Here at Dear Sports Fan where we try to make the world of sports accessible and understandable to everyone who wants or needs to understand it, the technical language of sports is an obstacle to be cleared. We’ve written about phrases like “and one,” “ball don’t lie,” “faking a spike,” and “pulling the goalie.” Grantland is one of my favorite sports sites. It writes for sports fans who are on the inside of sports culture but who have other interests, particularly pop culture. They assume that sports fans are well-rounded people who can have other interests the same way that we assume that well-rounded people with other interests can still be curious about sports. Bryan Curtis is a staff writer for Grantland and has put together a list of clever definitions of sports terms in the vein of Ambrose Bierce’s famous The Devil’s Dictionary (which is available for an insane $.99 for Kindle or $3.50 in paperback on Amazon.) Here are a few of my favorite definitions from Bryan Curtis’ Devil’s Dictionary of Sportswriting and Devil’s Dictionary of Sportscasting:
Olympics, the (n.) — A broadcast every American hates and watches with equal devotion.
sideline reporter (n.) — A woman who’s expected to be as sophisticated about football in three minutes as the men in the booth are in three hours.
“Signed off the street … ” (exp.) — Announcers love to talk about a new player who “just last week” was selling used cars. Of course, it’s no surprise that a marginal athlete would take a temporary job between playing gigs. The surprise would be if he were signed off the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
columnist (n.) — a writer who produces less copy than a blogger.
immortal (n.) — common as a noun, i.e., “one of the immortals.” Becomes awkward when an athlete dies — an act that would seem to establish his mortality beyond all doubt. A 1953 obituary for Jim Thorpe proclaimed, “Immortal Athlete Passes.”
mature (adj.) — a mature athlete, for a sportswriter, is one who spends his every waking hour on sports.
Curtis has so many more enjoyably snarky and insightful definitions in his Devil’s Dictionary of Sportswriting and Devil’s Dictionary of Sportscasting. Check them out now!