Over the years I’ve watched the media interview many outstanding professional athletes. I end up laughing during most of these interviews because so many pro-football and pro-basketball players are just plain unintelligible. It seems that unless it’s ghetto-speak, many basketball players in particular can’t speak. And these guys ‘attended’ our institutions of higher education for four or five years.
One of the worst examples is Earl Campbell who played his college football at the University of Texas. One of the greatest running backs ever, he won the Heisman Trophy in 1977, played for the Houston Oilers and the New Orleans Saints, and was inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 1991. But poor old Earl has difficulty putting two sentences together when he's not reading from a prepared script. Actually I feel sorry for Earl because not only was he a great athlete, but he also seems to be a really good guy.
Right now we are in the middle of the National Hockey League Stanley Cup playoffs. I’ve been watching the games on TV every day. During each broadcast, hockey players are interviewed before the start of the games, between periods and after the games. Many NHL players, both North American and European, never attended college, having come up through the Canadian junior leagues instead.
But you know what – when hockey players respond to questions their answers are rather intelligible, unlike those of many football and basketball players. Shit, even though they can barely speak English, Alex Ovechkin and the other Russian hockey players come across more intelligibly than those ghetto-speak basketball players.
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