Thought-provoking tweet here by Troy Machir, who is the Senior Digital Editor at NBC Sports Washington:

Good topic, much more interesting than the typical day on Twitter, which consists of liberals and conservatives yelling absolute nonsense at each other.

The worst word that immediately came to my mind, in response to that question, was “exposed.” I hate that term in sports.

“He got exposed.”

“She got exposed.”


“Gabe Kapler’s managing has been exposed.”

We say that as if people are completely incapable of adjusting or responding when things work against them, like it’s some finite judgment being passed. Once you’ve been “exposed,” there’s no recovering. You are forever a failure.

Here are some more good suggestions, after the jump:

Yes. Agree with Doug here.

“That guy is a football player.” 

“He does a great job at scoring the basketball.” 

I’m not sure why we started saying things like this in the first place. Maybe to try to spice up otherwise bland nouns.

“Outcoached” is another good one, similar to “exposed.” People like to call the radio and say “Brett Brown got outcoached,” simply because the Sixers lost the game. If you’re gonna go down this road, you have to give specific examples, i.e. Nick Nurse started going big with Serge Ibaka and Marc Gasol on the floor together while Brett failed to make the proper rotational adjustments. Something like that.

“Physicality.”

I don’t know how many times I heard other writers use this word in press availability during the 2018 Sixers/Heat playoff series. We’re talking NBA playoffs. Of course there’s going to be “physicality,” with an elevated sense of urgency in the postseason.

Yes.

We should remove “Yankees” from sports writing and commentary.

I also saw somebody mention this:

“Plays the game the right way”

You could use this phrase to describe the way Bryce Harper “hustles” and slides, or maybe Mike Trout or whatever. Or, in the NFL, a boring linebacker who just goes out and racks up tackles without any sort of fanfare of controversy. Some people say this term is “racist” because it’s used in a derogatory sense to elevate white players who run hard and play hard, while the “latinos” or whatever (Jean Segura) do not. That’s another topic for another time.

We spoof this all the time.

Is this a “must win” game?  You’ll hear it early and often in the NFL season, or when the Sixers lost game one against the Nets and Raptors, yadda yadda yadda.

Yeah, I tend to cringe when people use terms like this to describe athletes. “Soldier” is a good one. It was Kellen Winslow who went on a tirade years ago, calling himself a soldier, which seemed off-base because he was a football player and other Americans were over fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Trickeration is not even a word.

Deflategate.

Spygate.

Burnergate.

Bountygate.

It gets old after a while.

Anyway, we’re getting rid of all of these words from sports writing and commentary.

Thank you.