I use the term 'apologist' a lot (not wrt Carr). May be I should start using the term 'shill'.
:)
Gotta admit, I love Rome.
You could add the terms "Pick Six" and "Walk off" to the list, as well as the new trend when announcers say a player is "Out with a hamstring" instead of saying "out with a hamstring injury". Someone mentioned that before....I'm not sure if it was you, another blog, Simmons, or who...but whoever it was is right. That is horribly annoying.
Packer,
With you 100%. Never understood why someone would be forced to sit because "they have a knee". I have two. I can still run and jump. Am I medical marvel?
Another addition to the list Brian.
Playing for Respect.
Alexander get no respect. Thats right we just voted him league MVP you freaking moron.
USC gets no respect, yeah they have not been awarded "the grestest team to have ever played" award.
Pats get no respect. Three rings?
longhorns get no respect. Well you are no 2 in the polls(and USC leads not by much) and you are in the NC game.
and
LC gets no respect: He won a NC in 97!!! (this was just a joke, LC doesn't deserve any respect)
I was in Motown on the eve of SB XL and just couldn't stop hearing ppl tallk about respect, both seahawks and steelers fans. Felt sick by the time i got out.
Not to mention the usual local media hand-wringing over whether visitors will say nice things about Detroit.
Impressive blast. Well done.
My new least favorite phrase in recruiting is "slow played." I prefer "Waited for another player who didn't suck as much."
I slow played a falafel sandwich the other day while I waited 5 minutes for the guy behind the counter to make a shish tawook. The falafel sandwich ended up committing to some hippy chick.
Nice rantings Brian. My list of crap I don't want to hear anymore of would include the use of hyperboles to describe a good play/player. As Madden, Salisbury, Holtz, Taylor, Stewart Scott, et. al would have us believe, every week there is a "new" greatest play/player/game. I get tired of such idle talk.
Further, I'm tired of hearing announcers shortening up everyone's name. As if "Tiger" is so difficult to pronounce or isn't cool enough or whatever. You don't have to tell me how "E-Woods" did over the weekend you gas-bag Stewart Scott. Just give it to me straight dickhead.
Woody Paige comes to mind when talking about "gut" or giving random statistics without context in predicting the future.
Then there are the "I am not articulate enough to use a variety of creative adjectives" types, a la Troy Aikman, who used "heckuva" approximately 16,000 times in every playoff game he worked. Oh the damage a few concussions can do.
Addition to the list, anything ever said by Chris Berman.
Mine is when a coach or announcer trying to sound articulate refer to their players "a" [state their name]. For example,
As John Madden might say (a few thousand times) When you have a Brett Favre, he does the type of things that only a Brett Farve can give you.
You need to include two overused expressions that make bleed:
"to a man..."
what does this expression mean? Does it mean "to Me..." if so why don't you just say that
"__ nation"
why is everything a nation now? Steeler Nation, Raider Nation, Red Sox Nation. Stupid.
How about "Moral Victory"? or, along the same lines of Kool-Aid, "Eating the Cornbread"?
Aggression, not aggressiveness. This is bad English and should be expelled from the mind as soon as it's heard.
It's also meat and potatoes stuff for the HGH, circle-jerk of masculinity crowd of Schlereth and Hoge. Therefore, it is bad not only by usage, but contaminated by association.
dammit! I totally forgot "___ Nation." I actually saw some use the term "Hawks Nation" when referring to the Atlanta NBA franchise... exactly what nation is that? San Marino? The Vatican?
You also left out "Anything that comes out of Stewart Scott's Mouth."
There is no difference between Rome and Scott other than height and heritage. They are by far the two most annoying people ever put on TV/radio. If I hear "booyah" one more time to describe a 10 foot jump shot I'm hiring chuck norris to hunt him down....
this one is selective but how many times have you heard Berman say,
"daylight come.....and ya gotta Delhomme!"
wow.
I, too, hate "nation" describing ANYTHING.
Woverine Nation is bad. Not to mention, I cringe every fucking time Vitale says, "he's the best shooter in the NATION, baby!"
Best defense in the NATION.
Most underrated team in the NATION.
Highest ranked team in the NATION.
Can't we say country, or ncaa... or division 1. Anything else. Please.
I like Berman, I don't care what anyone says. He's always had the same shitck and it's comforting, especially when confronted with the abomination that I'm faced with on most sports related television.
