Post-game interviews are icing on the cake for those writers who also love sports. Watching coaches destroy the English language is as entertaining as watching Ndamukong Suh destroying quarterbacks. Coaches, many of them with master's degrees, mangle phrases as badly as running backs. And coaches have a particular talent for confusing verb tenses. But you expect more from sports writers, who make a living with the language.
Sometimes sportswriters project their own errors onto coaches in quotes. One writer I read frequently online quotes coaches using "that" for "who," as in "He's a player that shows real leadership" instead of "... who shows real leadership." Another writer leaves off the auxiliary verbs in perfect tense. Instead of "We've got to turn this season around," it is "We got to turn this season around." The writer wouldn't write "He got to get better" or "I got to get better" but can't seem to hear the last part of the contraction "we've" during interviews. It took hearing the coaches' own words for me to realize it was the writers who inserted the errors.
The inability to use verb tenses correctly afflicts plenty of national sportswriters. It has become fashionable for coaches and athletes to speak of past events in present and future tense. "If we score on that fourth down we win the game." Ah, but the game is over and you lost, so it's too late for that.
A CBS sportwriter, in a column about this year's five Heisman candidates arriving in New York for tomorrow's award ceremony, makes six errors in the first four paragraphs. Example: "If there isn't a second left on the clock last week in Arlington, Texas, the fallout carries all the way to New York for the 75th Heisman ceremony."
But there ISN'T a second left on the clock. It ran out — twice, actually, as those who saw the game know — six days ago. The sentence should read: "If there hadn't been a second left on the clock last week in Arlington, Texas, the fallout would have carried all the way to New York for the 75th Heisman ceremony." That turns 28 words into 30. Is that really such a problem?
By the way, I pick Colt McCoy for the Heisman. He's had a strong season to cap a stellar four-year career. Mark Ingram can wait until next year. Suh will have to be satisfied with being selected first in next year's NFL draft. Gerhart managed to take 21 credit hours at America's most selective university while racking up 1,736 yards against tough competition. He deserves it as much as anyone. Tebow doesn't have the stats this season to become only the second player to win the Heisman twice, but if they give an award for greatest all-around human being on the planet, he's a shoo-in.
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3 comments:
Re; Tebow; AMEN
I think the Heisman will come down to McCoy and Ingram. I think McCoy probably has the edge based on all the awards he took home on Thursday, although Ingram performed more effectively down the stretch.
Why are you so hung up on the "gramatical correctness" of someone else's writings? I believe if you can understand what one is writing, then who care about the grammar. Your mightier-than-thou, self appointed superiority on this subject is a dying art. The kids of today don't even spell out words, much less care about grammar. The future of how we communicate in words is changing and your hang up on grammar has been passed up.
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