This post is what it's all about

This blog post is not what it's all about, and it does get better than this.

OK, let me backtrack. This is another time-stamped post while I take a few days off. So if some actual gigantic news has broken out, that's why I'm offering this irrelevant drivel while the world shakes.

(If the world actually is shaking, you aren't reading this, anyhow. It's been good knowing you all, I appreciate you coming here to the Hlog, and see you on the other side.)

We hear a lot of things during sportscasts and get immune to many of them after a while. But we shouldn't. We should pay attention and strike back at the inanity of it all. Like ...

"They're playing with a real sense of urgency"

Translation: They've realized that they're going to lose if they keep playing like dozing dogs.

When have you ever heard anyone at work, or in any aspect of daily life, say "I've really got a sense of urgency?" It's more like "I've got to hurry up and get this done."

I'd rather here "git 'er done" than "sense of urgency." And I never want to hear "git 'er done" again.

"This is what it's all about"

No, there's always more to it than that, whatever it is.

A team scores a few unanswered baskets, its fans go nuts, and that is what it's all about? That doesn't seem very existential to me. If that's what it's all about, our lives have no meaning whatsoever. What a dark and disturbing thing for a commentator to insist to me.

"They've really bought in to what this coach has told them"

Bought in. That one crept in to the sports lexicon a couple years ago and has taken root. It means "accepted."

Say it, announcer. Accepted. It's a good word. An understandable word. Accepted. It means something.

There's no "buying in." Just like there's no buying in ...

"They can't buy a basket"

Of course they can't. It's a competition, not commerce. You earn points, you don't purchase them.

Isn't that understood by everyone? So why suggest buying a basket is a possibility.

If you could buy baskets, that would mean the game was fixed. No one wants that. It's illegal, and it makes gamblers furious. The ones who weren't in on the fixing, that is.

"(Hockey Team A) skated past (Hockey Team B)"

You hear this on local news and see it in local newspapers. My newspaper has the Cedar Rapids RoughRiders "skating past" several teams a season, and occasionally getting outskated.

No, that's not what happened. It's hockey. It's a scoring competiton, not a skating competition. You put the biscuit in the basket to win. It's got nothing to do with double axels or triple Lutzes or double-triple-quadruples of both.

At the end of a hockey game you don't hear fans muttering "Yeah, we scored nine goals and they had two, but their guys skated like a bunch of Apolo Ohnos. We stink!"

"It just doesn't get any better than this"

Seriously? So a team wins an exciting game, and it doesn't get any better than that? That's as good as life can possibly be?

How would you like to go to bed a couple hours after that, thinking about the fact nothing is going to be as good as the game you experienced that evening?

No, thank you. As Paul Simon wrote in "Train in the Distance," the thought that life could get better is woven indelibly into our hearts and our brains.

"(Any team's name) Nation"

Everybody's in a Nation these days. Hawkeye Nation and Buckeye Nation and Husker Nation and Banana Slug Nation.

It's not enough to, you know, just be part of a school, a city, a state, or a region. You have to be eligible to join the United Nations. Like that's a good thing, hanging around with dictators and tyrants, and needing translators to understand 95 percent of them.

Is calling yourself a Nation going to remain big enough? Maybe it's best to step it up and be the Ute Universe or Cougar Cosmos or Grizzlies Galaxy or Sooner Solar System.

"Kirk Fuh-RENTZ"

You don't hear this on radio or TV, at least not much. But after Kirk Ferentz has been Iowa's head football coach for 12 years, it still amazes me to hear some Iowans call him Fuh-RENTZ instead of FAIR-ents.