It has become the practice on ESPN (and probably elsewhere) to use sports teams nicknames when giving the scores, but their city-name when giving the standings. For example, the score page will say Rangers 7 Indians 4, but then when you look at the standings chart, they are listed as Texas and Cleveland. If your following of that particular sport is not deep enough to have a grasp of every team and its nickname (as is the case with me and NHL or NBA), you are left scrambling through various other links trying to match up Miami with Heat or San Jose with Sharks.
This becomes particularly pronounced when going beneath the four major mens sports, like women’s basketball or arena football, whose scores in the bottom crawl are completely meaningless.
NFL.com lists the standings as complete team names (Chicago Bears) but scores only as “Bears”. MLB.com lists standings by city (Detroit, Toronto), but scores by standardized city-name abbreviation (Det, Tor). NBA.com follows the MLB pattern. NHL.com uses city-name throughout, for both scores and standings.
I think this annoying practice is something new in the TV-Internet era. In newspapers, the scores and standings were always right there next to each other, and the team was called the same thing in both charts.
Are there many people who follow a sport enough to care about scores and standings but don’t know team names? I didn’t know San Jose has a team named the Sharks, but I wouldn’t be interested in the standings or scores for whatever sport that was either. For the sports I follow, I know all the teams, and I’m not a rabid sports fan.
I’m unconvinced by your argument that everyone who cares about any subject already has a certain prerequisite of knowledge about it.
I have presented you with a living example (myself) of someone who at some point cares enough to look at the scores of NHL or NBA games (like around playoff time), without being able to infallibly match team cities with nicknames. I think it’s presumptuous of ESPN to just blow off that gray area.
I tend to think that ESPN, at least, caters to a level of sports-enthusiast that it assumes is fairly knowledgeable about stuff that basic – at least when it comes to the major US sports. If they were reporting on, say, Major League Lacrosse or the Australian Football League, I suspect that they wouldn’t be as casual.
I do vividly remember the first time I went to England and watched the local sports report on tv, though. They kept throwing around statements like, “Let’s go out to the Madejski Stadium for a report” or “tonight’s action at the Stadium of Light” and I realized for the first time what it must sound like to an Englishman watching ESPN as they report live from “Soldier Field” but expect you to already know that that means they’re in Chicago. And Heaven help you if they only discuss “the Frozen Tundra” or “the Big Sombrero” or “the Mistake on the Lake” or any number of other stadium nicknames present and past that those in the know take for granted, but those on the outside looking in will never figure out without help.
Keep watching any of those clips, short as they are, and it becomes clear. A report from Soldier Field is *going *to be about the Chicago Bears, who *will *get mentioned in it. If you care enough to pay attention for another ten seconds, yes, you will know.
Bolt: not exactly the same thing, but ESPN’s WSOP coverage the first couple years had an explanation of Hold 'em rules. Haven’t seen it in years. Still remember the winning hand was a Full House.