We love sports. But watching—and especially listening to—sports broadcasts requires the viewer to accept language that is brutally inaccurate, inappropriate and often just plain dumb. Perhaps this is why European football (aka "soccer," around here) increasingly appeals to us here at Positively Writing. England's Premiership announcers use language more correctly, precisely, and more cleverly than do the announcers of American sports.
It's almost too easy to point out silly announcer errors; the web site Awful Announcing has built a business by doing that. So let's go deeper; why do viewers evidently accept the consistently incorrect use of language during games?
We cite three primary reasons. First, let's turn things around and look not at the announcers, but at the viewers. No need to tense-up sports fans; just keep an open mind.
Many (perhaps most) sports fans are not overly concerned with announcer syntax during games they watch. We would venture that highly precise language might in fact distract viewers. Here's why: Sporting events are decidedly informal gatherings. Alcohol often is consumed; massive amounts of alcohol often are consumed. When that happens, the brain, the nervous system, and general awareness levels are operating on less-than-optimum levels. Larger stimuli will logically make an impact; more subtle stimuli do not.
So if an announcer states "The Cowboys offensive line has three first-time starters, which begs the question . . . " most sub-optimized viewers don't particularly care that "begs the question" is completely misused. They (the Cowboys haters) instead salivate at the thought of their team's defensive-line stunts that will confuse those new starters and KO Tony Romo for another season. Larger stimuli.
The viewers are into the experience, not the framing of the experience with precision language. So the announcers and their networks do not receive negative feedback, even though it is warranted in many, many cases. Hence, thorough elucidation not required.
The second reason: Many announcers are ex-athletes who have not, shall we say, matriculated with particular urgency at their respective institutes of higher learning. The true scholar-athlete—the Bill Bradley or the Pat Haden—is not merely the exception. He is scarce to the point of near non-existence. So we'll not get a seriously studied delivery from the athlete-announcer . . . which fits just fine into the aforementioned "informal" game-time experience.
The third reason language gets abused during sports broadcasts: Language also gets abused in the surrounding media environment (i.e., advertising pre-, during, and post-game). Advertisers are pretty good at targeting their messages, especially those in sports-related broadcasts. They, too, know that informal is better. In this case, informal sells better. So they keep the language loose and focus on monitoring sales, not monitoring Twitter comments about misplaced modifiers in their :30 commercials. If the brand is thriving, the language is acceptable, they seem to be saying.
To be sure, some sports writing is highly competent and technically correct. But it is striking how infrequently we see it; the almost incomprehensible, sheer volume of sports banter across all media channels is staggering, so even if 10% (we're skeptical) is done well, it's swallowed by the typically insipid, bombastic blather of the sporting media landscape.
So it seems we purists might pay more attention to Man United–Chelsea matches that the Yankee–Red Sox games. (For the record we'll restate a recent Tweet of ours: Barcelona's Lionel Messi is approaching a "greatest ever" level, one that may surpass Gretzky, Jordan, Montana and all the rest.) And while we'll always advocate for strong, clear communication, we recognize it's not a high priority for the average sports fan. That's too bad, because we're all for doing the right things, and we view respecting the language as one of those right things.
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