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Wednesday, August 7, 2013

The (proper) grammar of talking about sports

When I was younger, I was a professional wrestling fan. However, I lost my interest in it when I was about 10 years old, and I haven't watched any wrestling event or show extensively in almost two decades.

I do, however, like current WWE Superstar CM Punk. He's true to himself, he says what he feels, and, having sat in on the WWE Mattel panel at last year's San Diego Comic-Con, he seems to be a really nice guy.

As part of YouTube's "Geek Week", Punk has launched a new web series on Nerdist's YouTube channel, entitled Grammar Slam. Five episodes have been released so far. In each episode, Punk reads a hate Tweet and a hate email, each one written specifically to him. Each written statement contains improper grammar, and Punk proceeds to teach the writer(s) of the statement(s) about proper grammar with his own special brand of tough talk. The series is pretty funny, and I recommend viewing it. Here's the episode on the difference between "your" and "you're", both of which are increasingly misused these days (warning: NSFW language):
Punk's series is the inspiration for this blog post. Standards for grammar have really sunk in the age of the Internet and texting, with people using textspeak (or Twitter-speak) on long form posts on forums, rather than typing their sentences properly, then dismissing it as, "It's only the Internet, not English class."

Using improper grammar on the Internet, though, doesn't extend to just misspellings or using contractions where you should use a possessive. People also take too many liberties with certain words, such as using "literally" where "figuratively" should be (Punk does a video on this, too).

Perusing the comment sections at Deadspin and ESPN.com (the latter of which displays a cacophony of people who can't/won't use proper grammar), I find people using one word quite a bit: nobody.

Webster's Dictionary defines "nobody" (when used as a pronoun) as, "no person." When used as a noun, "nobody" means, "person of no influence or importance."

Like "literally", people use "nobody" far beyond its actual meaning. Check out the following example:

Nobody watches [ice] hockey.

This statement is used quite heavily by (ignorant) Americans to slam a sport they don't care for. Not only does the sentence make the person who typed it look immature, it's also not true.

According to the NBC Sports Group, 8.16 million people tuned in to watch Game 6 of this year's Stanley Cup Final between the Chicago Blackhawks and the Boston Bruins, which featured that frantic, fantastic finish that saw the Blackhawks win their fifth Stanley Cup. A capacity crowd for an NHL game at TD Garden in Boston is 17,565. It looked to me like every single one of those seats was full of people watching the game. Just because you don't watch hockey doesn't mean that everyone else doesn't, too. Hockey in the United States isn't as popular as football or basketball, but people do watch it. If they didn't, the arenas would be completely empty; people wouldn't be talking about it on Twitter, Facebook, forums, or other sites devoted to hockey; and the NBC Sports Group and the NHL wouldn't have that 10-year, $2 billion contract, right? How else could I call GNASH games if I'm not watching them?

Moving on:

Nobody in the United States cares about soccer.

Again, not true. If nobody in the United States cared about soccer, we wouldn't have a men's national team that just won its fifth Gold Cup, or a women's national team that's won multiple Olympic Gold Medals and Women's World Cup championships; the NBC Sports Group wouldn't have ponied up a quarter of a billion dollars for the rights to the Barclays Premier League, which they've been promoting heavily since the Spring; and people wouldn't take to Twitter to passionately complain about Gus Johnson calling matches for FOX, or tweet about how much they love Ian Darke calling matches for ESPN. Drew Carey is a huge soccer fan who co-owns Major League Soccer's Seattle Sounders, who have one of the most passionate fan bases in MLS, and has an intense rivalry with the nearby Portland Timbers, who also possess many passionate fans. There are plenty of people who care about soccer in the United States, and, if you've been paying close attention these past few years, it's gaining traction.

Nobody cares about [small market team here].

