There is no denying that the sports business these days is awash in bright lights …
Quite often, though, the same can’t be said for the people or practices involved.
The passage of time, the fading of origins and the constant superseding of slang can combine to cause some curious contemporary contexts.
To start, have you ever really thought about how pedantic the word ‘quarterback’ is? When the innovators who metamorphosed rugby into gridiron football were telling players where to stand, it was only logical to have someone placed all the way behind the line called a ‘fullback.’ By then, soccer already had two defending positions which used that term, so they surely provided the acceptable sporting frame of reference. For the gridiron game’s founding fathers to next place another player halfway between the fullback and the linemen and call him a ‘halfback’ made sense, too. But, perhaps they overdid this theme by sticking a third player halfway between the halfback and the linemen and arriving at the unfortunately obvious titling conclusion.
It only figures that such a mathematically correct —...