As a writer, “professionally” so for about 10 years now, I’m always fascinated by how the language is used in some places. I’m always on the look for words bent into adjectives or trying to find better verbs and whatever else (and the fact that I usually resort to “whatever else” means I’m not all that good at this). On the flip side of the coin, watching sports programming most of the time means I’m seeing the language get butchered. The problem usually lies in that those doing a lot of the talking are former athletes which probably means A) they stopped going to school for any real purpose somewhere around 7th grade and B) have been repeatedly hit in the head, knocking loose whatever education they did get.

But they’re not always the culprit. So here are the things that bother me the most when watching broadcasts: