Turning a Good Phrase

So I've been eagerly watching football now that the regular NFL season has started and as always, I have been biting my nails as I watch every Washington Redskins game, wondering what the outcome will be. There was a time when Washington was very much the dominant team in the league and it never seemed that the team would be out of playoff contention but lo and behold, more than a decade after their last Super Bowl victory, a berth in the Super Bowl is never a sure thing anymore. While these situations are frustrating for the fans like me who cheer for them through thick and thin, is the fact that it can make for a dismal time watching a game but I think for people who study the English language or enjoy idioms, there's no sport and no team like the Redskins in terms of offering up idioms like no one's business.

Seriously, there are times when I think that there is so much idiomatic turn of phrase being bandied about that it would make English professors giddy with excitement that a supposedly 'dumb jock' could use such profound and utterly moving phrases apply to what many people consider a brutish sport. But what I feel is that while it's an intelligent way to describe the situation, after a while, the idiom or turn of phrase begins to lose it's meaning. Like the boy who cried wolf, after a while, people no longer seem to care of think that what you're trying to say is really what you mean. Take for example the ever popular phrase, 'must win game'. So many teams that are on the eve of their next game after having lost the previous one always turn to the phrase, 'must win game'. Technically isn't every game supposed to be a must win game? Shouldn't you want to win in order to remain a winning team? I don't think any team will ever want to have a 'must lose game' simply because that wouldn't make sense. At one point it did mean something when you applied the idiom to being one win away from the playoffs or from the Super Bowl. Then I understand why the game is a 'must win' but for the second game of the season? Please.

Last year the Giants started out with one of the worst records in the league and even their coach declared that fans and the media should not expect the team to suddenly appear in the Super Bowl. Prophetic words from a coach who just a few short months later would be hoisting up the trophy triumphantly. But at that time, the team like the Redskins as well, would give interviews to the media in which they'd talk about hitting 'rock bottom' or 'digging ourselves into a hole'. The hole digging idiom is another that gets used ad nauseum and it also tends to lose it's meaning. Some players used it so often when their team was losing that I'm amazed they didn't end up on the opposite side of the earth after digging their way so far down.

And what about all this talk about defining moments? Some teams and some writers have so many moments that they consider to be 'defining moments' for teams that it amazes me that more teams aren't suffering from an identity crisis. You have teams that consider a game winning touchdown a defining moment or when their coach yelled at them in halftime as a defining moment or tragic events in their host city. Sure they define a moment but they don't define a team. Or at least not unless they win. I doubt that a losing team will have a defining moment tied into any one of those instances unless they have a very skewed idea of what a defining moment is. But for all that, I love watching football and I love watching the Redskins no matter how frustrating it can be. I'm not one of those fickle fans that we have here in DC who will curse the team one minute and then sing their praises after victory. You have to be there through thick and thin and every turn of phrase.