Adrian Moten's not a fan of bull, jiving or bulljiving. Matthew Creger
Chalk this one up to the “You learn something new every day” pile.
As I was preparing for Friday’s column, I asked a bunch of different Terp players and coaches about the differences in football coach Ralph Friedgen between this year and last year.
The ninth-year coach announced that he would be the old Friedgen again after Saturday’s loss to Middle Tennessee, but this week, he has backtracked a little bit. The question is: Which version of Friedgen we will see as the team tries to get past its early season difficulties? But that’s for my column.
Maybe the best answer about Friedgen’s attitude came from linebacker Adrian Moten, once I figured out what he was talking about.
“What he means by that is he’s not going to take no more bulljiving,” Moten said, matter of factly. “That’s all. He don’t take bulljiving. That’s the old Friedgen. He don’t take nothing less. You’re going to get it done or not, or he’ll get someone else in there.”
Being the intrepid reporter, I asked Moten what he meant by “bulljiving.” “No mess,” he said. “He won’t take no mess.” I took Moten for his word on this, at least until I got back to my computer to Google it.
Luckily, I discovered two helpful UrbanDictionary definitions (bulljive and bull-jive). I guess it was a funkified way to say that Friedgen won’t take any crap from his young team.
With players from all upbringings and family backgrounds, it’s not surprising when a bit of colorful language pops up during an interview, but this rural Pennsylvania native can’t recall ever being so utterly puzzled by a quote.
My favorite part of the UrbanDictionary entry was this: “This was a popular term used in the late 60’s, all of the 70’s and fell out of use in the 80’s due to lack of soul in the middle class.”
If anybody can offer me any more information on this term, its prevalence in this area or its possible grass roots comeback in Gossett Football Team House, I think we would all benefit.
But for now, I guess the moral of the story is the Terp defense has not been struggling due to lack of soul.
Eric Detweiler is The Diamondback’s Terrapin Football Team columnist. He can be reached at edetweilerdbk@gmail.com. You can follow him on Twitter at http://twitter.com/edetweiler.
Eric,
Adrian is a respectful young man and obviously felt he shouldn’t use “bullshit” when speaking with a reporter.
You need to watch the original Airplane movie — it’s a good education on “jive”, the vernacular for urban slang in the 60s/70s and early 80s.
afterp,
I completely agree. If I didn’t give Moten enough credit for his good quote, that was my mistake. My point is that there are a lot of ways to say the same thing, and he chose a very interesting way to say it.
If he had used a more derogatory term, it certainly wouldn’t have been newsworthy, but I found the quote both informative and funny. If anything, this situation illustrates my lack of familiarity with the term.
Thanks for the “jive” lesson, and taking the time to set me straight.
Eric Detweiler
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