Announcer clichés are one of the most recurring, yet truly
fascinating things about bad sports commentators. From Phil Simms to Reggie
Miller, every bad announcer uses this one cliché ad-nauseam: momentum swings. This
cliché has become so overused that despite it literally making no sense, it has
found its way into our general fan lexicon. That is enough for me to call this
an epidemic, and although my audience might not be as large as theirs I will do
everything I can to make it known that momentum swings does not make sense.
If you are still reading this but not quite sure why
momentum swings do not make sense as a cliché I have two things to tell you:
first, thanks for reading this far; second, momentum cannot swing. I do not
claim to know science at all, but I do know that momentum goes one way and
carries that way. So if momentum exists in sports (it doesn’t but that is for
another post) than it cannot swing. If a commentator tells you “this team had a
big stretch here which allowed them to seize momentum from their opponent” than
that commentator does not know how to speak about sports in any way other than
pluralities. I know this because I do sports commentary, and when bad
commentators can’t think of what to say or how to say it they find a generality
to fill the air and sound insightful.
I was watching Villanova vs. West Virginia in the sweet sixteen
of the NCAA Tournament a few weeks ago. Villanova fell behind but somehow
according to the announcers, not because they are better or anything, grabbed
momentum and won the game. A true miracle how momentum is able to defy what it
literally means. This blog that has pretty close to zero readers serves as the
watchdog for sports fans that like to think they know what they are watching. As
that watchdog I take my responsibility very seriously and I need to call out
these things because it is what the people want, or need. My observation is
that for the good of the intelligence of the average sports viewer who is
trying to get smarter by listening, commentators should stop with clichés like
this that do not make us smarter. I dream of a world in which we can all argue
and discuss sports without clichés and specifically without ones that are oxymoron’s.
With that dream, I hope that sports commentators stop putting these into the
sports fan lexicon.
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