“Say, What?” Inside Lingo in Sports Broadcasting

Once athletes become sports commentators, they should act like journalists. Sports lingo doesn’t have to be continually explained each time. Better still, all sportscasters should use proper English that anyone can understand. The worst of the lot, Olympic commentators. That means get ready to cringe.

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Ever since I can remember, sports broadcasts were sponsored by manufacturers of products that made people very sick, mainly tobacco and alcohol. Now they also hawk products that can bankrupt viewers by inviting bookies into your home. Tobacco products were finally banned from sports broadcasts. But taking their place were hard liquor products and, more recently, gambling from home commercials, even though research shows that gambling debts are a prime reason for suicides.

Soon, one of the world’s most-watched, commercially supported sports events, the 2026 Winter Olympics, will take place from February 6 to February 22 in Milano Cortina, Italy. History shows that viewers tuning in to NBC Universal’s televised games are sure to experience this: so-called “analysts” unable to explain what is occurring in arcane sports.

But obfuscation is not just an “Olympics thing.” Baseball is another example, and it’s a sport where sports broadcasting has devolved. One reason? Many former athletes now serve as commentators and analysts.

It wasn’t always like that, and Ralph Kiner is one example. Kiner was a Hall of Fame baseball player who became a popular TV analyst for the New York Mets for more than half a century, beginning in 1962. I knew him personally when I managed an account with Gillette sponsorship. Kiner always made sure to use words that a person tuning in a broadcast for the first time could understand. Unlike too many of today’s broadcasters, if Kiner used an” inside baseball” term, he explained what it meant.

Before then, I managed publicity for “The Schaefer (Beer) Circle of Sports,” a nine-year television series that broadcast various sporting events. Three other broadcasters with whom I worked closely were the former Olympian Marty Glickman, who is credited with inventing the modern-day play-by-play description used by basketball announcers; Win Elliot, who excelled at hockey broadcasting; and Fred Capossela, the thoroughbred race track announcer for the New York Racing Association. As Kiner did, all were able to make their descriptions of actions exciting while using proper English.

Terms like squaring up in baseball broadcasting are now commonly used to describe a batter hitting a pitch solidly with the sweet spot of the bat (roughly 4 to 9 inches from the barrel end), resulting in maximum potential exit velocity. In football, the nickel defense is a much-used term. But explain those two terms?! Almost always not. It’s as if they expect everyone tuning in to be fluid in sports talk.

Other inside sports terms that have become part of standard sports broadcasting are Big Dance, can of corn, cheddar, and Uncle Charliee. How many fans knew what The Mendoza Line was the first time they heard the term?

Viewers who are sports fans will eventually figure out their meaning, but not the occasional viewer, who might think the terms two-seamier and four-seamier refer to tailoring.

Going to the Big Dance and Going Downtown (but not to get to the Big Dance) are two of the most used and popular phrases by sports broadcasters. But one of the most inventive was the description of a basketball player grabbing an offensive player’s rebound, dribbling the length of the court, and scoring. “He went 360,” said the commentator. (Rather difficult because a basketball court is rectangular in shape.)

Some other inside sports terminology that goes unexplained are football’s Hail Mary, pick 6, and 3-4 defense, and eight in the box. In hockey, it’s a hat trick. In basketball, it’s brick.

In sports coverage, even when proper English is used, it can leave casual viewers scratching their heads. Some of the comments defy logic, like the batter who “hit a pitch that was impossible to hit,” or the football announcer screaming, “That was an impossible catch” by a wide receiver.

Audiences who tune in only to mega-sporting events like the Olympics, Super Bowl, U.S. Open, or World Series are often bewildered by commentators’ sports lingo. Ask a casual viewer if they know the meaning of a lutz or salchow in figure skating, a nickel package in football, a yellow card in soccer, playing in a slam in tennis, balked on a vault in gymnastics, or a slider in baseball? You can bet that most don’t.

Athlete-turned-analysts seem to forget, or ignore, that many viewers might be tuning in for the first time, the way the aforementioned Kiner did in baseball, John Madden did in football, and Red Auerbach did in basketball. With those men at the mic, novice viewers didn’t need to be an insider to understand what was being said.

That said, several current broadcasters help viewers understand sports terminology. They include Johnny Weir and Tara Lipinski, who many consider the best skating analysts; Ron Darling and Keith Hernandez, who often explain sports lingo in understandable English on the NY Mets telecasts; and Troy Aikman and Greg Olsen who, if they use insider language, will explain it when broadcasting NFL games.

In my opinion, once athletes become sports commentators, they should act like journalists. Sports lingo doesn’t have to be continually explained each time. Better still, all sportscasters should use proper English that anyone can understand. With that in mind, Olympic analysis deserves a failing grade, because former Olympians, instead of being able to explain what’s happening clearly, too often act as cheerleaders.

Sports announcers use words that many people don’t understand, and, unlike the singing of Frank Sinatra, Doris Day, and other vocalists who pronounced every word clearly, much of what rap and rock’n roll performers say is also not understandable.

When I was a sports writer many years ago, using language that everyone could understand was a rule of journalism in both broadcast and print sports reporting. That has largely disappeared, and it’s not for the better.