Working Up

by Dwayne Phillips

Football players are not weapons. Please stop being so lazy as to call them such.

The National Football League playoffs are in full stride. I like to watch, but I hate to listen to the ladies and gentlemen who talk during the games and on the sports shows during the week.

One of the things that upsets me is the phrase:

The quarterback has a lot of weapons at his disposal.

This refers to the players on the team that are talented at catching passes and running after the catch. Somehow, these players are now “weapons.” Sigh. Football players are not weapons; they are people playing a game.

Back in the fall of 2001, soon after the September 11th attacks, much of the warfare metaphors ceased for a while. Real people were actually dying in real warfare. The stupidity and laziness of relating a game to a war hit people hard enough to cause them to think a while and speak English.

Time has passed, and the stupidity and laziness has returned. This all reminds me of Orwell’s “Politics and the English Language” (see Wikipedia for a discussion and links to the essay). Broadcasters and commentators babble to fill air time and speak in cliches. Lazy. Stupid.

One of the reasons I hate this is that is spreads the stereotype that athletes and sports fans are stupid.

If anyone in the sports media business is reading this, please stop the war metaphors. Please stop the cliches. Please speak English. Say what you mean and mean what you say.