Here are some of the glaring errors and general nonsense contained in his Monday Morning Quarterback column for August 20.
1) First, the highlights of the second full preseason weekend (and I will spare you, Mike Greenberg and similar Jetoholics, any further mention of the foibles of right tackle Wayne Hunter, because I do not want to ruin your week on Monday)
What the hell does that mean? Foibles? In the words of Inigo Montoya, I do not think it means what you think it means. I googled Wayne Hunter, and all the latest news are about him being a sub-par right tackle. Nothing about him having minor flaws or quirks. You want to say Chad Johnson has foibles, knock yourself out. Here, the wrong word was used, Mr. King.
2) Amazing, by the way, that Brown's been the whipping boy in Arizona for so long, and now people are pining away at his loss.
Again, wrong use of a word or idiom. What he's trying to say is Cards' fans are 'pining for a healthy Levi Brown'.
3) The officials have to drop their demand to keep a pension that's better than full-time NFL employees have, and the league has to jack up the money it has offered by $10 million or $12 million over the seven-year life of the contract.
Properly, it's not a demand of the officials that they retain their current pension (and congratulations on shilling for the league and siding with the richest sports organization in North America in its efforts to chip away at their employees' retirement fund, in this time of unbounded revenue and growth), it's a demand of the League that the officials give up their pension. In negotiation, a side doesn't demand to keep something, the other side demands that they give something up.
4) Now, the future is fraught with pratfalls.
Ugh. Facepalm. He meant 'pitfalls'.
5) Nothing looks uncomfortable for him. I don't know any better way to say it.
Mr. King should have tried harder. That just doesn't sound right. Is this the best way to say that nothing fazes him, or nothing makes him lose his poise? 'Nothing makes him uncomfortable' is better, but would still need work.
6) ...the Colts got the first pick in 2012 and Luck in their laps.
That just sounds unseemly. Is Andrew Luck moonlighting at a gentleman's club to pay off his college tuition?
The proper idiom is that Andrew 'Luck fell into their laps.'
7) The offense was so intergalactic last year...
Ouch. I've never seen the word intergalactic, which strictly refers to the space between galaxies, used as an adjective to denote high quality or proficiency. Or is Mr. King channeling his inner MCA?
'Other-worldly' might have been the appropriate word. He could have described their numbers as 'stratospheric'. As it is, he stands the risk of having his poetic licence revoked.
8) Gabbert looks night and day from last year,...
Again, something that should have been caught during revision. We know what Mr. King means, but that doesn't make it right. What he attempted to say and left us to interpret is that his play this pre-season compared to last season is as different as night and day.
9) The Rams were a confident offensive team Saturday night, which, with all the newness, is a credit to Schottenheimer.
Newness is such an ugly word. Novelty is much better. Mr. King should have used a word like 'transition' or 'change', and adapt his sentence accordingly.
10) I saw Bruce Tuesday night at Fenway Park on a busman's holiday from visiting camps.
I'm not sure that Mr. King knows what a 'busman's holiday' mean. Maybe he's comparing the act of covering football players at work to his sitting down and enjoying a rock concert, and maybe he could have elaborated on that, but at this point, when I read something that seems odd or out of place in his articles, I don't trust that he's being clever. I assume that he screwed up.
So there it is, ten really obvious errors I uncovered reading Mr. King's four-page column. A nationally recognized writer, in a prestigious publication. Unacceptable.
Oh, and Mr. King still owes us an ultra-marathon.
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