Music plays a large role in getting players and crowds hyped for the action during a game. This is especially true in sports like football with large attendance rates in-stadium.
What do NFL players listen to before games to get their juices following? According to Billboard, the answer is all over the place.
Six NFL veterans were surveyed by Billboard about pre-game music in the locker room for themselves and their teammates. Two players gave similar answers about recent hip hop artists, but everyone else had a diverse, if not surprising, set of choices for music before a football game.
Justin Durant, linebacker for the Dallas Cowboys, listens to "angry stuff" with a particular affinity for early 2000s Southern hip hop and DMX's first studio album, "It's Dark and Hell Is Hot." Durant says that Tony Romo prefers James Blake and the kind of 90s hip hop "that would probably have been on 'Now That's What I Call Music.'" Not a diss by Durant but not exactly a compliment either.
Minnesota Viking linebacker Audie Cole's choices are also a blast from the past with bands such as Sum 41, Smash Mouth, Blink 182, and Everclear. Cole also made sure to mention a song by New World Sound and Thomas Newson called "Flute," although he couldn't recall the name of the group when answering the question. Cole says his teammates enjoy a lot of rap music, country music, and John Legend. It was not specified if the players were listening to party songs by Legend like "Green Light" or love ballads that bring tears to listeners like "All of Me," but nonetheless, it's an interesting choice before playing football.
The other four veterans surveyed mostly listened to the latest pop hits, early 90s hip hop, or gospel music.
Players at the 2014 NFL Draft in Radio City Music Hall were the first allowed to pick walk-up songs as they came to the stage to shake the hand of NFL commissioner Roger Goodell. Only a handful of rookies chose non-hip hop music, and nearly a fifth of the draftees selected songs by Drake. Johnny Manziel chose "Draft Day" by Drake in which he is shouted out in the first line of the song: "Draft day, Johnny Manziel/Five years later how am I the man still?" Did Drake throw in the shout out because he knew the NFL would allow incoming rookies to pick their own songs? The world may never know.
Based on this small sample size, it seems like NFL players who continue to enjoy the party scene listen to whatever is hot, and the rest stick with the music they listened to when they entered the league. No one mentioned contemporary rock bands which is either an indictment of the current state of the genre, or the NFL's musical taste.
