Hammie Busters! Bad sports speech

In My Humble Opinion
1

If business speakers mangles English regularly with their slightly pompous, self-aggrandizing, but still vaguely ignorant approach to the language, sports announcers and sports participants do one hell of a lot more to mangle the langle. They do it with glee, with joy, and with an offhand ease that puts business language manglers to shame. Just this weekend I heard a national television sports commentator report than an athlete who had apparently injured his hamstring tendon had ‘busted a hammie.’

Mmm, “busted a hammie.” That’s good manglin’! Other examples come to mind?

2

“The bowler’s Holding; the batsman’s Willey”.

3

Darryl Waltrip was talking about NASCAR drivers temporarily sharing a draft with a driver they’ll later battle for position. He deemed it “coopetition,” combining cooperation and competition.

4

After the Falcons/Packers game this weekend the female field reporter asked a Falcons player

I was thinking “Man, the worst our coach ever did to us was extra windsprints!”

5

I’ll usually give sports announcers a pass since they’re trying to spontaneously come up with something to say. On the other hand, the business writer who gave us his article (we’re editing a magazine advertising insert) detailing “the CEO’s double-pronged approach to achieving market penetration” actually sat down and thought about it first.

6

I once saw a football player answer a question “Yes, quite a much.” Now I say it all the time. I’m hoping it’ll catch on.

7

I think shock treatment is is what they do to help revive athletes who’ve given 110 percent.

8

The phrase definite has quite a muchness of quality to it. I’m proactively bringing it into my new paradigm Real Soon Now.

9

Just heard a new one:

“In a game like this, they wanna do what they wanna accomplish.”

10

This strikes me as a good neologism. It’s a concept that didn’t have a name before, and the word itself is sufficiently well-chosen that we know what it means without being told.

YMMV.