Top 10 Terms I Never Need to Read or Hear in Sports Ever Again

by DMtShooter, Five Tool Tool

10) "Man crush." We get it, you really like Athlete X. We just don't need to be given the mental picture of the spa rubdown to go with it. Why not mix in something new, like Short Term Personal Savior?

9) "He's long." Once more with the gay porn? I can tolerate wingspan, even though it makes everyone sound like a prehistoric animal. I can even be down with tall. Long? Unless your first name is Howie, this is shunned by decent Americans. (And he's shunned by decent Americans, too.)

8) "He gives 110 percent." Statistically impossible, clinically stupid, and in something like its third or fourth decade of unbridled use. Let's all just evolve as a species, shall we?

7) "He's like a coach on the field." He's slow, isn't wearing proper equipment, makes a tenth of the amount that the athletes do, and is twice the age of most of the other players? If none of those things are true, he's as much of a coach on the field as you're a genius in the booth.

6) "His stuff is filthy / nasty." First off, stuff is just kind of everyday odd, but we'll let that go. No pitch is filty unless it's being loaded up with a foreign substance, and no pitcher is nasty unless he's throwing at people's heads.

How about something that's less meatheadish, like "has late movement", "is deceptive," or "makes hitters look bad"? And if you can't be accurate, how about we just settle for creative, and go with "is possessed by demons," "redefines antisocial" or "is harder to hit than a cute drunk girl with a fat sober friend." Just looking for variety, really.

5) "It's a shame, because he's got all the tools." Guess what? Determination is a tool. The ability to focus and ignore pain is a talent. Your mind is your most important muscle. If Player X can't get past squandering his athletic gifts, it's because his brain isn't very good. If his brain isn't very good, he's missing a tool. So is the announcer saying it, really.

4) "When you meet Player X off the field, you find out he's really a..." Stop right there, because everything that comes after this is, at best, noise. At this point in the development of professional sports in this country, we really don't expect the athletes to be role models, nice people, or even likely to be proven innocent in a jury of their peers. So take your dime-store psychoanalysis, powered by your thousand dollar access to the people who are trying to con you into their personal marketing agendas, and roll it all up into a ball. Then place that ball somewhere painful.

3) "Coach X really isn't happy with that. You better believe that, in the locker room at halftime, he's really going to..." Oh, no! Coach is gonna get mad, presumably at most of the players that he chose to be on the team, for sucking. As a fan of the Sucking Team, this helps you, because you'll know that those naughty, naughty people are going to be punished for making you feel bad. Punish them, Coach! PUNISH THEM GOOD!

Um, frankly... this is all getting a little, how shall we say... personal. Like the announcer has some issues they need to work out. On their own time, hopefully.

2) "Plus Arm / Legs." Everyone loves to talk like a scout, because scouts are just so sexy and with it. Can we get back to the game, and stop talking about the players as if we're examining animals at the county fair?

1) "That's got to help your fantasy team..." Listening to most television announcers talk about fantasy is like listening to your fat old uncle talk about what's hot and new in The Hip Hop. Either do your research and play in a league or six, and stop telling me how wonderful it is for the third tight end's fantasy owners when he catches a touchdown... or just talk about the freaking game.

On second thought, just talk about the freaking game, OK?