With spring break approaching quickly, I began to think about where we are in the school year. This portion of the year is definitely a grind. The time between Christmas and spring break definitely creeps along, but the school year is a game of inches. After spring break is definitely the home stretch of the school year, it's time to show your mental toughness and buckle down on defense. Wait...what? Point being, I'm going to have to take the rest of the school year one day at a time and rely on my teammates to get us into the playoffs. Hold on a second...playoffs? As I thought about how far we've all come this school year I came to another realization: Sports metaphors, cliches, and lingo are everywhere. I can't shake 'em and damnit I don't want to. What would our analysis of everyday occurences consist of without them? I don't want to know. These cliches and sayings are so common that it is much more effective to use them then it is to take the time and actually explain something. For example, if my mother, who I love dearly, screws up her beef stroganoff, I can simply say "Dropped the ball Mom," or, "Below par." These simple words drastically cut down on unnecessary babbling about how "It's ok, just a little bland," or "No...really...it's good." Shake it off Mom, maybe next time. Instances like these are perfect for sports sayings.
There are many other places where sports lingo is acceptable, scratch that, its mandatory. I'm going to pull out the drawing board and give you the x's and o's on situations where sports talk comes into play. Say your friend is desperately attempting to pickup some chick at a bar/club/wherever chicks reside outside of the home, and after the awkward hello and handshake, she turns away...strike 1. In order to break this tension, your friend offers to buy this chick a drink or some celery (what do you buy someone if you aren't around a bar, clearly I've never picked up chicks before). She would then chug down whatever is in front of her, and give the cold shoulder...swing and a miss, strike 2. At this point he might as well throw in the towel, but sports lingo dictates these kinds of things. He has to go in for another try. After desperately looking for any sort of conversation with no progress being made, she turns and starts chatting with another guy. Strike 3, ring him up. This is one of the more depressing examples of sports lingo, but also the funniest.
Overtime you realize that the basic sports sayings just aren't quite as satisfying as they used to be. For example, when someone drops something, you say they "fumbled." When one of your friends finally gets a tug, you say he got to "second base." When someone does a job well, he or she "hit it out of the park," and so on and so forth. Those aren't getting the job done for me anymore. I needed variety. I needed to spice things up. I needed a deadline deal in order to beef up my roster (vocabulary in this case) for the stretch run (meaning the remainder of my life). What I decided on is to start making up my own. Whenever somebody falls, whether it is from a punch, slip, trip, narcolepsy, or anything, I just start screaming at them, "DOWN GOES FRASIER, DOWN GOES FRASIER," and stand over them in a Muhammad Ali pose. In cases where something so unexpected happens, something that makes you really get out of your seat surprised, it requires one to yell "THE BAND IS OUT ON THE FIELD!!!," or in super extreme cases in which something good happens, "Do you believe in miracles? YES!!!" These sayings never seem to fail me, however, given the fact that these aren't the basic cliches, I've gotten some strange looks. Hopefully these sayings catch on like the mobile quarterback (which is totally a fad, but I'd love to be responsible for a fad).
My last note on this topic for now is this: Dick Vitale is the king of cliches and sports lingo, he always has been, and he always will be. No question about it. Anybody who inserts Dickie V quotes into their conversation is definitely a friend of mine. I don't want to live in a world without Dick Vitale.
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I definately agree that it is time to "pass the baton" to a new set of sports related phrases and cliches. But I think we should try to use lesser known phrases from unconventional sports, such as poker. For example, when something unfortunate happens, unexpectadly, at the last moment, like your girlfriend telling you to pull-out just before climax, you could say you "got rivered". Or when something begins unbelievable but slowly gets worse until you are left utterly destroyed, like dating Beyonce for a few months followed by her breaking up with you but leaving a parting gift of HIV which quickly turns into AIDS and kills you, but, because she's rich, she receives the Magic Johnson AIDS cure and lives a wealthy, happy life. In this situation you could say you "flopped the nuts and went all in, but she stayed in on a gut shot, runner-runnered you, and took your whole bankroll". I think this could catch on.....
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