Are you throwing out experience when you also disgard "senior leadership"? Just curious. I don't think experience is something to be so easily dismissed. Is it the sole determinant of outcomes? Obviously not. And I haven't run the numbers, but I would imagine that a person could make a case for experience being some sort of significant metric.
Bless you, sir. Bless you.
'Boom goes the dynamite'. That poor guy has suffered enough.
oh, and anything coming out of that fat tired cretin berman's mouth.
I'm out.
My nomination would be for the use of the term "swagger." Whether someone or some team "lost their swagger," "has their swagger back" or never had it to begin with, I don't give a shit. Stop saying it.
"Defensed" needs to go. Is it so tough to remember that the noun is defense, but if you want a verb you have to use defend?
I'm also sick of plays being termed "coverage sacks." Wow, the receivers were all covered and the QB didn't lob up an easy pick? Am I supposed to be surprised?
Defensed should only be used by the British.
"Oh and that particular manoevre failed quite spectacularly. Well defensed by Chelsea indeed."
"Presence of mind" always seems to me to be an odd thing to say.
Just to clarify, "to a man" doesn't mean "to me."
The context in which the phrase is used is something like this: "Before the game, I interviewed the offensive players and, to a man, they all said Bill Jackson should stay as offensive coordinator."
What that means is: "Before the game, I interviewed the offensive players and every one of them said Bill Jackson should stay as offensive coordinator."
Tyson may still be right about the use of the phrase, but it basically means "every last one of them."
Like Orson, I am particularly perturbed by made-up words ("proactive," "admittance," "humankind"), but, like Colin, I find Chris Berman's routine reliably campy.
As for the use of "nation," I must confess to being one of the worst offenders---when referring to the Georgia fan base, I invariably use "Bulldog Nation," the preferred term among the Red and Black faithful---but I agree with Ben about using "the country," "the N.C.A.A.," "Division I-A," or "college [name of sport]" instead of "the nation" when referring to the United States rather than to a particular fan base.
Of course, my great-great-grandfather (like Fielding Yost's father) was a Confederate veteran and we Southerners (who regard "United States" as an adjective and a plural noun, not as a first name and a last name) always have been a bit prickly about that whole "nation" business.
Accordingly, Ben's and my position may have been dealt a fatal blow at Appomattox Courthouse over 140 years ago, but I'm on his side, nevertheless.
Joey: experience is obviously helpful and it does appear that teams need good players who can execute in times of high stress... it's just the incessant, non-stop hammering of "senior leadership" that grates.
re: "Swagger." I can't believe I forgot that particular abomination, either. Any sentence containing it is guaranteed to be uninformative.
"Coverage sack" doesn't bother me since it's a useful descriptor of a situation: "Wow, the defensive line killed 'em this week." "No, all those sacks were coverage sacks."
I am always ambivalent about "swagger." It is a favorite of the lazy set who don't want to explain a blitz or an effective trap or anything else that is hard to deal with when executed well, but at the same time, a team like 1990 UNLV intimidated opponents before the games had even begun, and that quality seems like it should be acknowledged. Now, the intimidation owed to the collective athleticism that allowed four-fifths of the starting five made the NBA and to UNLV using said athleticism to destroy teams, so perhaps one might have said or written, "Intense, disciplined defense has allowed UNLV to cause a lot of turnovers and score in transition. Teams know they will encounter this but have a hard time preparing for or adjusting to it, and that makes a game against UNLV ominous." But, some might have just opted for "UNLV is a team with swagger" and assumed that you knew what they were getting at. Again, it's lazy, but I don't think it's useless. Luther Campbell-era Miami is said to have possessed swagger: post-play gesticulations; animated sideline demonstrations of confidence; and, most importantly, on-field superiority. That all went into the "swagger" or "mystique." To deny the existence of that collective character--something opponents acknowledged--would be to neglect the entire story.
Kyle -- Bill Martin said "country." I knew I didn't hate that man for good reason.
That's encouraging he sent you a reply. I'm still waiting on mine. I'll let you know when I do.
p.s. what is your email address?
Ben:
You can start by e-mailing me at kyle_cha@bellsouth.net, which is the public account available on our firm's website.
When I hear from you at that address, I'll reply to you directly and give you the better address at which to reach me.
I apologize for being so secretive, but the last thing I need is to let rival fans know the best way to harass me.
Kyle
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