A Future Blog Topic

On my side blog, Top Five And Then Some, Joe Theisman came up as I was discussing his career-ending injury. However, Joe is now a commentator for TV; I think he's with ESPN. Anyway, he's kind of annoying, but he has some good takes from time to time. He's most famous as a broadcaster, however, for this gem:

The word "genius" isn't applicable in football. A genius is a guy like Norman Einstein.
-Joe Theisman

I love missteps like this, and sports announcers definitely stumble more than any other journalist group. If I have a free half hour or so, I'll try to compile some more. I feel like the San Francisco Giants used to have (or may still have) a play-by-play guy in the 80s and 90s who was notorious for Yogi Berra type gems on a weekly basis.

And speaking of Yogi, athletes also are very quotable. I remember back when the Spurs stunk in like 1988 and Walter "The Truth" Berry was their best player. He had a few poor shooting nights and when asked what he needed to do get out of his shooting slump he said, "I ain't in no shooting slump. My shots just aren't falling!" Or at least that's how I remember it, or want to remember it.

And there was some basketball player who complained, after a loss, that his team was "too amphibious" on the court. He meant to say ambivalent. This quote is pretty famous and players and coaches from time to time will still joke to sportswriters that they were amphibious on the court. I'll have to look into who said that.

As an aside, I did Google search using the key words "amphibious, ambivalent, and basketball," thinking I'd find a page referencing the quote. The search didn't yield anything except interesting except for a website that lists ten-letter words. Who know all three of my key words had ten letters? Well, who knew, except for the guy who made the list of ten-letter words.