Words That Sportswriters Use That Make Me Cringe

We had a boss who filled in one night in the backshop (still in pasteup days). He saw an error in the golf story, sent out the fix and made the correction. So we had a reference in the paper about Steve Ballesteros.

 

Would you add "table" to this list? Instead of "standings."

 

Yes.

 

If you wouldn't mind, I'd like to borrow this and tweak it the next time I cover a game between two winless teams: "It was a tale of two halve-nots."

 

OK, I'll contribute: Legacy. Way overused, especially with high school sports.

 

Gary Danielson's favorite:

"This Alabama team."

"This Auburn team."

"This Florida team."

Just say Alabama, Auburn or Florida.

My wife and I joke about how many times the word "football" is used by broadcasters in one sentence.

"He threw the football down the football field and the receiver caught the football and made a football play to win the football game."

 

Any passage from a dictionary. It's not cute, don't do it please.

 

I lost my shit once when someone on the desk swapped out “Loss sends Wildcats to consolation game” for “Loss sends Wildcats to pity game”

“Oh, ‘pity’ isn’t an acceptable substitute for ‘consolation?’ But the thesaurus said....”

 

I suppose it fits but I get tired of seeing it every day multiple times.

 

etc.

 

ест = "eating" in Russian. Carry on.

 

Have to watch out for non-sports people editing sports copy. I recall a girls' high school softball feature that, for some reason, ran in the metro section. The copy editor, who had little sports knowledge, thought terms such as "first baseman" and "second baseman" were inappropriate. She changed them to "first base person" and "second base person." And they got in the paper.