[OT] Sportswriting cliches

Picking up on Darren's comment about drivel online: Cliches and sportswriting go together like, well, beer and Sunday afternoon football. Dan Jenkins in his novels does a good job of mimicking the best or worst of sportswriting, but one man can't track them all.

There are something like 100 synonyms for defeated, almost as many as there are for boobs. (Playboy once counted them all. Talk about investigative journalism.) Beat, whipped, trounced, edge, upended, upset, walloped, outgalloped (Texas sportswriting especially), nipped, hammered, rolled over ...

The ball or puck can have lots of names, too: tater, pigskin, spheroid ...

There must be an NFL School of Platitudes coaches must attend upon entering the league. This helps keep them from saying anything useful in an interview beyond that the opposing quarterback, even if he's average four TD passes a game, still puts his pants on one leg at a time, just like everybody else.

All coaches know that a player who gives his all gives 110 percent. Giving 100 percent is what you expect of a star and a superstar of course gives more. We're approaching crisis mode because now that stars are routinely called superstars, what do you call the best of the best - megastars? Regardless, such a person is some kind of athlete.

The tenth-of-a-second clock makes it mandatory that we write about the tying goal being scored with 42.3 seconds left, as if there was some difference between that and 42 seconds, no decimals. Maybe for something happening in the last 2 seconds, the tenth makes a difference, not otherwise, but we're stuckwith it.

One can also expound on rookie mistakes when a QB throws a fourth quarter interception (now called a pick), as opposed to bad timing when a fourth year veteran throws the same interception.

Games of the century come along, what, every six to eight years?

There are phrases that just begged to be used together, such as grizzled and veteran.

When you don't know what else to say about an upcoming game, you can say it will be interesting to see what happens. That is a favorite USCHO term.

When we run out of cliches, we can always turn to PWR ratings to fill our spare moments.

And etcetera. Other examples greatly welcomed.



[Q]Darren Leung Wrote:

I, for one, am sure glad to have something else hockey-related to read outside of that pointless drivel that comes out on USCHO practically just before the puck drops every weekend. And I'm probably just being an ass about it, but is anyone else tired of reading about 2 or 3 game "streaks" being "snapped"? Can their writers get any less creative?

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