Meh.
All right, maybe not meaningless. Useless.
Must be a cultural thing, because I’ve only ever generally heard “Nation” used as a synonym for “Country” (with the exception of the various Native Indian tribes). And countries get to do things like issue their own currency, set their own laws, sign treaties with other countries, control their borders (and who gets to enter the country), have standing militaries, and so on.
Now, I can sort of see how the idea of a “Iroquois Nation” (for example) would be perfectly cromulent in the early 19th century when they really were a “Nation” and it’s a polite courtesy extended to them today as a result of various unpleasantnesses which kind of stopped them continuing to be something we’d recognise as a country today- but I’ve never heard sports fans describing themselves as a “Nation” and frankly it just sounds bizarre.
Because that’s basically what it’s a polite form of saying. 
In the US Native American nations do have sovereign powers. The have their own judicial and law enforcement systems, they sign treaties with federal and state governments and can issue their passports. Nation was not just a cutesy term but descriptive.
Red Sox Nation on the other hand… shudders.
I hate it when people refer to a non-fast food restaurant as a “sit-down” restaurant. Last I checked, most of the McDonalds’, Burger Kings, Wendys’ and other similar fast food establishments all provide tables and seats where one can plant his or her posterior to consume meals. I prefer to make the distinction between the two by calling them “full service” restaurants.
“What have you”: This one makes me want to slam my fist straight into the teeth of the person who says it.
“Y is the new X” and its evil cousin, “Today’s Y is yesterday’s X”. Gray is not the new black (or vice versa); they are two distinct colors!
Just to keep people on their toes (and I’m sure someone out there probably hates this phrase, as well as parenthetical offsets such as this), I’ll rephrase common cliches. For example, “the whole nine yards” becomes “the entire 27 feet/324 inches”. “The whole ball of wax” becomes “the entire sphere of paraffin.”
I know it’s been mentioned, but I can’t leave this list without including my seething and unabating hatred for “my bad”. “Bad” is not a noun. I don’t care if some modern-edition dictionary declares such usage as valid, I refuse to say it. We already have plenty of good, established words for this: mistake, flaw, defect, error, oversight, goof, flub, blunder, fuck-up, etc. Before too long people will probably make it into a verb (e.g. “I badded the project.”).
I’m glad I don’t spend much time around teenagers and twenty-somethings because most of them have forgotten the word “said”. Instead, they say “like” and “all”. And I was like, “You’re going out with Bill?” And she was like, “Yeah, what of it?”
Since I just used it in my example, I’ll include “What of it?” This phrase, like so many others, does not parse grammatically and its usage should cease immediately.
“I could care less.” I know this one has been argued to death on this board, and I’ll concede that it’s not going away, but I still refuse to accept it.
“Coke” as a general word for “soda” or “pop”. I know this is mostly a southern thing, so I don’t hear it much around where I live (Idaho). A childhood friend of mine always referred to his drinks as “Cokes”. One day he said that he couldn’t find where he set his Coke down. Ten minutes later I heard him say, “There it is.” It was a 7-Up can. Had he said it was a 7-Up I would have spotted it for him right then and there and his drink wouldn’t have gotten warm on him.
I’ll echo “I could care less,” and add unnecessary pronoun syndrome. “The Pope, he went to London,” or “The Lions, they couldn’t score if the other team walked off the field,” or “Kelly McGillis, she’s a lesbian.” It’s grating, even it’s not a particular phrase (as in “I could care less”).
I don’t know the grammatical term, but using the preposition “of” in the middle of a phrase makes me vomit, mainly because it’s…I don’t know, but to me, it sounds too passive, I guess. Examples: “tears of joy,” “jaws of life,” etc. There are only a few, and those two are the most pervasive, but every time I hear that type of word arrangement, I feel like I should smile and look at someone lovingly like the characters do in “Airplane!” when Randy starts singing to the sick girl.
Finally, and it’s not used as often anymore (thank the…of your choice), but any story, particularly in the news, about a cat had to be “purrrfect”, and about a dog had to be “dog-gone”. Examples abound, and most of us are probably old enough to recall those, so I won’t inflict them on you, and if you happen to be young enough to not know what I’m talking about, holy shit, you’re lucky.
I have spent a day or so getting increasingly cross about this, and conclude that you are probably right. However many ways I do it, the noun phrase explanation that you suggest might work.
So I will take refuge in simply disliking it. I think it can reasonably be said that for clarity, a noun phrase ought to be pretty short. The “I love…” structure tends to end up with long NPs that clutter understanding. So maybe my complaint should be expressed so: do not add stupidly long NPs to your “I love…” sentences 
Not sure I’ll be happy at the end of that, but I’ll certainly have less to carp about.
Hey, dislike all you want. 
It’s just the “ungrammatical” part I felt compelled to respond to.
I nominate any phrase where you never hear someone say the opposite. There’s the ubiquitous “You wouldn’t like me when I’m angry” and “I like to laugh.” Really? How informative. I’ve never heard someone go “When I’m angry, I’m generally ineffective. It’s comical, really,” or “I hate laughing. It gives you wrinkles.”
And God help you if you start talking about how much you’ll defend your kids. So what you’re saying is you’re a sane human being? Well gee, I thought, since you like to laugh, that I’d just start kicking your toddler. That isn’t funny? Oh, OK, nevermind then.
Wow. I’ve never actually heard someone actually *advocating *an incorrect usage before. Why are you encouraging people to drop needed pronouns? Would you say that someone is “a shadow their former self” or “a shell a man”? What about “The top the table is broken”?
What in God’s name makes you think “big a deal” is correct?
You do realize that it’s common to refuse something the first time you’re asked, right? I mean, it’s pretty common to go:
“Do you want the last piece?”
“No.”
“Are you sure?”
“Well…ok.”
Well where I come from, Larry is the guy in the third cubicle over.
Nations don’t have to have political power. Those entities with militaries, borders, and governments are called “states”, not “nations”. A nation is a large group of people that identify with each other by lineage, language, and/or territory. Many don’t have accompanying states, like the Kurdish Nation, the Palestinian Nation, and of course the American Indian nations. You’ll find stateless nations pretty much anywhere where there was some land taken over by another sovereign.
BTW, there’s also the Steeler Nation, of which I’m a proud member.
In certain contexts it is permissible to omit words.
The two are also largely synonyms IME. You can be a state but not a nation, but I don’t think you can be a nation and not a state, barring exceptional circumstances. And being a member of your local football team’s supporters club doesn’t count.
The two correlate often, but they’re not synonymous.
They correlate often enough to be near enough to synonyms to make no real difference IMHO.
“It’s all good!” No, no it isn’t, lots of things suck!
I wish people would learn the difference between affect and effect so they could stop overusing “impact”.
“I myself” sounds stupid. I wouldn’t have thought you meant “I, someone else” if you hadn’t said myself.
Some people say “actually” or “actual” just to sound fancy and end up sounding foolish, in my opinion. Yesterday, my sister said “I’m going to drive up to the actual sidewalk so Mom can get out. I’m not actually going to get out because I’m going to actually move the car after she gets out.”
These may be repeats, but “share” doesn’t (well, shouldn’t) mean “tell” and “feel” doesn’t mean “think”. I was in a high school science teacher’s workshop and the State Science Lady asked if anyone wanted to “Share out”. She caught hell from three or four of us for that one.