English as a Second Language for Sports Announcers

While watching an entertaining weekend of football (a big high five to F-Train for his Jets knocking off the Electric Norvs), I was reminded repeatedly of how badly many sports announcers mangle the English language. Here are my two biggest sports announcing pet peeves du jour:

“There’s no question …” / “No question about it …”—Umm, if there’s no question about a point, if it is so obvious and so incontrovertible that there can be no debate on the issue, why oh why are you wasting my time with your nattering?

“Player X is out with a [body part].”—This formulation is pure verbal laziness. “Smith is out with a knee.” Actually, he has two knees. He’s out because he has (take your pick): a) a torn ACL, b) a knee strain, or c) a knee injury. See how that works? You report on a medical condition, not merely name a part of the anatomy. To illustrate the silliness of this formulation, imagine saying a player is “out with a head” or “out with a brain” when in fact he is “out with a concussion”.

Now we can only hope Joe Buck goes back to baseball where nobody listens to him …