If that were true, small market teams wouldn't exist. Maybe the casual viewer (I refuse to say "fan", because being a fan implies that one is more involved with the sport than just watching certain teams/players) doesn't care, but the diehards do. Would I like to see the Tampa Bay Rays, a small market team, win the World Series this year? Absolutely, especially with fellow Middle Tennessean David Price in their rotation.

Here's one I've been guilty of saying, in terms of a game/race/match with a sparse crowd (Jacksonville Jaguars games in recent years have dealt with the following sentence):

Nobody's there.

If nobody were there, the stadium/racetrack/arena would be empty. There would be nobody in the stands watching, nobody on the field playing, or nobody in the press box covering the game. A sparse crowd doesn't equal "nobody"; it just wasn't a sellout (or it was a sellout, but not all the seats a filled).

Here's a non-sports example:

Nobody listens to Justin Bieber.

Too damn many people listen to Justin Bieber.

OK, I'm done with all the "nobody" business. Let's talk about something else that bugs me when it comes to talking about sports, and it comes from the journalist covering them: saying someone won their first something. This is particularly prevalent in auto racing, golf, and tennis, but it can be applied to team sports, as well.

This past Sunday, Charlie Kimball scored his first IndyCar Series win at Mid-Ohio. It was a popular victory among fans and fellow drivers. In writing about the race for USA Today, Curt Cavin committed one of my biggest pet peeves:

He [Kimball] won the first IndyCar Series race of his career, a start-to-finish green-flag run Sunday at Mid-Ohio Sports Car Course.

Argh.

This was not Kimball's first IndyCar race; it was his 45th. Cavin even mentions this in the very next sentence.

The Sunday prior, 2008 Formula 1 World Drivers' Champion Lewis Hamilton won the Hungarian Grand Prix for the fourth time, which was his first win driving for Mercedes' factory team. Hamilton had previously won 21 races for McLaren; the win for Mercedes was the 22nd of his F1 career. I'm sure people improperly said that Hamilton "won his first race" for Mercedes, when it was actually his tenth. Now, Kimi Raikkonen, the World Champion the season before Hamilton, did win his first race for Ferrari in 2007, the season opener in Australia. Double World Champion Fernando Alonso did the same thing for the same team in 2010 in Bahrain. Both Alonso and Raikkonen had won races with other teams prior to their stints with Ferrari: both drivers won races for McLaren, though not as teammates, and Alonso won races for Renault in two separate tenures, his two World Championships coming in his first tenure with the French team (coincidentally, Renault is now Lotus Renault, for whom Raikkonen now drives, and has won races).

Rarely does a racing driver literally win his/her first race in a major form of racing. Doing so doesn't mean they're destined for greatness, of course.

In a previous sentence, I mentioned that the Chicago Blackhawks won their fifth Stanley Cup in June. This is correct, because I am referring to the trophy itself, even though the Blackhawks can only keep it for a year (and, in doing research on the Web, plus reading books, the team doesn't get a replica), unless they repeat as champions next season.

Saying the Baltimore Ravens won their second Super Bowl back in February is correct in the literal sense, as the Ravens have been to two Super Bowls, and won them both.

Turning to golf, Francis Ouimet (1913 U.S. Open), Ben Curtis (2003 Open Championship), and Keegan Bradley (2011 PGA Championship) all literally won their first major. When Tiger Woods won the 1997 Masters, it was his first major championship, as he had previously competed in majors as an amateur.

When Andy Murray won the U.S. Open last September, it was his first Grand Slam title, as he previously taken part in 27 Grand Slam events.

As with the Stanley Cup, it's perfectly OK to say someone has won his/her first Olympic Gold Medal, as you are referring to the top prize that's at stake in that particular event.

Call it a rant, call it pedantic, but those are just some of my thoughts on how we talk about sports.

Thanks for the inspiration, Punk. Keep up the good work.

-Michael Hackney

1 comment:

  1. Apologies for the font getting smaller towards the bottom of the post; I can't fix it, for some reason.

    ReplyDelete