History WesternAnimation / HowToPlayFootball

-->'''Narrator''': Football needs special equipment: a college covered with ivy, a stadium filled to overflowing with a hundred thousand fans, great armies of vendors, managers, mascots, photographers, sportswriters, doctors, elaborate brass bands, assorted coaches, old grads, scores of Annie Oakleys and two teams resplendent in brilliant uniforms.

* TheAce: Swivel-Hips Smith scores the first goal on the opening kick-off, an even manages to win the game when concussed out of his mind.

* TheBenchwarmer: Star player Swivel Head Smith is only brought into play when the team needs a winning touchdown. When Smith is incapacitated, the coach desperately tries to revive him while the other players get creamed by the opposing team. When Smith shows meager signs of life, he gets thrown back into the field and, with help from the rest of the team, staggers half-conscious to the end zone for the win.

* DogpileOfDoom: Swivel-hips Smith gets knocked out when every player on the field ends up crushing him.
* DontCelebrateJustYet: Swivel-hips Smith would have dodged all the opposing players if he hadn’t started celebrating before crossing the goal line.
* DownToTheLastPlay: A semi-conscious Swivel-hips Smith staggers his way down the field for a touchdown on the last play and Taxidermy Tech wins by a score of 13 to 12 1/2.
* HopeSpot: Swivel-hips Smith is effortlessly speeding down the field, dodging all tacklers, and is about to score the winning touchdown... when out of nowhere he's jumped by the entire opposing team, leaving him out of commission.

* TheLongList: Right off the bat, the Narrator rattles off a list of over a dozen things needed to stage a game of football. About the only actually necessary thing he mentions is the two teams that will play the game.
-->'''Narrator''': "Football needs special equipment: a college covered with ivy, a stadium filled to overflowing with a hundred thousand fans, great armies of vendors, managers, mascots, photographers, sportswriters, doctors, elaborate brass bands, assorted coaches, old grads, scores of Annie Oakleys and two teams resplendent in brilliant uniforms."

* {{Narrator}}: There is almost[[note]]The Taxidermy Quarterback and Coach each have a single line.[[/note]] no dialogue, but rather a narrator whimsically describing the game of football. This was a case of RealLifeWritesThePlot. After Pinto Colvig, the actor who voiced Goofy, quit the studio in 1938, Disney came up wit the "How To" series of instructional video parodies as a way to feature Goofy that didn't require Goofy to talk.

* PlotBasedVoiceCancellation: Near the beginning of the short the narrator tells the audience that he's going to explain the rules of football. The noise of the crowd then increases enough to completely drown the narrator out.

* UnecessaryRoughness: The Narrator tries to assure the audience that football isn't rough, it just builds character. The whole rest of the short begs to differ: even the ''cheerleaders'' get seven bells knocked out of them.

* [[RugbyIsSlaughter Football Is Slaughter]]: The Narrator tries to assure the audience that football isn't rough, it just builds character. The whole rest of the short begs to differ: even the ''cheerleaders'' get seven bells knocked out of them.

* SquashedFlat: Football players get squashed flat in cartoon style, appropriately for a cartoon about football.

* OffscreenMomentOfAwesome: Swivel-Hips Smith establishes him as TheAce by single-handedly carrying a ball to touchdown and avoiding all contestants, but all the audience sees is him catching the ball and him running into the end zone, with the rest of the camera swivel covered by a long row of bystanders.

* ManlyTears: When Swivel-Hips Smith is knocked out and has to be carried to the sidelines in a stretcher, [[EveryoneCries every member of his team doffs his helmet and sheds tears]].

* LoudGulp: Exaggerated: the Taxidermy Tech coach accidentally swallows his cigar alongside his saliva once his top star gets knocked out by a dogpile.
* {{Narrator}}: There is almost[[note]]The Taxidermy Quarterback and Coach each have a single line.[[/note]] no dialogue, but rather a narrator whimsically describing the game of football. This was a case of RealLifeWritesThePlot. After Pinto Colvig, the actor who voiced Goofy, quit the studio in 1938, Disney came up wit the "How To" series of instructional video parodies as a way to feature Goofy that didn't require Goofy to talk.

* NervousGulp: Exaggerated: the Taxidermy Tech coach accidentally swallows his cigar alongside his saliva once his top star gets knocked out by a dogpile.

* CigaretteOfAnxiety: The coach is seen smoking a whole mouth full of cigars during the final play.

* {{Narrator}}: There is no dialogue, but rather a narrator whimsically describing the game of football. This was a case of RealLifeWritesThePlot. After Pinto Colvig, the actor who voiced Goofy, quit the studio in 1938, Disney came up wit the "How To" series of instructional video parodies as a way to feature Goofy that didn't require Goofy to talk.

[[caption-width-right:350:Also known as how to contract Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy.]]

* DownToTHeLastPlay: A semi-conscious Swivel-hips Smith staggers his way down the field for a touchdown on the last play and Taxidermy Tech wins by a score of 13 to 12 1/2.

* LiteralMetaphor: Source of much of the humor. The narrator says that the stadium is "filled to overflowing with fans", at which point the stadium literally overflows with fans.
* PlotBasedVoiceCancellation: Near the beginning of the short the narrator tells the audience that he's going to explain the rules of football. The noise of the crowd then increases enough to completely drown the narrator out.

* {{Narrator}}: There is no dialogue, but rather a narrator whimsically describing the game of football. This was a case of RealLifeWritesThePlot. After Pinto Colvig, the actor who voiced Goofy, quit the studio in 1938, Disney came up wit the "How To" series of instructional video parodies as a way to feature Goofy that didn't require Goofy to talk.

WesternAnimation/{{Goofy}} stars in a satirical take on the game of football. It's a college game between Taxidermy Tech and Anthropology A&M. The film doesn't have a story as such, but rather is a parody of instructional videos, purporting to explain American football but really serving as a vehicle for a series of sight gags and puns.

This short was part of the "How To" series, in which Goofy was cast as an Everyman in increasingly ridiculous scenarios, often involving sports. Sixty-odd years after the series ended, it received a revival with 2007 Disney short "WesternAnimation/HowToHookUpYourHomeTheater".

* {{Narrator}}: There is no dialogue, but rather a narrator whimsically describing the game of football. This was a case of RealLifeWritesThePlot. After Pinto Colvig, the actor who voiced Goofy, quit the studio in 1938, Disney came up wit the "How To" series of instructional video parodies as a way to feature Goofy that didn't require Goofy to talk.