Oy. I don’t know if any trendy announcer-speak is more annoying than the tendency for announcers to start referring to the time left in a game in terms of money, such as There’s a buck ten left in the game. They only seem to do it when there is less than two minutes left in the game (or the first half); it’s always a buck something left (sometimes they even say a buck and change left), but with inflation, it’s likely to spread to two, three, or 10 minutes left soon.
I’ve been trying to decide why I find this so annoying, and I think it’s mainly because it’s just a ridiculous thing to say. It doesn’t make sense. I would never tell someone that I have a doctor’s appointment in five bucks rather than in five minutes because that would obviously be incredibly stupid, but once the clock ticks down to under two minutes in a football game, time and money become the same unit.
I know that they don’t literally mean money instead of time; they’re just following a trend that someone started a few years ago. And I want a name–I need to send a letter of complaint or something. It was probably Joe Time, I mean Joe Buck.
–Paul
Paul’s book–Literally, the Best Language Book Ever
