Adventures in Imperative Speech, Sportscasting Edition

By Alan Jacobs • January 7, 2013, 6:18 AM

Among sportscasters, verbal tics are highly contagious: a quirk of phrasing that begins with a single person quickly spreads to the whole profession. This is usually not a good development. I particularly despise a set of phrases that have become ubiquitous in the past few years: “Oh, he’s gotta make that catch.” — or that throw, or that shot.

To which I always reply, “Evidently not.”

Or, reversing the polarity, the commentator exclaims, “He can’t make that throw in that situation” or “He just can’t miss from there.” To which I reply, “Evidently he can.”

This kind of thing is non-commentary, utterly useless verbiage, the apotheosis of linguistic emptiness. But it’s impossible to get through a sporting event without hearing something of the kind. So, commentators: You can’t use those lame locutions. You’ve just gotta do better.

9 Responses to Adventures in Imperative Speech, Sportscasting Edition

Bill P says:

January 7, 2013 at 9:12 am

My favorite is when they tell us that a certain has “had a lot of good success” with something. I’m always glad to see it when players are having good success on the playing field. As a Yankee fan, I can still remember the early 90s, when guys like Ed Whitson and Matt Nokes were having a lot of bad success with almost everything. Good success is better than bad success.

Also, this isn’t sportstalk, but – on the “apotheosis of linguisitic emptiness front – I just got this from someone I work with: “Can you localize a few of our key learnings for me into a document describing our product development initiatives to instantiate a suite of services that pre-productizes certain tools or packages to work toward enhanced efficiencies-slash-proficiencies?”
Frank OConnor says:

January 7, 2013 at 9:49 am

The mute button, or volume control turned extremely low, will solve this problem for you. The idea that we need to have endlessly explained to us what is obviously going on before our eyes is absurd. It’s just that people are afraid of silence and apparently prefer uninformative babble to quietly sitting in their livings rooms “watching”rather than “watching/listening” to their televisions. A few hundred years after Pascal, his insight remains: People still fear sitting quietly in their rooms.
Alan Jacobs says:

January 7, 2013 at 10:23 am

I love sitting quietly in my room — watching stuff on a giant TV screen.
B. Minich says:

January 7, 2013 at 11:40 am

Scoring the basketball is an annoying one, though it doesn’t bother me too much because basketball isn’t my sport of choice. What else can you score with?

The dumb sideline questions bother me. “So, coach, what did you think about the first half?” It’s basically a way to let the coach ramble on in a way where he is tired and doesn’t give any real insights.
Dan Davis says:

January 7, 2013 at 11:42 am

Going back before television, how did people even watch sports (I mean in the actual stadiums) before the invention of microphones and loudspeakers? It makes sense for radio broadcasting, I guess, but even the idea of doing that doesn’t seem all that obvious in retrospect. At least, not to me.
John Speranza says:

January 7, 2013 at 12:38 pm

I don’t know if tennis is your bag, but the 1980 Wimbledon final is available on DVD from Netflix and elsewhere. It’s a marvel of minimal commentating, not only because what the BBC announcers do say is quite a bit more intelligent than what we’re used to now, but also because they’re not afraid to remain silent. I seem to remember that the first point of the match, around a minute of screen time, is played out in silence from the booth — because there’s nothing to say yet!
CharleyCarp says:

January 7, 2013 at 1:05 pm

‘They’re going to have to put some more points on the board if they’re going to have any chance at winning this thing.’
B. Minich says:

January 7, 2013 at 5:27 pm

Oh, I forgot how much I loathe points on the board.

Another: “This team is going to have to score a touchdown in order to win this thing” when a team is down by > 3. Really, sportscaster? I KNEW THIS.
Evgeni says:

January 7, 2013 at 10:48 pm

I think I was spoiled growing up on hockey that had a radio simulcast; all they do is tell what happens as it’s happening, which is useful in such a fast moving sport. That’s one of the many reasons football and baseball bug me do much. That being said, roll tide.