Words That Sportswriters Use That Make Me Cringe

agreed. That stuff is virtue signaling to
The coach or, worse to basketball snobs.

 

The two words mean the same thing, so neither is really wrong, but somewhere around the turn of the century "control" became "command" for baseball pitchers and I'd love to know why. It's a useless change.

 

Or any adjective used as a noun, or nouns used as verbs.

I also hate anything that’s just a complete ripoff of ESPN slang — “web gem” is the most egregious example I used to spend a lot of time removing from a particular writer’s articles. And “trucked” — ugh, no. Find a standard usage instead of trying to prove how you’re cool, connected and plugged-in to the buzzwords of the moment.

 

I agree with the guy who listed "score the ball." I always wonder what other kinds of scoring there might be, like "score the truck" or "score the dog." I also get tired of hearing about Length, as in, the team has great Length because of all those Long players. But my biggest irritation is with Exhaustion. I played basketball. Our coaches drove us to extremes to make sure we were in shape. It was a common cliche that games were significantly easier than practices. With timeouts, halftimes, commercial breaks and substitutions, there was no way anyone was exhausted. Yet I continually hear on TV and read in articles about how one team became exhausted in the final quarter or final 10 minutes. Nonsense. Not even junior high players suffer from exhaustion during games.

 

In wrestling I hate the word pinfall.
You either win by pin or by fall not pinfall.

And capped off.
Podunk finished or capped an unbeaten season. You don't need off.

 

“Pinfall” is a term from rasslin’ rather than wrestling. If it shows up in copy, take it out and tell the writer there’s no kayfabe here.

 

Unless you're writing for UK publications, for which you'd better know your stuff/kit. The sports-tech online I write for has a European edition and I'm expected to make that copy editor's job a bit easier.

 

In college at Ohio University, our baseball coach was Bob Wren. The campus newspaper would refer to us as Wrenmen and, I think, Birdmen after the bird wren. The school nickname is Bobcats, but back the days of freshman teams, the frosh teams were sometimes referred to in the paper as Bobkittens.

 

Def, and don't forget ties ... soccer has ties!

 

Craig Stanke had a long list of these when he put together the sports stylebook at the Fort Lauderdale paper many years ago. It included such awfulness as "charity stripe" (free-throw line) and "keglers" (bowling).

"Iconic" is way overused, and not just in sports coverage.

 

Like when they say late in a blowout football game "The defense is getting tired." The offense never gets tired?

 

Add to the list: "Joe Schmoe will be QB1 tonight when Springfield plays Shelbyville for the traditional trophy." I get the reference to "Friday Night Lights," but as a colleague pointed out, the show stopped using QB1 when it was discovered coaches don't talk like that.
Come to think of it, saying any game is under the "Friday Night Lights" is a cliche.