Jeff Agase Agase thinks that columns
about clichés are so cliché. E-mail him at agase@ucla.edu.
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On any given Sunday, in a must-win game of inches, if every
individual on a team steps up and gives 110 percent, while
remembering there is no “I” in team and winning the
turnover battle, something has to give.
It’ll be a war, but if they go out and take care of
business with their backs against the wall, picking up the
intensity level, capitalizing on turnovers, and doing their best to
contain (opponent’s star player), while overcoming nagging
injuries, they might just save their embattled coach from the
firing line, get off the bubble, run the table, control their own
destiny and, of course, shock the world.
The cliché has penetrated sport like ““ well, like the
simile has overtaken humor in sports columns.
Even talking about clichés has become cliché, to the
point that the Web site www.sportscliché.com “really
came through in the clutch” with many of the clichés in
the first two sentences of this column.
Meaningless yet inescapable, hackneyed yet lazily inviting,
played-out platitudes have muscled their way into the parlance of
athletics to such an extent that even the most casual of fans can
predict the painfully typical post-game interview right down to the
last “you have to give credit to (opposing team).”
It has to stop. It’s not like we’re expecting Daniel
Webster or Winston Churchill when we see an athlete speaking. Most
of them, like most of us, are not spectacular orators.
But that also doesn’t mean the majority of interviews have
to sound like John Major reading the dictionary cover to cover
while under the influence of multiple sedatives.
Strong words? Probably, but that’s kind of the point here.
We either need to start hearing something fresh or else create a
prerecorded tape of interviews from the 10 or 15 situations that
arise in sport and save the trouble.
I’m serious here. Imagine “Unexpected Upset
Loss,” “Single Player Dominates Game,”
“Coach Takes Blame for Loss” (we at UCLA are
particularly used to that one), recorded and filed for quick access
before the Super Bowl, at halftime of the NBA Finals or after Game
7 of the World Series. We could even get someone with a cool voice,
like James Earl Jones or Carrot Top.
“Coach Bibby, it must be tough to lose in the first round
after all you accomplished this season.”
“It never gets any easier, Jim. None of the breaks went
our way tonight. This is going to be a tough plane ride
home.”
“Most thought your team would see its tournament end at
the hands of Duke in the Sweet 16. Can you honestly say you
expected this kind of game from UNC Wilmington?”
“You can’t look past any team, Jim. Every game is
important. You never want to point fingers and I don’t want
to discount the great job Coach (whoever) did with that team. We
were flat-out outplayed.”
You get the idea. And yes, it’s a bad idea.
The only feasible alternative I foresee is eliminating the
cliché through well-conceived, creatively outrageous
commentary. That doesn’t necessarily mean players and coaches
need to start making irrational claims, like Anna Kournikova saying
after a quarterfinal victory, “I’m going to win a
tournament.”
It’s not about sounding like a delusional moron.
It’s about making the people who watch actually care about
what you have to say.
It’s not easy. I know because journalists like me (as
always, I use the term “journalist” liberally when
describing myself) are preached at again and again never to use
clichés.
The cardinal sin is the dreaded “weather lead,”
which incorporates game day weather into the first sentence of the
story. Two years ago I sat through 90 minutes of soccer at Drake
Stadium in a downpour, then was told not to say something to the
tune of, “when it rained, it poured,” when describing
the Bruins’ four-goal outburst.
As difficult as it may sound to accomplish, killing the
cliché is mutually beneficial to athletes and sportswriters.
We writers live for that one glimmering quote that outshines the
dung heap of clichés we have stockpiled in the rest of our
stories, and athletes and coaches often love exposure in print,
especially when everyone’s talking about a particularly
hilarious quote.
But if athletes and coaches feel compelled to hang onto
clichés like summer camp-bound schoolchildren grasping beloved
stuffed animals, that’s fine. But in order for the revolution
to take place, each athlete or coach is going to have to establish
his or her own clichés. No borrowing allowed.
We need not look far for progressive action. Steve Lavin, who I
have on many occasions nicknamed the “Sultan of Slick,”
has jocular clichés all his own, to the extent that it might
be more appropriate to call him the “Raja of
Repetition.”
He constantly referred to good-luck senior Sean Farnham as his
“leprechaun” two years ago. This season, he called Dan
Gadzuric the “x-factor,” Ryan Walcott “a smaller,
quick point guard ““ your water-bug type,” and he
repeatedly compared the season to a “boat race.”
We’re all still waiting for an explanation of that last
one. But hey, at least it’s entertaining.
To the athletes and coaches of the sports world, consider this a
plea for the eradication of the cliché as we have come to know
it.
However, I regret to say that history predicts for us
creativity-starved fans a drab and cliché-ridden future.
No question about it.