endures as the signal to move.
But why?
“I have no idea why we say hut,” said Philadelphia Eagles center Jason Kelce, who in a Pro Bowl career of seven years has probably snapped the ball thousands of times to “hut” but still cannot explain it.