Ok so I freely admit that if you talk enough something really dumb will eventually come out. Sometimes though some of the things these guys say really make me laugh.
For Example:
Earlier in the college basketball tournament one of the announcers was breaking down what a team needed to do to win the game. Number one on his list was “Score more points than they allow.” Really so to win they needed to score more than the other team. Great, thanks for your in depth analysis Mr. Announcer.
During the college football season we were watching the Texas Longhorns play. I can’t remember who they were up against but the announcer was commenting on how the weather was affecting the game. He proceeded to tell us how high the “humiture” was and how it eould eventually wear the players down. I thought maybe he just made a mistake, but he said humiture about 7 or 8 more times. Just to be sure we looked up the word to make sure it wasn’t real. Couldn’t find it, but maybe it’s a word that doesn’t appear in dictionaries. Maybe this guys was trying to coin a phrase or something so that he could be rich.
So when you’re watching sports on TV just keep your ears open and maybe you will learn some new vocabulary or gain a deeper understanding of the sport.
I’ve heard “humiture” for years used by meteorologists, and it appears in my American Heritage Dictionary. It means the same thing as the heat index or “apparent temperature”, which is the temperature your body feels when the air temperature is combined with the relative humidity. As humidity increases, the rate of evaporation decreases. And since our bodies are cooled by the evaporation of our perspiration, if evaporation is slowed your body will cool more slowly and thus feel warmer.
peepthis- Really, my dictionary must blow hard. Well I’ll pass that along to all my friends. I haven’t been able to find it a single dictionary I have access to. Interesting. Well I take it all back. See you can learn new vocabulary from listening to these guys.
Ok so what I should have done was type humiture into Google, because when I did that it gave me several different online dictionaries that contained that word.
Much as I think Howard Cosell was a fine sportscaster, it was quite obvious that he didn’t know much about baseball (boxing was his forte, and he was good with football). In one World Series, he pointed out quite vehemently that the reason why Eddie Murray was nailed at the plate on one play was because he took an extra wide turn at third.
Then the showed the replay. Howard was screaming about how wide the turn was, but it was just a normal turn. Sure he went wide – you can’t make an instant right angle turn – but the baserunning was perfectly standard.
This one’s actually amusing. I forget what game it was, but one team was horribly outmatched by the other. They were going through the gameplans for the two teams, and the plan for the good team included strategy like, “Don’t oversleep and miss the bus.”
A couple years ago my husband and I were in the car listening to a SF Giants game on the radio. At some point one of the umps ruled a really close play in favor of one of the Giants players and the sportscaster said “he loves that call.” Then in a totally serious tone said: “He loves that call so much, he wants to marry it.”
We just looked at each other to make sure we actually heard him say that, then we cracked up for like a half hour over it.
I can’t find a cite for it, but there’s an Urban Legend about Canadian hockey broadcaster, Howie Meeker, calling a player “one tough c*nt” (not once but twice) on live TV.
During the last Olympics, Dan Rather took political correctness to a new low. A woman from Great Britain won a gold medal, the woman also happens to be black. Rather’s infamous comment: “Denise Lewis is the first African American woman to win a gold medal for Great Britain.”
What I thought he meant when I first read what you typed is that the team needs to score more points than the other team typically allows teams to score. That’s not exactly a brilliant observation either, but at least it’s not as dumb.
I never heard the actual broadcast, but comedians are constantly re-creating a broadcast during which Harry Caray supposedly saw a Hispanic outfielder misplay a fly ball, and asked, in exasperation, “How the hell does a MEXICAN lose the ball in the SUN?”
I once heard Bob Costas say: “Terry Mulholland is now pissingin the Giant’s bullpen”. Of course, he meant to say pitching…and not many people noticed it either. His co-hort, Joe Garagiola, covered it up quite well by not missing a beat in the coversation.
However, years later, I heard Costas refer to it again in an interview.
Another one (this may be urban legend, but I read an article on line about six months ago that contained this information…I did hear the actual slip-up, but don’t know if anything that followed is true):
The last year Dennis Miller and Dan Fouts were in the booth for Monday Night Football, Fouts made an error that got a bit of attention. Dennis Miller had been commenting all game long about a particular receiver who could not catch the ball. Fouts was disagreeing saying that the quarterback was not delivering it properly. Finally, in the fourth quarter, the receiver missed a key pass on third down…a first down would have put them in field goal range and a possible tie. Miller started the conversation with “See what I"m talking about, Foutsie. Was that one catchable?”
That happened to be the night after ABC aired Saving Private Ryan, so the attention was somewhat diverted. However, the comment apparently had something to do with Fouts not being invited back to announce the next year.
I do miss Fouts. However, with Madden in the booth, Monday Night Football has become the best sitcom on TV. I wish they’d play reruns during the offseason.