About

Foobaw is a perjorative slang term for "football," which intentionally misspells the word in an attempt at mimicking an Southern American accent, particularly in reference to the Hank Williams Jr. song "Are You Ready For Some Football?" (similar Sportsball). Memers frequently used in conjunction with a photo of a newspaper featuring a picture of professional football player Ben Roethlisberger. The crease on the page causes Roethlisberger's face to appear enlarged, particularly his mouth.

Origin

On February 5th, 2012, Tumblr ^[1] user baka-its-not-like-i-really posted the earliest available usage of the term. They uploaded a photograph of a creased newspaper page showing professional football player Ben Roethlisberger, which distorts the face and causes the mouth to appear enlarged. They captioned the image, "i hope everyone is ready for some FOOBAW." The post received more than 193,000 notes in less than nine years (shown below).

Spread

Following the post, the image, as well as usage of the term "foobaw," increased on Tumblr. For example, on February 26th, 2013, Tumblr^[2] user foo-baw submitted their first post, which featured the picture of Roethlisberger and the caption "You’re name is the FOOBAW FANDOM and you think you’re ready to play some FOOBAW." The post received more than 2,600 notes in less than eight years (shown below, left).

Later that year, on September 5th, Tumblr^[3] user bill posted the image with the caption, "ARE YOU READY FOR SOME FOOBAW." The post received more than 277,000 notes in less than eight years (shown below, center).

The image of Roethlisberger and the term continued to spread on Tumblr. On February 5th, 2017, Tumblr^[4] quiixotical shared the image with a screenshot from a video game in which a football player appears small in stature. They captioned the image, "[VERY SMALL VOICE] foobaw" (shown below, right).

Various Examples

Foobaw pic.twitter.com/WAgpqg1ovY

— P.M. Seymour 🎙 (@PatMSeymourVA) October 21, 2020

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